July 21 Political Animals Club: Ernie Passailaigue

Arkansas Lottery Executive Director Ernie Passailaigue
will be the speaker at the next meeting of the Political Animals Club. The meeting will take place on Tuesday, July 21 at the Governor's Mansion. If interested in joining PAC, send an e-mail to Steve Ronnel at SteveR [at] metalrecyclingcorp [dot] com.

I've received more than one e-mail from constituents asking about this remark in the press:

Lottery Executive Director Ernie Passailaigue asked legislators to ignore criticism in the news media and from constituents about high salaries and other lottery issues, such as whether Arkansas should allow keno. “You cannot go back and talk to the average person about this [creating a state lottery] because they will not understand it,” said Passailaigue, who started work Monday.

Update: Here's a swift response from the lottery office (.doc), that includes a description of the startup. The response also states that after Arkansas voters approved the lottery, we had the choice of either having a good lottery or a bad one. The staff worked from 8:00 am to at least 9:00 pm each day over this past holiday weekend to ensure the former, and they're confident that the decisions made by the Arkansas Lottery Commissioners will be vindicated by the results produced once the operation is up and running.