AUGUSTA — The company that won the multiyear, $35 million state lottery contract in September, then lost it two months later after a competitor appealed, urged a judge Thursday to reinstate the original award.
Jeffrey Lipps, attorney for Intralot Inc., a lottery firm based in Athens, Greece, asked Justice Robert Murray to invalidate an appeal panel’s decision and award the contract to Intralot.
Lipps said the appeal panel misapplied Maine law and essentially substituted its judgment for that of the original evaluators.
Charles Dingman, the attorney representing New York-based Scientific Games Inc., which holds the contract and has an office in Gardiner, urged the judge to uphold the appeal panel’s decision.
Scientific Games had challenged the award to Intralot and won a sort of reprieve by retaining it for a year while legal challenges are argued.
Oral arguments in the case were held Thursday in Kennebec County Superior Court. Justice Robert Murray said he will issue a ruling later.
The attorneys appeared to agree that, if the court affirms the appeal panel’s decision, the contract award is invalidated and a new request for proposals would be prepared by the Bureau of Alcoholic Beverages & Lottery Operations.
If Murray overturns the appeal panel’s decision, Intralot gets the contract.
Lipps maintained the appeals panel’s decision was flawed. He said it abused its discretion, made multiple errors and came to conclusions unsupported by law. He described the original scoring process used by the lottery committee to evaluate the proposals.
“It’s not surprising the competition was close,” Lipps said. “There are literally only three vendors that actively compete for the lotteries.”
Last month, the state extended for one year a contract for Scientific Games to continue to print scratch lottery tickets. That contract originally expired June 30.
Assistant Attorney General William Laubenstein, representing the state Bureau of General Services, which issued the request for proposals, asked the judge to uphold the appeals panel’s decision.
Laubenstein said a losing bidder has an opportunity to challenge an award, and an appeal panel then looks at how the contract was awarded, including scoring methods and guidelines. “The appeal panel doesn’t attempt to rescore proposals,” Laubenstein said.
In the case of Intralot, the three-person appeal panel found the contract to Intralot to provide instant lottery tickets and online lottery services was “in violation of law and contained irregularities that created a fundamental unfairness.”
Betty Adams — 621-5631
badams@centralmaine.com
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