(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa Lottery is increasing its budget projection slightly for the next fiscal as it is on pace to finish this fiscal year around four percent above its projection. Lottery C-E-O Matt Strawn says they saw the a slight increase in sales this year despite a lack of large lotto jackpots.

“We’re projecting to largely be in line with where we’ve been with this year’s current budget. So we’re not banking on those big billion dollar jackpots. So we’re going to take a conservative approach,” Strawn says. The next fiscal year budget of around 418 million dollars includes a small increase in projected sales. Strawn says with the uncertainty of the large jackpots, they have to look at historical averages.

Iowa Lottery Headquarters. (RI photo)

“Because when we put a budget projection out there to the legislature and the governor and to the state, we want to make sure that’s a projection that we’re fairly confident we can hit.” While some business have been concerned about the impact of tariffs on costs, he says the impact on the Lottery is not big. “Nominal cost as it relates to the cost of printing, just like any manufacturer product, when it comes to the printing of scratch tickets, we’ve seen a slight increase,” he says. “Of course, those are contracts that that are bided out. And one thing that we are actually currently in a request for proposal process for the future of printing the Iowa Lottery Scratch ticket. So we’ve got to let that process unfold and then we’ll have a better idea as to what the economics are going to be of those products going forward.”

The new fiscal year begins on July 1st.