The Wyoming Lottery is celebrating its first year of operation this month. Since August of 2014 more than 577,000 players have collected .2 million and retailers have collected million in commissions.
According to lottery CEO Jon Clontz, “It’s been a successful first year, and we’ve certainly hit the targets that were given to me.”
The lottery is a quasi-governmental body created in 2013 by the legislature, whose board of directors is appointed by Governor Matt Mead. It has been criticized for a lack of transparency about its finances and for so far not returning any profits to local government.
The law creating the lottery specified that the first $6 million in net profits go to local government, however it did not allocate start up funds. So the lottery had to take out a $3 million loan to launch. The lottery board decided to pay the loan back before distributing the $6 million.
Scott Badley, a spokesman for the Wyoming Association of Municipalities, isn’t ready yet to criticize the lottery. He told the Washington Times: “We’re optimistic that they’ll get startup loans paid back and then as the revenues come, in we’ll start to see some.” He added, “Then we’ll see how it goes.”
The lottery isn’t allowed to offer instant scratchers. It is limited to draw games.
About 58 percent of the $27 million in proceeds for the first year went towards prizes.
