Lottery retailers visit this room at Lottery headquarters in Salem
to learn how to operate new video lottery games.
POSTED: Friday, October 30, 2009
The Oregon Lottery Commission decided today to make no changes
to the way the state compensates video lottery retailers. The
decision to keep the status quo came as education advocates
pushed hard for the state to keep more of the profit from the
machines. Salem Correspondent Chris Lehman reports.
(sound of video lottery machines)
If you like video lottery, you’d love this room at the Oregon Lottery
headquarters in Salem. It’s here that lottery retailers learn how to
operate each new game that comes along. In the next room over,
Lottery Commission members were deciding how much money
those retailers can keep from the cash that people lose in the
machines. Education advocates wanted the rate lowered from its
current average of around 24 percent. But
Commission chair Steven Ungar says the economy has many retailers
struggling.
Ungar: “If we were making the same decision two years from now,
I don’t know that this would be the magic rate. It just happens to
be the appropriate rate we all believe right now with all these
circumstances.”
The commission did shorten the length of the contract from six
years to five. Education advocates say they’ll make video lottery
compensation rates an issue in next year’s governor’s race.
Copyright 2009 OPB
On the Web:
Oregon Lottery
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