WASHINGTON (Map, News) – Virginia Attorney General Robert McDonnell told state lawmakers Tuesday that their long-standing practice of sending lottery revenue into the state’s main funding pot and not directly into local education is unconstitutional.

The legal opinion, while advisory, clears up a budget dispute over the course of the proceeds and could prompt legislators to change the way they route the more than $400 million the lottery raises each year for local school systems.

Republican Lt. Gov. William Bolling last month sought to block the state Senate’s slim Democratic majority from passing its budget by insisting that the inclusion of lottery money into the state’s largest spending fund would require an 80 percent vote, which would have been impossible in the increasingly divisive chamber. Bolling was overruled.

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