Our Take

Majority opinions of The Red & Black's editorial board

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Posted: 10/26/05

Help comes too late
Gov. Perdue's new proposal to save HOPE will have little impact now

Gov. Sonny Perdue's proposed "HOPE Chest" is solid legislation. It's the kind of common-sense bill that will resonate with voters and help his chances of reelection in 2006.

Too bad he didn't propose it in 2003 - when it mattered.

2004 CHANGES TO HOPE

In 2004, the Georgia General Assembly approved the following triggers that would cut students' HOPE Scholarship benefits if the program continued to lose money.

- The first year the scholarships' funds dropped below the previous year's balance, students would lose $150 (or half) of their yearly textbook allowance.

- The second year the scholarship lost money, HOPE would stop paying the other $150 in book allowances.

- If the program lost money for a third year, HOPE would stop paying any student fees.

- Also, the amount HOPE pays in student fees was capped to its 2004 amount, so it would not cover future increases in what colleges and universities charged.

Between 1994 and 2003, lottery revenue funded approximately $1.8 billion in non-HOPE or Pre-K projects.

The HOPE Chest is a constitutional amendment that would forbid state lottery revenue from funding anything other than the HOPE Scholarship and Pre-K education. No more satellite dishes, no more computers, no more metal detectors.

For nine years after lottery funds were earmarked for HOPE and other educational uses, legislators helped themselves to what seemed like a neverending river of cash. Classroom by computer lab, $1.8 billion was spent on items other than HOPE or Pre-K.

The spending spree gradually ended as policy makers became aware of the looming financial shortfall the merit-based scholarship was headed toward. The lottery stopped funding the construction of school buildings after 2001 and technology purchases after 2003, according to documents obtained from Perdue's office.

Locking lottery revenue into HOPE would have been a good move then, before the General Assembly approved a 2004 bill that chips away at the merit-based scholarship if it continues to lose money.

In Perdue's defense, this should have been done years before he entered the governor's mansion. Had Gov. Roy Barnes or Gov. Zell Miller nipped this in the bud in the '90s, HOPE might not be in dire-straights today.

And this is not to say the legislature shouldn't approve the bill, and if it does, that Georgia voters shouldn't be eager to vote for it in the statewide referendum that will follow.

But before Georgians reward Perdue at the ballot box for his commitment to HOPE, they should understand he is pretending to fix a leak that already has been plugged - partly at the expense of students' textbook allowances and student fee payments.