Georgia legislators will begin looking at ways to overhaul the lottery-funded HOPE Scholarship next year, legislative leaders say.

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"There's going to be a discussion that has to look at the future of the HOPE Scholarship and the fees (the scholarship pays for)," said state Sen. Jack Hill, R-Reidsville, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. "It's apparent that the lottery is either maturing or flattening out."

State officials say they will dip into a HOPE reserve fund for the first time in nearly a decade next year as costs rise faster than sales of lottery tickets, which fund the HOPE Scholarship and a statewide pre-K program.

"It's not an emergency situation," said Sen. Bill Cowsert, R-Athens, who also said legislators will study the future of HOPE and other lottery-funded education programs next year. "Although this is the first year we pay more out (than is taken in), there are still very high amounts of reserves."

A HOPE reserve fund has about $1 billion in it, he said, 10 times the $100 million shortfall predicted next year by the Georgia Student Finance Corporation.

Georgians could see one addition to the scholarship program as soon as next year. Hill is backing a new grant program that would help about 50,000 poor students pay for college, in addition to the regular HOPE scholarship. The new program would cost about $30 million a year, Hill and other backers estimate.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of more affluent students may have to begin spending more of their own money beginning in 2012.

Under a plan adopted by the legislators, a $300-per-year book allowance for HOPE recipients may be cut in half in 2012 because of the shortfall in lottery revenues.

If the gap between income and costs continues to grow, the book money will be eliminated entirely in 2013, according to the plan.

And University of Georgia students could lose even more in 2014. In a third step of HOPE's expense-reduction plan, the scholarship would no longer cover mandatory student fees. The change would cost UGA students nearly $900 a year.

More than 200,000 students got HOPE this year, including students in the state technical college system, the University System of Georgia and private colleges.

Half or more of the technical college students would be affected by the reduction in book benefits, said Mike Light, a spokesman for the Technical College System of Georgia.

Another half, about 58,000, received Pell Grants this year, a federal award designed to help poor students pay for college. The HOPE reduction plan specifies that book fees won't be reduced for Pell Grant recipients, at least in the first year, Light explained. The number of students on Pell Grants is increasing because of the deep economic recession, he said.

Since HOPE covers tuition, any time the state Board of Regents increases that amount, the lottery fund must pay out more. But Cowsert and Hill downplayed the notion that Georgia's budget crisis is depleting the lottery fund.

The state Board of Regents hiked tuition last year to help make up the difference after the state legislature reduced state appropriations to the university system, and education officials say regents are likely to hike tuition again when the board meets in April.

But tuition rates remain well below average at UGA and other state public colleges and universities, Cowsert said.

And a new round of reductions in state money for higher education won't be as much as the $300 million proposed in a February legislative committee meeting, Hill said.

"The cuts will not be at anything near that," he said.