Missouri Senate Will Talk About Lottery Privatization

The state lottery is currently gathering opinions from state vendors on turning over the lottery's control to a private company.

March 07, 2011

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. - Next month, the Missouri Lottery and the state Senate will begin a dialogue about privatizing the lottery, the Lottery Post reports. Before then, the lottery is talking with state vendors on the issue.

"We really haven't engaged in conversation with the Senate," said May Scheve, the lottery??s executive director. "But beginning in April, we will work with the Senate to provide as much information as we can."

The Senate??s Rebooting Government program has eyed privatization of the state lottery as one of its topics. State Sen. Jim Lembke pushed back a lottery hearing because no lottery vendor would testify until after they had spoken with lottery officials. Lembke chairs the Senate Government Accountability Committee, which will schedule a hearing next month on lottery privatization.

"The lottery has to be kind of reserved with their comments since it might affect some of the (answers)," said Lembke. "My concern and interest in the lottery is I'm looking at all areas of state government to find out how we can become more competitive."

Missouri started talking about moving the state lottery into private hands after neighbor Illinois okayed a bill transferring its lottery to a private company. An Illinois appeals court ruled that the bill was unconstitutional and now the Illinois Supreme Court is reviewing the case.

Federal law makes it illegal to completely privatize a state lottery, which is why many states are closely following the Illinois case.

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