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JEFFERSON CITY, MO. -- Update: Thursday, Sept. 23 at 6:23 p.m.

Two years ago, Missouri voter’s eliminated gambler loss limits and raised casino taxes.

The initiative put the new money generated into a separate fund to be distributed to schools on top of their normal funding. 

State Auditor Susan Montee said that has not happened. She said lawmakers have simply replaced general revenue with gaming tax revenue.

"There is new money coming in,” Montee said. “The new money is just supplanting old money. They appropriated less and then they can use that money somewhere else.”

Montees said lawmakers are not giving voters what they bargained for with gaming. She said there could be an additional $21 million for public schools funding, had state lawmakers followed voters' wishes; but technical problems may have made that unlikely.

Budget analysts said the new law created problems for Missouri’s School Funding formula, leaving many schools ineligible for the new money. So, last year, lawmakers changed the voter-approved initiative by removing the requirement to treat additional casino revenues as new money for schools.    

"This is something that was sold to the voters as new money for education,” Montee said.

The ballot initiative required the auditor to track the gaming money, to make sure it was spent as intended. But Montee said that's pointless, since lawmakers can, and always could, spend it any way they want.

"We put right in our audit there's really no reason for us to come in and look at these numbers because there's no provisions anymore that the money be held somewhere else,” Montee said.

Read the whole audit report 

Original Story:

A state audit report shows that legislators misused funding that was supposed to go to Missouri schools.

State Auditor Susan Montee said in a media release that the Missouri General Assembly in 2009 removed key components approved by Missouri voters in 2008. Legislators removed the requirement that increased gaming revenues generated by Proposition A would go to funding education, or the Schools First Fund, for 2009 and 2010.

Montee’s report shows that if the components stayed in place, more than $20.9 million would have gone to schools.

Read the media release