Asheville Citizen-Times (because the N&O wants me to pay for it):
North Carolina teachers would get average 5 percent raises without giving up their job protections or having teaching assistant cuts, according to the preliminary Republican House government spending plan released Tuesday.
The $21.1 billion spending plan, which is expected to clear the full House by the end of the week, would locate much of the money to pay for the raises through an expected jump in North Carolina Education Lottery revenues generated by more advertising.
The Senate proposal approved late last month cut the amount designated for teaching assistants almost in half to help pay for pay raises that average more than 11 percent. The Senate also required veteran teachers to agree to end their tenured status to receive the higher salaries. ...
But the proposal envisions the lottery giving $177 million more in net profits to the state in the next fiscal year, with nearly all of the money going to pay for classroom teachers. While the cap on lottery advertising would increase from 1 percent of overall lottery sales to 2 percent, lottery commercials also would have to disclose the longer odds of winning top prizes.
From the NC Education Lottery website:
In the lottery’s last fiscal year, $478 million dollars were contributed to the more than $10 billion provided to education from the state's General Fund. Lottery funds are a small but important part of the state money to support education in North Carolina.
With revenue of $1.69 billion [pdf] this suggests that about 28% of sales goes to education. An increase of $177 million, if the 28% margin stays constant, suggests that lottery sales will rise by $632 million. This means that the NC House envisions a doubling of lottery advertising leads to a 37% increase in revenues.
