SACRAMENTO – For the sixth consecutive year, the California Lottery has received a prestigious award for financial reporting from the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada (GFOA). The award is a Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting (CAFR) given for the Lottery’s comprehensive annual financial report for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2008.
“The Certificate of Achievement is the highest form of recognition in state and local government financial reporting,” Lottery Director Joan Borucki said. “To win the award once is a great honor. To win it for six straight years is a testament to the great work done year in and year out by the Lottery’s Finance team.”
To be awarded a Certificate of Achievement, a government must publish an easily readable and efficiently organized comprehensive annual financial report. This report must satisfy both generally accepted accounting principles and applicable legal requirements.
The CAFR has been judged by an impartial panel to meet the high standards of the program including demonstrating a constructive “spirit of full disclosure” to clearly communicate its financial story and motivate potential users and user groups to read the CAFR.
The Government Finance Officers Association is a nonprofit professional association serving approximately 17,500 government finance professionals with offices in Chicago, and Washington, D.C.
More than 95 cents of every Lottery dollar is returned to the community in the form of contributions to education, prizes and retail commissions. The California Lottery contributes at least 34 cents of every dollar that players spend on Lottery products to public education and returns more than 50 percent of sales to players in the form of prizes. Since its inception in 1985, Lottery players have contributed nearly $21 billion to California schools out of total sales of nearly $56 billion. Retailers benefit too, earning $3.6 billion in compensation since 1985.