The Colorado Lottery Commission took an important step toward sprucing up the agency's increasingly tarnished image this week by approving tough new conflict-of-interest rules.
For a department that relies on ticket-buying citizens for the bulk of its money, a clean reputation can't be underestimated.
The new rules prohibit employees from accepting any gifts from companies that do business with the Lottery. In the past, those same companies wined and dined employees, took them to Denver Broncos games and paid for massages and rounds of golf.
The changes come amid an investigation into gift-giving by vendors wanting to do business with the Lottery. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation even seized computers from key Lottery offices last month.
The private companies are only playing the game as it's played in today's business world. Clients are routinely treated to dinners and sporting dvents.
But by accepting the gifts, Lottery employees not only create an appearance of conflict of interest, but make it difficult to prove conflicts don't exist.
For example, Georgia-based Scientific Games International recently won the contract to operate the Lottery in Colorado after entertaining agency officials. GTECH, the company that had the contract previously, did the same.
The Lottery's existing rules allow employees to accept gifts up to $50 in value as many as four times a month. Employees are then supposed to file reports with the state showing what they received and the value, but that rarely happens.
Under the new rules, expected to get final approval within a few weeks, Lottery employees can no longer accept even a cup of coffee from a vendor. They can, however, accept minor tokens, such as keychains, or food at lottery conventions - provided everyone has access to the freebies.
Lottery Commission Chairman Stephen Hess says because the ban is total it has "the benefit of absolute clarity." We couldn't agree more. Even the smallest of gifts can create a conflict of interest.
The concerns over gift-taking arose around the same time the Lottery's former director, Mark Zamarripa, abruptly left his job one day before he was scheduled to be quizzed by his boss, Colorado Department of Revenue Director M. Michael Cooke.
Cooke wanted to talk about what she considered to be questionable expenses that Zamarripa incurred on a trip to New Orleans. It was impossible for Cooke to tell what the state was to reimburse Zamarripa for and what was provided by the group sponsoring his trip.
The timing of his retirement also was odd because Zamarripa was close to earning full state retirement pay.
A few weeks later, state Auditor Joanne Hill released a scathing audit of the Lottery's operations. An audit six years earlier raised some of the same problems.
Cooke, who so far has proven to be a no-nonsense manager, wrote to the Lottery Commission asking for a strict ban on gifts.
The new rules won't solve all of the Lottery's problems, and they won't please workers who have grown accustomed to the perks. But they could help restore any of the public trust that's been eroded over the past two months.
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