State auditors give Oregon Lottery clean opinion on FY2024 financial statements

The Joint Committee on Legislative Audit heard a presentation Monday on the Oregon Lotteryfiscal year 2024 financial audit, in which auditors issued an unmodified opinion and reported no accounting errors or significant internal control weaknesses.

For the record, Michael Kaplan, deputy secretary of state, introduced the presentation and Steve Bergman, audits director for the Oregon Secretary of State, and Sarah Anderson, financial audit manager, delivered the audit findings. "We audit the lottery's financial statements every year," Bergman said, adding that the office issued its opinion on the lottery's fiscal year 2024 financial statements on Nov. 14, 2024.

Sarah Anderson said the audits use operating revenues as the materiality benchmark and that for fiscal year 2024 that benchmark was $1,700,000,000. "As with prior years the video lottery is the primary source of gaming revenue accounting for nearly 1.2 of the $1,700,000,000," she said. Anderson described the office's sampling approach and said auditors aim to cover roughly 75% to 80% of dollars in each audited transaction category. She said, "for state fiscal year '24 we found no accounting errors," and that had auditors identified errors they would have discussed proposed adjustments with lottery management.

Carl Strauss, controller with the Oregon State Lottery, was present to represent the agency; committee members asked no follow-up questions of lottery staff during the session. The audit materials for the lottery were uploaded to the committee record (OLIS).

The presentation was informational; no committee action was taken during the meeting. The committee was told the next meeting will be held on Feb. 24.