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Sponsor asks Revenue Committee to move bill removing county fair lottery cap to Ways & Means
Summary
Representative Anna Scharf told the House Committee on Revenue that House Bill 2,145 would remove an outdated $1.53 million cap on the county fair share of lottery net proceeds so the distribution defaults to the statutory percentage; the sponsor asked the committee to pass the bill to Ways & Means to meet its companion bill.
Representative Anna Scharf told the House Committee on Revenue on April 22 that House Bill 2,145 would remove a statutory "not to exceed" cap on the county fair account so that the account would again receive the statutory percentage of lottery net proceeds. "House bill 21 45 simply removes that cap, and allows it to just simply default to the 1% of the lottery funding," Scharf said.
Scharf said the cap (adjusted for inflation) was set about 20 years ago and no longer reflects current lottery proceeds or fairground needs. Justin Lowe of the Association of Oregon Counties said counties support removing the $1.5 million cap and noted that, with higher lottery proceeds, a 0.9% or 1% distribution could produce several million dollars for county fairs in a recent year.
Legislative Revenue Office staff described other lottery distributions (constitutional and statutory) and noted the committee had several related omnibus proposals; the sponsor said HB 2,145 landed in Revenue by clerical error and asked that it be moved to Ways & Means to reunite it with its companion bill (HB 2,304), which contains additional budget provisions. The committee did not take a vote during the hearing and agreed to follow up with LRO at a later date.
