Lottery Officials Quiet on New Hire After Former Sales Director Scratched

Mitch Chandler, formerly a senior vice president at Martin-Wilbourn Partners, is joining the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce.

You’d never know it from reading the reports of his firing in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, but Robert Stebbins was not directly responsible for ticket sales at the Arkansas Scholarship Lottery.

Stebbins’ title was sales director, but the job description — released to Arkansas Business’ Whispers column under the state Freedom of Information Act — makes clear that his duties primarily involved lining up retailers and keeping them stocked with the games that were developed and marketed by other lottery executives.

By our press time on Thursday, the Democrat-Gazette had published two articles on Stebbins’ firing, including the fact that he was given the opportunity to resign and that his health insurance benefits were canceled on June 30, one day after he was fired and the last day of the state’s fiscal year.

The D-G’s reports also described the downward trend in ticket sales — and scholarship proceeds — which might lead a reader to think that it was the sales effort for which Stebbins was responsible.

The D-G didn’t report on retail contracts, Stebbins’ primary sales responsibility, but Whispers will:

At the end of June, lottery tickets were being sold by 1,899 retailers. While retailers come in and out of the fold — stores open, close, change ownership, etc. — the number of retailers has not changed significantly since ticket sales began in the fall of 2009. Fiscal year-end retailer counts have ranged from a high of 1,917 on June 30, 2010, to a low of 1,874 a year later.

Now, we can’t say whether that’s as many retailers as the lottery needs or should have, but we can say that the number of sales outlets has been far more stable than the revenue from ticket sales. Ticket sales were off by about 1.5 percent for the first 11 months of the fiscal year and on track to be down by almost 15 percent from the high-water mark reached three years ago.

So who else is involved in ticket sales?

Mike Smith has been director of gaming since the lottery launched in 2009. He is paid $159,197. And Joanna Bunten has been advertising and marketing director since startup. Her salary is $82,285.

The New Guy

If you didn’t read to the end of the Democrat-Gazette report, you also missed out on the news that a replacement sales director had already been hired before Stebbins was fired.

That would be Mitch Chandler, most recently owner of Connect Global Tech LLC of North Little Rock, but with a resume that includes the Little Rock Regional Chamber of Commerce and the Martin-Wilbourn Partners and CJRW ad agencies.

More importantly perhaps, Chandler was the spokesman for the Arkansas Economic Development Commission in the mid-2000s, when that department was headed by Larry Walther, who is now the director of the state Department of Finance & Administration.

And the lottery, thanks to new legislation, is now a division of DF&A rather than an independent, stand-alone agency run by a state commission.

And that might explain why the Democrat-Gazette reported that Lottery Director Bishop Woosley “had no details” about the man who had already been picked to fill a job that had paid Stebbins $98,187 a year. (The job, grade N910 on the state salary schedule, did not have to be advertised for applicants.)

Except that’s not Chandler’s salary. While the job description has not changed, according to Woosley, Chandler’s starting salary is $104,080.

It also might explain why Chandler, who does not have a college degree, was hired for a job whose written requirements include “a bachelor’s degree, preferably in business administration, marketing or a related field.”