A promise is a promise.

When Gov. Mike Easley signed the law establishing a statewide lottery in 2005, it was done with the pledge that the proceeds would go to support education. Even with that promise, the issue was deadlocked in the N.C. Senate and Lt. Gov. Bev Perdue had to break the tie in order to get the bill to the governor’s desk.

Now as governor, Perdue has diverted lottery funds that should be going to local school districts to plug a gap in the general fund budget. We understand why she did what she did. It boils down to cash flow, her spokesman, Chrissy Pearson told the Daily Journal on Wednesday.

Pearson pointed out that final corporate tax payments have been due by March 15, but this year the deadline is a month later. Perdue wants to make sure that the state has the money in the bank to pay the bills. Pearson also points out that most of the state’s budget goes towards education. In a way taking lottery money and putting it toward the general fund in a sense is funding education because more than half of the state budget goes towards schools.

That’s a pretty thin argument, and one opponents of a lottery raised long ago. The fear has always been that even if lottery proceeds go towards education, the state would reduce the amount of money it spends from the general fund. That would mean the net gain to schools would be zero.

“They sell it as the ‘Education Lottery’ they don’t sell it as a ‘General Fund Lottery,’” said Bob Orr, executive director of the N.C. Institute for Constitutional Law. “To the extent that money is diverted, I think it’s a breach of faith to the public.”

Let’s forget for a minute that lotteries prey on people looking to make a quick buck. Your odds of winning a Powerball drawing are one in 195 million. Your odds of getting hit by lightning are far greater, one in 700,000.

Mecklenburg County State Rep. Thom Tillis co-sponsored House Bill 518, which would strip the “education” portion out of the lottery name. We think he has a valid point. Let’s call it what it is.

When he was governor, Easley lobbied, without success, to have a constitutional amendment to make sure that lottery funds would never go to something other than education. Maybe now that amendment can gain traction. If we’re going to have a lottery at all, and it’s supposed to benefit education, we need to keep the promise.