Iowa Sets Lottery Record

Wednesday, March 08, 2006 posted 11:18 AM EST

Iowa Lottery sales have set a new annual record, and Powerball sales in Nebraska hit $3 million in one week -- sparking an effort to re-direct how that money is being spent.

Officials say sales, fueled by those TouchPlay video machines and a record Powerball jackpot reached a new high last month -- with four months left in the fiscal year.

Lottery spokeswoman Mary Neubauer says sales through the week of February 22nd were $223 million. That tops the overall record of $211 million set last year.

Neubauer says sales for all but two lottery products are running ahead of last year. Powerball sales were sparked by the recent record jackpot of $365 million won by eight meatpacking workers in Lincoln.

The new dollars flowing in both Nebraska and Iowa are raising questions about where that money is being spent.

In the past, some of that money funded a special computer class at Robert Gilder Elementary School.

"The community could come in after school and work with their children so they could have different ways of accessing the computers," said Principal Velma Crumbley.

That program no longer exists because it's no longer funded. State senators took lottery money away from the department of education in 2001 and put it directly into the general fund.

Prior to the budget crunch in 2001, 1 percent of Nebraska lottery money went to treat compulsive gambling, 10 percent to the state fair, 44 percent to the education department and 44 percent to the environmental trust fund.

A bill calling for that money to be put back into the education department was introduced in the legislature Tuesday.

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