Relating to the Iowa lottery

This bill relates to the Iowa lottery.40, and moves duties of the administrator of the Iowa lottery regarding conducting hearings and administering oaths to assure the security or integrity of the lottery to the director of revenue (director). The bill specifies that the Iowa lottery commission is prohibited from adopting policies, procedures, or rules that relate to the department of revenue (IDR) in general, and removes from the suggested policies, procedures, and rules that lottery drawings be witnessed by an independent certified public accountant. Under current law, IDR is prohibited from hiring persons convicted of a felony, bookmaking, other form of illegal gambling, or a crime involving moral turpitude for lottery-related employment. The bill removes crimes involving moral turpitude from the prohibition and gives the director discretion to determine the relevance of other crimes on employment decisions. The bill updates and expands the list of persons prohibited from purchasing a lottery ticket or being awarded a prize, including by adding a state officer or employee providing services to IDR to administer lottery provisions if such person has access to confidential information which may compromise the integrity of the lottery. The bill adds ticket order history, ticket inventory, or any other records that could affect the security, integrity, or fairness of a lottery game or the security of lottery retailers to the list of exceptions to an open records request governed by Code chapter 22. The bill changes lottery security staff requirements to include investigators that support the division and updates the activities performed by investigators supporting the lottery division. Under current law, the director of the department of management is prohibited from including lottery revenues in fiscal year revenue estimates.22A (revenue estimating conference). Under current law, the director is required to certify quarterly that portion of the lottery fund that has been transferred to the general fund and to transfer that portion to the general fund. The administrator of the Iowa lottery is required to transfer proceeds from the lottery fund to the general fund within days following the end of the quarter. The bill eliminates the duplicative transfer requirement by removing the duty from the administrator of the Iowa lottery, and increases the transfer deadline to days for the director.