Don't break the Promise

So Gov. Joe Manchin has floated the idea of tying Promise scholarships to recipients' willingness to live or work in West Virginia after receiving their degrees. I have a few thoughts on that, and I'd like to get some of yours:

-- This sounds good for the interior counties, but in the border counties, it's close to impossible to implement honestly. A person can live in Huntington and work in Ashland, or he can work in Huntington and live in Proctorville.

-- It sounds to me like the guv wants to reduce the Promise payouts.

-- Promise is funded through those video poker machines you find in every neighborhood. In 2001, then-Gov. Bob Wise made a deal with the public. If he could get rid of gray (illegal but in the open) machines and replace them with state-regulated machines (remember "reduce, restrict, regulate," or something like that), then he would see to it that our best high school graduates would get free tuition in college. Because a lot of kids qualified for Promise, the state has been raising requirements in order to keep its costs down.

-- When my 10th-grade daughter heard about Manchin's idea, she wondered if she would even bother applying to Marshall. So far her choices have been Marshall (she lives close to it) or Ohio State, where she would try to live with her one of her favorite aunts. If West Virginia is closing off this pay-for-achievement program, why bother even looking at Marshall, she asked.

-- Video lottery sunsets in 2011 or 2012, and some places are trying to get rid of it even earlier. Kanawha County wants to eliminate video lottery in favor of sending its resident gamblers to the dog track casino. If there is sentiment against renewing video lottery, then the state will either have to eliminate Promise or find another funding source.

-- Although the original deal was Promise-for-video lottery, the Legislature keeps finding new uses for video lottery revenue. Perhaps Manchin has ideas for other use of Promise money, and he needs to restrict the Promise payouts to do them.

We'll have more reporting on this in The Herald-Dispatch soon. I have a hard time believing Manchin's proposal will get a lot of support unless he's got a tasty carrot in there somewhere.