State lottery payouts resume
<p class="p1">SPRINGFIELD – The Illinois Lottery will start processing claims this week for winners who previously had to accept vouchers for prizes greater than $600.</p><p class="p2">The Illinois Senate’s passage and Gov. Bruce Rauner’s signature Monday afternoon, Dec. 7, on Senate Bill 2039 means the lottery can again begin payouts for all prizes, acting director B.R. Lane said in a statement.</p><p class="p2">Claims will be paid out in the order received, according to the agency.</p><p class="p2">“We are excited to be back and look forward to a revitalized experience for our players,” Lane said.</p><p class="p2">The lottery halted payouts for wins of more than $600 in mid-October. </p><p class="p2">Having exhausted its prize money available from fiscal year 2015, the lottery said it no longer had the legal authority to issue checks given the lack of a 2016 appropriation due to the state budget stalemate.</p><p class="p2">Prizes of $600 or less, about 8,000 of them, were paid out by retailers.</p><p class="p2">The lottery’s legally mandated transfers to the Common School Fund were not affected.</p><p class="p2">Senate Bill 2039 passed the House and sailed through the Senate by a vote of 53-0. Rauner signed it Dec. 7.</p><p class="p2">All told, it authorizes about $3.1 billion in spending and releases some tax money back into the hands of local governments. </p><p class="p2">That money includes revenues such as the local share of motor fuel tax funds, money collected from phone-bill taxes and local shares of gaming revenues.</p><p class="p2">Some general fund money also was freed, about $28 million, according to House sponsor State Rep. Barbara Flynn Currie, D-Chicago, and goes toward costs ranging from cyber-security contracts for the Illinois Secretary of State to funding for rape crisis shelters.</p><p class="p2">The bill, sponsored in the Senate by State Sen. Tom Cullerton, D-Villa Park, was the result of bipartisan negotiation among the legislative caucuses and the Republican governor’s office, Cullerton said.</p><p class="p2">Illinois Comptroller Leslie Geissler Munger said her office would begin paying out the money.</p><p class="p2">Munger, R-Lincolnshire, said payouts for local governments, 911 centers and lottery winners can go out quickly because they are set aside in independent state funds.</p><p class="p2">However, domestic violence shelter payments, also authorized in the bill, come from the state’s general fund, which has a nearly $7 billion bill backlog.</p><p class="p2">Munger said she is directing domestic violence shelter payments be prioritized and paid upon receipt of a voucher.</p><p class="p2">Attorney Tom Zimmerman of Chicago, who had filed a federal civil lawsuit on behalf of about two dozen lottery winners seeking their payouts, told Illinois News Network the lawsuit will continue.</p><p class="p2">Interest the state earned on the payouts it withheld should belong to the lottery winners, Zimmerman argues, and he said the allocation of that interest must be decided.</p><p class="p3">(continued on page 2)</p><p class="p2">As of early December, about $75 million to $80 million in lottery winnings, plus interest, had been withheld, Zimmerman said. </p><p class="p2">Because the lawsuit seeks class-action status, a decision or settlement could affect interest on the payouts for all lottery players who had prizes withheld.</p><p class="p2">Illinois is in the sixth month of fiscal year 2016 without an overall budget as the GOP and Democrats remain at loggerheads.</p><p class="p2">Meanwhile, the state is spending at a pace that could put it $5 billion into the red for this fiscal year as it funds primary and secondary education, satisfies its debt service and pays for items demanded by court orders, consent decrees and in continuing appropriations.</p><p class="p2">Barring further developments, the Illinois General Assembly is next scheduled to return to Springfield on Jan. 13.</p>