The Kentucky Lottery Corporation is moving ahead with a new Keno game and online lottery sales. Officials have high hopes the games will be profitable.
The lottery board hopes to generate $85 million a year with the new games by 2023.
State Treasurer Todd Hollenbach spearheaded the effort to expand to Keno and online sales as a way to help generate more revenue for the state. He says the implementation will take time, but money should start coming in shortly afterward.
"So you're probably not going to see anything of any significance until 2014. It takes a little while,” he said.
"Initially what we envision doing would probably be limited to offering just existing games that people can purchase online,” Hollenbach said. “But eventually we will be developing and entering into new games geared specifically for the Internet."
State House Democrats have said additional lottery revenues could pay for the state's underfunded pension system. Finding a way to fund pension reforms has been a major cause of disagreement in Frankfort this year.
Currently, the extra lottery revenue is slated to go to education. But Hollenbach says routing to pensions would be worthwhile. He says otherwise the extra funds will go to education, and he's open to using it for pensions.
