Although several prominent investment advisers urged senators to explore turning the lottery over to a private contractor, Sen. Kip Averitt, R-Waco, cautioned that the state first should determine the value of its lottery before it looks at potential solutions to boost returns to the state.
"To make a good decision, we first need to know what we're talking about," he said.
Mr. Averitt and other senators expressed interest in hiring a consultant to work with Texas Lottery Commission officials in determining a monetary value for the lottery.
Gov. Rick Perry last year set the future value of the lottery at about $14 billion and urged the Legislature to sell it to a private vendor in order to create trust funds for public education, a cancer initiative and health insurance for the poor. But his proposal — offered at the start of the 2007 legislative session — went nowhere.
Critics said the governor's plan was based on overly optimistic assumptions about what the state could earn from the move.
