Peter Schorsch
So how smart was the Florida Lottery to pick IGT? Business smart.
In Florida, it’s a compliment to say business smart, rather than government smart. And the Lottery, unlike the public-private Enterprise Florida, is still fully a state agency.
That kind of smarts means billions of dollars have gone into the state’s trust fund that pays for education, including scholarships for needy and deserving kids.
Moreover, there have been no issues with fraud since IGT has been on watch, for more than eight years now.
The contracting process was so spotless you could see your face in it, even though it was one of the most competitive contracts in state government history.
That was a far cry from the recent bid for a Lottery advertising contract worth a whopping $125 million. That wound up in a protest that was only recently settled.
You’re also not reading stories on this site such as the ones now circulating in the North and West.
Take Connecticut, where that state’s lottery chief quit after “an expensive flaw in the 5 Card Cash game last year,” according to ctpost.com.
“(T)he Connecticut Lottery and state Department of Consumer Protection are still involved in an investigation into last year’s problems with the game, which produced more winners than the game should have allowed,” the site said.
Whoops.
Or Arizona, where software bugs are “prevent(ing) the new machines from reading winning scratchers tickets,” KGUN9-TV reported.
Whoops again.
Here in Florida, with things running so smoothly at the Florida Lottery, one might say “no news is good news.”
