The Red and Black

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.

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.

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