Auditors say state lawmakers may have violated state law by misusing public funds.

The Legislative Audit Council’s performance review of the SC Education Lottery found lawmakers used $2.1 billion from the state lottery to reduce their obligation to public education.

When lawmakers approved the state lottery in 2002, they designated lottery revenue to increase overall public education funding.

It was not to replace money already going to education.

But the audit shows that lawmakers used some of $5 billion from the lottery to replace state education funds.

“I think it’s a bombshell in what it shows about how we’ve funded education,” Sen. Brad Hutto, D-Orangeburg, said.

“What we’ve done is exactly what people have feared.”

The decrease in general fund money has primarily affected higher education.

Since 2002 the legislature violated state law by giving $4 billion less to colleges and universities.

K-12 education has actually received $1.9 billion more since 2001. But cuts to higher education funding still leaves a $2.1 billion deficit.

The leftover $2.9 billion in lottery revenue would mean an overall net gain for education, but lawmakers are not allocating the money as required by law.

Leftover lottery funds go to scholarships which doesn’t decrease tuition.

“The only way to help us freeze tuition or slow tuition growth is through increased funding to higher education — direct appropriations to the institutions that pay for operational expenditures,” USC spokesman Wes Hickman wrote in an email.

“In fact, the (audit) makes that exact point. The authorizing legislation for the lottery says that funds must supplement, not supplant, the funding levels for higher education that existed at the time.

“However, as we’ve been saying for years and the (audit) concludes, that’s exactly what has happened,” Hickman wrote.

Inside: How lawmakers misused lottery revenue