Lottery officials prepare to sell tickets by April

Sunday, January 08, 2006 posted 10:18 AM EST

(RALEIGH) -- The lottery keeps moving along toward its goal of selling tickets by April 5th. The commission met again Friday and set salaries for dozens of new positions. With three months to go, time is ticking fast.

Lottery officials know what games you will get to play.

揝o you can figure in the first year we'll be selling scratch off, Powerball and then one other computerized game,?lottery director Tom Shaheen said.

But to get that up and running will take a lot of work in a small amount of time.

Lottery executives plan to pick a company to provide the actual games February 2nd. They must also pick an agency to help with advertising and set up four to five regional offices across the state.

Once the companies are picked, that will provide all the games the next project is getting all the retailers on line and ready to go.

揥e have over 600 listings on our website at this point,?Linda Carlisle of the lottery commission explained. 揟he exciting part is we have over 3,500 locations, so that's really exciting. When we have our application ready to go, we'll be able to get it in their hands very quickly.?/p>

When that happens, every retailer must go through a background check.

Lottery officials must hire at least 200 more employees. Friday, the commission agreed on pay scales non-management jobs. The pay scale ranges from $22,000 to $59,000 a year for a wide variety of positions to be filled in the coming weeks.

Hoping for a successful start, the lottery will unveil just a few games and then expand a year later.

Shaheen said, 揑'm talking about Pick 3 or Pick 4. If you've heard about it or there's a five digit game like a small lottery game where you pick five out of 39 numbers.?/p>

Shaheen has a $50,000 bonus on the line if he gets the lottery up and running by April 5th. He still believes that's possible.

The commission also agreed to a minority outreach program.

That program sets a goal to do at least ten-percent of its business with minority owned businesses.

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