By John Lyon
Arkansas News Bureau

LITTLE ROCK — In his first appearance before state legislators, Arkansas Lottery Director Ernie Passailaigue on Thursday defended his plan to create 88 staff positions, including two jobs paying $250,000 that may go to South Carolina lottery executives.

The Arkansas Lottery Commission Legislative Oversight Committee approved Passailaigue’s hiring plan, though some members said they would have a hard time explaining it to constituents and one member questioned whether it was legal.

“When the commission hired you and paid your salary, the constituents out there were raising all kinds of cain and ringing the phones off the wall,” said Rep. Buddy Lovell, D-Marked Tree, referring to reaction to Passailaigue’s $324,000 salary. “I’ve already heard about these two salaries since yesterday’s commission meeting.”

Passailaigue announced at a Lottery Commission meeting Wednesday he plans to hire a vice president of gaming operations and a vice president of administration at salaries of $250,000 each. The jobs should go to people with lottery experience if the lottery is to meet the Oct. 29 target date for the start of ticket sales, he told lawmakers Thursday.

Two executives with the South Carolina lottery have expressed interest and would be strong candidates, said Passailaigue, who left a job as director of South Carolina’s lottery to run Arkansas’ lottery.

“What I’m attempting to do is build up an organization in which you have about 90 or so people, and we’re trying to do that with the vast majority being Arkansans, but to do that you have to have some people that are knowledgeable of what this is all about,” Passailaigue told legislators Thursday.

He acknowledged that explaining the salaries to constituents might not be possible, though he predicted that complaints would stop after the lottery starts raising an estimated $250,000 a day for college scholarships.

“This is another one that you cannot go back and talk with the average person about, because they will not understand it,” he said. “Hopefully, they’ve got enough trust and faith in confidence in your ability, because you were elected, that you can come up here and listen to all this and make a good decision.”

House Speaker Robbie Wills, D-Conway, said people who question the salaries need to understand why attracting good candidates is important.

“A lot of those folks are fans of a football team that pays $2.5 million for a coach,” he said.

Passailaigue’s hiring plan required legislative approval because the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery Act only provides for 20 staff positions, though it allows the lottery director to request up to 75 more positions from an expansion pool.

State Sen. Johnny Key, R-Mountain Home, voted against approving the pool positions. He noted that the law permits up to 60 career service grade positions and up to 15 higher-paying professional and executive grade positions, but Passailaigue’s proposal calls for 62 career positions.

Bill Stovall, an assistant to the House speaker, said that to comply with the law, some of the positions listed in the proposal as career positions would have to be counted among the 20 positions that are not part of the expansion pool.

“It is not uncommon for someone in an agency to hire someone in a different job title and different job grade than what the law says and then clean it up later,” Stovall said.

The explanation didn’t satisfy Key.

“If I take this home and I get asked a question about these (positions), I can’t answer. I can’t take them and show them this paper and make it make sense,” he said.

Talking later to reporters, Key said he voted “no” because the document that was in front of him “did not conform with the law.”

Key also took exception to Passailaigue’s remark that the average person would not be able to understand what was happening.

“I have a little more faith in my constituents than that. I think they do understand it,” he said.

“Especially in this economy, they’re understanding dollars and cents a whole lot better than we have in several years.”