THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
LITTLE ROCK -- A sales director who has been with the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery since its start was given an ultimatum this week to either quit or face termination, according to Lottery Director Bishop Woosley.
He confirmed to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on Monday that Robert Stebbins no longer works for the program and said that he didn't know which option Stebbins took. A call by the newspaper to a phone number listed under Stebbins' name went unanswered.
Woosley declined to comment on whether weak ticket sales were behind Stebbins' departure. His replacement is Mitch Chandler, and he starts work Tuesday. Chandler was hired from outside the lottery, but Woosley had no further details about him.
The lottery began selling tickets in 2009 and has helped finance more than 30,000 scholarships every year for Arkansas students.
But revenues and scholarship proceeds have dropped each of the past three years. As lottery officials searched for ways to reverse the sales trends, lawmakers had cut the size of scholarships for new recipients and stiffened the minimum qualifications for receiving the awards.
Scholarship proceeds reached $94.2 million in fiscal 2011, peaked at $97.5 million in 2012 and then fell to $90.3 million in 2013 and $81.4 million in 2014.
Despite a 3 percent uptick in sales of scratch-off tickets to $306.6 million in the first 11 months of this fiscal year, which ends Tuesday, draw games such as Powerball and Mega Millions have declined by $14 million from the same period last year.
Earlier this month, Woosley told lawmakers that he expects the lottery to end the year with around $74.3 million in scholarship proceeds, short of the projected $78.1 million.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed a bill in February that dissolved the Lottery Commission and folded the lottery into the state Department of Finance and Administration. The law also created a lottery oversight committee tasked with improving the lottery's performance.
The committee's co-chairman, Sen. Jimmy Hickey, said Monday that he wasn't aware that Stebbins wasn't working anymore with the lottery and declined to speculate as to what prompted the decision.
State Desk on 07/01/2015