College students statewide have lobbied for legislation that would save the dying Lottery Scholarship fund, and their efforts may pay off during this year’s legislative session.
The Legislative Finance Committee has predicted since July that the fund will run dry as soon as 2014, but House Joint Memorial 14 and Senate Joint Memorial 27 both propose creating a task force to prevent that from happening.
Rep. Ray Begaye (D, San Juan) co-sponsored HJM 14 and said the memorial aims to develop a solution by the 2013 legislative session. The House Education Committee passed HJM 14 on Monday and it is the first item on the House Calendar for Wednesday. SJM 27 is currently in the Senate Rules Committee.
“Several NMSU students and students from other universities said, ‘Let’s look at this, put a team of experts together and find a solution by next January so we can save the scholarship,’” Begaye said.
Begaye said possible solutions include finding alternative funding sources, increasing the amount of funding going directly from ticket sales to the scholarship or making the academic requirements for qualifying for the scholarship tougher.
Begaye said another suggestion is to stop awarding the scholarship to freshmen, because scholarship funding has been spent in the past on students who dropped out of school.
“It used to be we would give the lottery to any incoming freshman and they would go for less than a full semester and then drop out, and that is money lost on the back of taxpayers,” he said.
Sen. Cynthia Nava (D, Doña Ana), chair of the Senate Education Committee, introduced SJM 27. She said she served in the legislature when the Lottery Scholarship was instituted in 1996.
“This is promise we made in 1996 to New Mexico students, and I think we have to find a way as a state not to go back to on that promise,” she said.
Nava said she doesn’t agree with making the scholarship’s eligibility requirements more rigorous.
“You can’t cut your way out of the problem,” she said. “We may have to raise (eligibility requirements) to some degree, but the lottery can’t continue to serve the state if we cut without adding any more money.”
Florencio Olguin, director of ASUNM Governmental Affairs, met with Nava on Tuesday to discuss the memorial. He said ASUNM advocated for a Lottery Scholarship task force, which would include students from colleges around New Mexico.
The memorials propose a task force that would include at least three students from three different state colleges.
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