A new television infomercial from the N.C. Education Lottery predicts layoffs in education at the same time that Gov. Beverly Perdue halted the state budget because she is insisting on no reductions in per pupil spending.
The lottery broadcast an interview-style commercial, an infomercial, with one of its top executives, Deputy Executive Director Alice Garland, on NBC 17 in Raleigh Friday morning.
The commercial boasts about the more than $1 billion the lottery has raised for education in three years. The interviewer asks about education funding and Garland explains that the education portion of the state budget is likely to be 14 percent less than last year and, of that money, 90 percent is salaries.
"When you have that kind of a decrease, you're going to have to have layoffs," Garland says in the ad.
Perdue slammed the brakes on the budget process this week because lawmakers weren't raising enough money to keep per pupil spending at the same level.
The infomercial was taped a month before Perdue's actions on the budget.
UPDATE: Perdue's press secretary, Chrissy Pearson, said the infomercial added to Perdue's message: "It is precisely because of the possibility of teacher layoffs that Gov. Perdue is working so hard to protect the funding for public schools in the budget."
Comments
Re: Lottery ad bumps Perdue message
July 27, 2009 - 2:52pm — hayek66Great. Let's have more people who can ill afford to waste money "invest in lottery tickets. All in the name of Bev Perdue.
Re: Lottery ad bumps Perdue message
July 27, 2009 - 12:49pm — NCLotteryCommun...No taxpayer money is used to fund any portion of the state lottery operations. The lottery uses less than 4 percent of sales from lottery tickets to operate, which includes advertising. The infomercial is an extremely low cost way for the lottery to get the word out about where the money goes, which is by far our most frequently asked question.
Asks obvious question for this article
July 24, 2009 - 3:52pm — captsfufp...so who paid for this ad? The taxpayers? Is the state funding an ad to support its own existence for the lottery? Just wonderin'... who approved the $$ for that ad budget?
Re: Lottery ad bumps Perdue message
July 24, 2009 - 2:48pm — cthayes75zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
huh, what? Is it over yet? I dozed off.