I was disappointed to read the immediate dismissal of the Oregon Veterans Lottery Bill initiative by The Bulletin editorial board without anyone from the newspaper contacting us for better information than what was presented to your readers.

While the spending percentages your writer found on the Oregon Lottery website may indeed be the current lottery allocation, those aren’t the constitutionally allocated percentages of the lottery as determined by Oregon voters.

It’s an important distinction that should have been made clear to your readers.

The lottery’s original purpose in 1984 was for economic development. Over time, Oregon voters made decisions to reallocate those funds to other causes.

In 1995, voters dedicated 18 percent to the education stability fund. In 1997, voters dedicated 15 percent to finance the school capital matching fund. In 1998, Oregon voters voted to dedicate 15 percent to parks and fish habitats and reaffirmed that decision in 2010.

Other statutory allocations include 2.5 percent of video lottery receipts to counties for economic development; 1 percent for problem gambling treatment; 1 percent to the OUS Sports Lottery Account; and a nominal amount to county fairs.

This brings actual lottery dedications approved by voters and required by law to about 51 percent of lottery proceeds. What happens to the remainder? It’s currently used as discretionary funds by the Legislature.

We can fund education or economic development, but there is no statute that directs us to allocate the discretionary portion as a set percentage for either purpose. That means the discretionary allocations are just that — up to the whims of legislators on a session-by-session basis.

Sometimes we fund things a majority of us care about, like bonding dollars for community college infrastructure. But tucked into a community college bond bill was a $10 million bonding allocation of lottery dollars for a downtown Portland convention center hotel. Many Portlanders have argued against giving those dollars to a private corporation for a hotel. And how does that spending decision benefit the rest of Oregon? Most likely, it won’t.

The Oregon Veterans Lottery Bill is about giving voters a say in how we use our lottery dollars. More than 50 percent of Oregon voters solidly believe we do not do enough for veterans.

Oregon has more than 325,000 veterans who served for our country. Currently, only about 100,000 of them have connected to their earned benefits. Those benefits account for $2.2 billion in annual economic activity in Oregon in the form of pension and disability compensation, health care, home loans and GI Bills.

More than 225,000 Oregon veterans have not been properly connected to their earned benefits. A small investment of dedicated funds can help Oregon reach these veterans, closing critical gaps in health care, homelessness, addictions, post-traumatic stress disorder treatment and unemployment.

For every dollar Oregonians pay in federal taxes, only 93 cents is returned back to us. Oklahoma, a state with a comparable veterans population, realizes $400 million more per year than Oregon back into its economy. We can do better. We currently serve only three out of 10 veterans.

Reaching more will not only help veterans and their families, it will help Oregon’s bottom line. In Washington, properly aligning veterans with their earned benefits has saved the state’s general fund millions of dollars annually. It’s time for Oregon to step up. The Legislature has refused to properly fund veterans’ programs and services, even though Oregon voters believe we should.

Your editorial presented a false choice to voters — choose veterans or schoolchildren. As a mother with three children in public schools, the wife of a veteran who served two tours in Iraq, and a legislator, I feel confident that passage of the Oregon Veterans Lottery Bill will generate new revenue for Oregon’s economy, return our federal income tax dollars back to Oregon, help our veterans with needed services and reduce pressure on the state’s general fund, which will free up money for schools.

It’s a win for all Oregonians.

— State Rep. Julie Parrish represents District 37.