| Public Release Date: January 26, 1996 | No. 95-52 |
The Minnesota State Lottery (Lottery) headquarters is in Roseville. Six regional offices are located throughout the state. George Andersen is the Executive Director of the Lottery. The Lottery Board, a citizen advisory council, advised the Lottery on various aspects of operations. The Lottery Board was abolished effective July 1, 1995, and all of its duties were eliminated as of that date.
The Lottery maintains accounts outside of the state treasury and records financial transactions on its own accounting system. Minn. Laws 1995, Chapter 254, Article 1, Section 861, Subd. 7 now requires the Lottery to transfer all available cash to the state treasury on a weekly basis. Lottery payroll and employee expense reimbursements are recorded on the Statewide Accounting System (SWA). The Lottery had gross revenues of approximately $330 million and $333 million during fiscal years 1993 and 1994.
The Lottery administered prize payouts and unclaimed prizes as required by statute. We also reviewed the status of prize incentive reserve accounts. The Lottery has reduced the amount of the reserve accounts in recent years. We concluded, however, that the Lottery should reevaluate its need for retailer incentive reserves by considering both its working capital and cash flow projections for the organization overall.
We reviewed the status of the on-line vendor contract with Automatic Wagering, Inc. The original contract was extended without a public bid process. We believe the Lottery should re-bid this contract in the future.
The Lottery complied with state statutes in transferring beneficiary distributions and the payment of taxes in lieu of sales tax to state agencies.
