Lt. Gov. Mark Taylor portrays himself a champion of the lottery-funded HOPE scholarship, but when he was a state senator he backed sending $2 million in proceeds to a park facility that now touts itself as a perfect setting for weddings, reunions and receptions.

That's the kind of project Gov. Sonny Perdue says he's targeting with a proposed constitutional amendment to ban using lottery money for anything but HOPE, pre-kindergarten classes and reserves.

Taylor and other Perdue critics note that lawmakers no longer approve things like the $2 million for the Chehaw Park education center in Albany because the growth in HOPE and pre-kindergarten costs is eating up lottery revenue. They say a constitutional amendment isn't needed and that Perdue's proposal has more to do with 2006 gubernatorial politics than a desire to protect one of the most popular programs in state history.

"Sonny Perdue is very late to the effort to support the HOPE scholarship," said Taylor, one of the candidates hoping to unseat him next year.

Perdue said he wants to remove some of the partisan politics from the HOPE debate, which has been a part of every gubernatorial election since Zell Miller beat Johnny Isakson in 1990 vowing to create a lottery for education. He also wants to let voters know that no lottery money has been spent on local pet projects since he took office in 2003.

"That message isn't out there," Perdue said.

What Democrats have put "out there" the past few years is that Perdue tried to cut HOPE funding as tuition costs rose, an unpopular move, particularly in the HOPE-heavy Atlanta suburbs that have long been the base of the Georgia Republican Party.

"It is very important for the governor to establish himself with the solid conservative base in the suburbs," said Gary Henry, a Georgia State University researcher who has studied the impact of HOPE on elections. "The HOPE scholarship is the big key to keeping that base. It is the public policy that most directly influences their pocket books."

Under HOPE, students with at least a B average get free tuition and some money for books and fees at the state's public colleges. Private school students who have the grades can earn $3,000.

Unexpected cash

Since its inception, HOPE has helped educate 850,000 students.

But during the first decade of the program, about $1.8 billion in proceeds went to historic buildings, seldom-used satellite dishes, special scholarships for students at favored private schools and a $50 million public broadcasting and telecommunications complex.

While serving in the state Senate in 1996, Taylor supported giving $2 million to an education center at a park in Albany, his home town.

Taylor said the money was for a distance-learning program that used the zoo to help deliver science education to children in southwest Georgia. A similar program was funded in Atlanta.

"It was a good buy for the lottery because it was delivering science education to the classrooms of Georgia," he said. "That's ancient history. That was at a time when we had so underestimated the [lottery] revenues that we were doing a lot for education."

Two years later, in 1998, Roy Barnes successfully ran for governor promoting a constitutional amendment giving HOPE, pre-kindergarten and reserves first dibs on any lottery revenue. The measure easily passed, but Barnes and lawmakers continued spending lottery money for other things because so much cash was available.

Rising costs for HOPE and pre-kindergarten have made such spending largely impossible, and most lawmakers support Perdue's proposal. Since the 1998 amendment allocates most lottery funds to three areas, critics aren't sure Perdue's amendment is needed.

"It's like wearing suspenders and a belt," Taylor said.

But it could provide Perdue with some insulation against Democratic attacks. During the 2004 legislative session, Perdue proposed cutting more than $120 million in payments for HOPE students' textbooks and fees as recommended by a bipartisan study committee. Taylor and other Democrats criticized the proposal, which was abandoned.

Be right on HOPE

Earlier this year, Democrats accused Perdue of misusing $1.7 million in lottery money to create a Web page of information for college-bound students (www.gacollege 411.com). Democrats argued the governor was taking money from HOPE, but Perdue staffers said the page let the state build a system to better track HOPE recipients.

House Higher Education Committee chairman BiIl Hembree (R-Douglasville), said it's important for Perdue to get on the right side of the HOPE debate.

"It's big not only in my district but across the state because of the popularity of the program," Hembree said. "He understands that. He understands how popular it is, and he wants to make sure it survives."