lottery tickets
Officials at the Pennsylvania Lottery are exploring an idea being tested in other states that allow lottery ticket sales to be sold at the gas pump, as one idea for increasing ticket sales to help grow the profits that pay for senior citizen programs.
(File photo)
Imagine being able to buy lottery tickets at the pump while gassing up the car. Or at the grocery store checkout counter instead of having to wander over to a vending machine or customer service counter. Or with a bottle of wine at a state liquor store.
All of these new venues for selling Pennsylvania Lottery tickets could be in play as soon as this year, a lottery official shared with the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday.
Drew Svitko, recently named as the executive director of the Pennsylvania Lottery, said, "The more places you see those [lottery] tickets, the more we are going to sell."
They are being explored as a way to increase ticket sales and, in turn, help meet the growing demand for senior citizens programs that the lottery funds, said Drew Svitko, a 15-year lottery employee who was named as Pennsylvania Lottery's executive director on March 16. He replaces Silvan Lutkewitte III, whom Wolf dismissed in early February.
"The more places you see those tickets, the more we are going to sell," Svitko said.
Sens. John Blake, D-Lackawanna County, and John Rafferty, R-Montgomery County, voiced concerns about the health of the lottery funds.
Blake pointed out that more than $500 million from the lottery fund was used this fiscal year to pay for long-term care, home and community services, and medical assistance transportation services, which historically were paid for by the state Department of Human Services out of the state's general fund budget.
"I feel that there's been a lot of raiding that fund," Blake said.
Acting Revenue Secretary Eileen McNulty said using lottery funds to pay for an increasing amount of programs formerly paid for out of the state budget is impacting the health of the lottery fund.
Acting Revenue Secretary Eileen McNulty replied, "I think you put your finger on what the significant issue with the fund itself is, and that is a 52 percent increase in expenditures in the Department of Human Services area between 2013-14 and 2014-15. I don't know what we could do in terms of the lottery program that would generate a 52 percent increase in revenue to cover that kind of increase in cost."
McNulty pointed out that Gov. Tom Wolf's budget proposes to reduce the reliance on lottery funds by removing $82 million of the cost of those services and putting them back in the human services department budget.
"We need to have a conversation with the General Assembly about where we want to go with this, whether we want to continue to put more expenditures in the lottery fund," she said.
If so, she said, some law changes will be needed to allow the lottery to expand gaming into new areas. One of them could be keno. Another would be allowing lottery tickets to be sold in state liquor stores.
"We hope to work with the General Assembly to introduce lottery sales in state stores, which is a significant opportunity for us, as well as other initiatives, which will result in people being able to have more access to our product in the existing stores that we have," Svitko said.
He noted that instant tickets are mostly impulse purchases so increasing access to them has proven throughout the 44-year-old lottery's history to be the biggest factor in boosting ticket sales.
Additionally, Svitko told senators that the lottery is working with big-box retailers to bring them on as lottery ticket vendors as well as in-lane ticket sales at grocery store checkouts, which currently is used by Canadian lotteries.
The agency also is exploring "play at the pump" ticket sales at gas stations that is currently being tested in California, North Carolina, Missouri and Minnesota, said revenue department spokeswoman Elizabeth Brassell.
"We have to continue to evolve our business," Svitko said. "We have a number of plans in place next year involving the way we sell our product and increasing our points of distribution."