Bookkeeping Charges Won’t Delay Lotto, Officials Say

California Lottery officials said Friday that the state’s new computerized lotto game will begin on target despite allegations of sloppy lottery bookkeeping practices leveled by Sen. William Campbell (R-Hacienda Heights).

Lottery Director M. Mark Michalko, backed by remarks from two private auditors, presented the Lottery Commission with a five-page, point-by-point rebuttal of the poor bookkeeping charges that Campbell, the GOP candidate for controller, made at a news conference Tuesday.

Michalko also rejected Campbell’s call for a delay in starting the lotto game pending a public hearing into the accounting practices of lottery officials.

After the commission meeting, Michalko declined to give a target date for starting the lotto game, saying only that it will begin “soon,” but Bob Taylor, lottery communications manager, said the game will begin before the end of the month as planned.

In his report to the commission, Michalko emphatically denied Campbell’s charge that state lottery books are out of balance by $1 million.

“We have no evidence of any missing dollars, much less 1 million,” he said.

Jack Brown, chief of the division of audits of the controller’s office, told The Times subsequently that there is indeed no evidence of missing lottery funds, but Brown agreed with Campbell’s contention that lottery bookkeeping method’s are sometimes sloppy.

Brown said the lottery had experienced difficulty in the past with accounting for “significant” numbers of tickets and that it needed an “aggressive system” for collecting delinquent accounts from ticket retailers.

Brown said the controller’s office is working with the lottery staff to correct bookkeeping problems but said the accounting system should be improved before the complex, computerized lotto game is begun.