By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — Former U.S. Rep. Ray Thornton of Little Rock is the first chairman of the Arkansas Lottery Commission.

As the first act in its inaugural meeting Tuesday, the state panel appointed to oversee operations of Arkansas’ scholarship lottery unanimously elected Thornton as chairman. Thornton, also a former state attorney general, state Supreme Court justice and past president of both the University of Arkansas and Arkansas State University, was appointed to the commission by Senate President Pro Tem Bob Johnson, D-Bigelow.

“I want this board to be open, full of integrity and transparency,” Thornton said. “It seems to me that the people of Arkansas need to have absolute confidence that we are not meeting in private or trying to do anything that we could not leave to this kind of forum and to set it on the table for everyone to observe.”

The commission elected Dianne Lamberth of Batesville, secretary of the Lyon College Board of Trustees, as its first vice chairman. Lamberth was appointed to the commission by Gov. Mike Beebe.

Beebe, Johnson and House Speaker Robbie Wills, D-Conway, each made three appointments to the nine-member panel last month.

Beebe, Wills and Lt. Gov. Bill Halter all addressed the commission at Tuesday’s meeting and promised not to interfere with the independent panel’s work.

“It’s your agenda,” Beebe said. “You are all smart, competent people or you wouldn’t be here.”

“My office stands ready to help you in any possible way, including staying completely out of the way,” said Halter, who first proposed the constitutional amendment that voters approved in November creating a state lottery to fund college scholarships.

The commission scheduled its second meeting for 1 p.m. next Tuesday in the same place as its first meeting, the Little Rock office of the University of Arkansas System.

Thornton said the state is missing out on potential revenue every day that the lottery is not operating.

“I think that it is vital, considering that we have $200,000 a day in missed scholarships, for us to move as promptly as possible,” he said.

Talking later to reporters, Thornton said he believes the lottery can be in place before the end of this calendar year. Legislators have said they expect the first lottery-funded scholarships to be available in 2010.

Also during Tuesday’s meeting, commissioners voted to invite a representative of South Carolina’s lottery to address the commission at a future meeting. The structure of South Carolina’s lottery was one of the main models lawmakers followed in crafting the enabling legislation for Arkansas’ lottery during the recently completed legislative session, Thornton said.

Thornton also said commissioners should not have one-on-one communications with lottery vendors or potential vendors and should not invite vendors to attend meetings as spectators because doing so could appear to show favoritism.

Matters the panel will take up at future meetings include hiring a director and an auditor, choosing a lottery vendor or vendors, deciding what kinds of lottery games to offer and creating a process for selecting the retailers who will sell lottery tickets.

The commission also will need to appoint a disbursement officer to approve expenditures. The state Legislature has approved a $6 million loan to the commission for startup costs, to be repaid with lottery revenue.

“We should bear in mind what an enormous task we have,” Thornton said.

The actions of the Lottery Commission will be subject to review by a 12-member legislative committee. That committee held its first meeting Monday.