State, lottery contractor have job ahead

In government, it may be that nothing removes the smell of an ugly insider deal like a billion-plus dollars, and in that context, Northstar Lottery Group and the Illinois Lottery have a fair amount of scrub work ahead of them.

Northstar is the consortium of three gaming contractors, each with its own history of business with the state, to whom Gov. Pat Quinn awarded the 10-year contract last week to take over operations of the Illinois lottery. Northstar promised to generate $4.8 billion for the state over the next five years, outdistancing the only other finalist by nearly $800,000.

Leading up to Quinn's decision, the process was widely criticized for an all-too-familiar lack of transparency in Illinois political decisions. In the wake of his announcement, one bidder dropped from the process without explanation quickly complained and on Thursday the only other finalist besides Northstar officially protested.

Andy Shaw, executive director of the Better Government Association, one of the prime critics of the process, told Crain's Chicago Business this week that despite everything, "it looks like they might have gotten it right anyway," referring to the extra $1 billion-plus Northstar is promising to generate over the next five years compared to what the state would have generated on its own.

And representatives for Northstar, its member agencies and the state lottery all assured the Daily Herald editorial board this week that the process from now on will be fully transparent.

"The state can have as much insight as they wish," said Northstar Chairman Jaymin Patel, promising that gaming receipts information will be available "on a minute-by-minute basis."

So, we'll see. That is, if Attorney General Lisa Madigan rejects a call from Democratic state Rep. Jack Franks, of Woodstock, to investigate the whole deal. Franks at this point may be tilting at windmills, along with the wound-licking losing bidders, but all of their complaints are easy to understand.

It is comforting that Northstar's contract includes very specific requirements for interacting with regulators and penalties for failing to meet its financial goals. But it's comforting in the way that writing a new treaty with someone who's already broken a previous one is comforting. The promises sound good, but now you know better than before that it's actions and not words that demonstrate trust. To anyone's knowledge, Northstar hasn't broken any trusts yet. But it has won a lucrative contract just as skeptics predicted it would. And the state vowing to oversee the entire process still can't say whether a single job will be cut in the lottery operation it presumably no longer needs.

These are discomfiting facts that no doubt will shroud the system in suspicion for years to come. Or at least until we see that extra billion-plus dollars,