In 2001, when Governor Easley was predicting that a then future state lottery would net North Carloina about $500 million a year (about 569 million in 2006 dollars), we published a Spotlight arguing that this was an extremely optimistic number. At the time our prediction, adjusted to 2006 dollars, was about $361 million (see this Locker Room post from earlier this year). But it looks like even our calculations were too rosey. The latest is that the lottery commission is predicting only a net of $341 million for next year. On the other hand, while we were off by $20 million the Governor was off by about $228 million. In other words, the JLF prediction was more than 11 times more accurate than the governor’s.