“Somebody’s going to get a nice chunk of change, depending on the area and the rate,” said Danielle Frizzi-Babb, spokeswoman for the Ohio Lottery.
The anticipation for tonight’s drawing has grown since Jan. 24, when a Georgia woman won $72 million in a Mega Millions drawing. The jackpot has rolled 18 times since, shooting the total past a half-billion dollars and sending everyone from first-time lottery players to groups of coworkers to slap down $1 for a ticket.
The winner will choose between a one-time cash payout of around $269.1 million or 26 annual payments of about $14.3 million after taxes. Individual municipalities have differing laws on collections from lottery winnings and rates.
The growing prize has increased ticket sales, which last year totaled $2.6 billion for all games in Ohio, the ninth-biggest total in the country. On Tuesday, the day of the last drawing, $5.3 million in Mega Millions tickets were sold, and officials expect an even bigger surge today ahead of the drawing of six numbers that occurs in the studios of WSB-TV in Atlanta.
About 28 cents from each dollar spent on lottery tickets goes to the Lottery Profits Education Fund, which receives all net profits of the Ohio Lottery. Last year, the lottery payment to education was $738.8 million, and the lottery portion is annually about 5 percent of the state’s education budget.
“Let’s be honest, people aren’t doing this to give back,” said Chris Jackson, a Centerville resident who purchased two Mega Millions tickets this week at a Sunoco station at 1927 Brown St., one of 9,360 Ohio Lottery retailers in the state. “But with that much money, a lot of it will be spread around.”
Who will benefit
Last November, Cheryl Farris, a six-year employee of Sammy’s Food Mart at 2416 S. Smithville Road in Dayton, received a call at the store.
“The lady wanted to know what the Rolling Cash jackpot was, and it was $271,000,” Farris said. “She had all five numbers on a ticket she bought at our store on Woodman.”
That prize earned the selling store the usual cut of lottery winnings and solidified the Sammy’s locations as go-to ticket spots. Now the retailer, like thousands of others in the state, is hoping for a substantial piece of a potential Mega Millions prize, which is one-tenth of 1 percent of the listed jackpot capped at $100,000. The state annually funnels about 6 percent of ticket revenue back to the retailers.
By the time a player has won, the Ohio Lottery already has its revenue for the education fund, which was created on the promise that the state’s lottery profits will benefit education. That contribution has topped $17 billion since the lottery’s inception in 1974, according to the lottery office. Patrick Gallaway, spokesman for the Ohio Department of Education, said funds are moved to the schools after approval by the state legislature.
“Overall, what I would say is yes, the funding that originates from the Ohio Lottery, in general, is important for the education system in Ohio,” Gallaway wrote in an email. “But it is simply one component to the overall foundation funding that schools receive from the state.”
After the winnings are in hand, the government takes its cut, including a quarter of the entire purse by the federal government. If an Ohio resident took the one-time Mega Millions payout, more than $25 million would go to the state in taxes.
Local taxes on lottery winnings vary. To collect, a municipality must specify in its laws that it taxes lottery winnings, and the rates differ. But even if no local lottery taxes are collected, as in Beavercreek, the community could benefit from a big winner living in its area.
“There could be someone contributing in the area for charities and things like that,” said Bill Kucera, Beavercreek’s finance and administrative services director. “But we wouldn’t see that money directly, unless they went ahead and bought a $15 million house.”
Education earmarks
The Ohio Lottery Commission was founded in 1974. By 1988, the state separated lottery funds earmarked for education into the Lottery Profits Education Fund.
The state joined the growing Mega Millions game in 2002, and the first resident to take home a jackpot was South Euclid’s Rebecca Jemison, who won $162 million in 2003.
Lottery has since become big business in the state. The $2.6 billion in ticket revenue during the last fiscal year was a 31.3 percent increase from the $1.98 billion in sales of 2002 and boasted the ninth straight year that proceeds surpassed $2 billion.
In a 2010 audit of the Ohio Lottery Commission totaling 194 pages, Ohio Auditor Mary Taylor wrote: “In general, auditors found OLC’s performance and management practices to be consistent with other U.S. lotteries. Overall, the lottery has performed well and generated significant revenue for the State through its game sales.”
However, that revenue could soon be compromised. In an analysis of the two-year state budget, the Ohio Legislative Service Commission wrote that transfers to the lottery’s education fund are expected to drop to $680.5 million in fiscal year 2013, a decrease of 7.9 percent from last year’s value. It cited the state’s coming casinos as the reason for the expected drop in lottery ticket sales.
But retailers haven’t felt any drop this week, as customers have streamed in, dreaming of a Mega Millions jackpot.
“I’m thinking (today) they could be lined up out the door,” said Sue Fraley, a 10-year employee of the Englewood Marathon station at 311 S. Main St., which recently was featured on the Ohio Lottery website as a Retailer of the Week. “It’s been very big here.”
Farris, of Sammy’s Food Mart in Dayton, said she already bought her ticket for tonight’s drawing. “Just one,” she said. “That’s all it takes.”
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