Editor's note: This version corrects the House Bill number.

Unlike southeastern Connecticut’s casinos, the Connecticut Lottery has a habit of turning over more money to the state than it did the year before.

At least that has been the case since the 2010 fiscal year, when the lottery generated $285.5 million for Connecticut’s coffers. In the fiscal years since, the lottery’s anted up $289.3 million, $310.0 million, $312.1 million and $319.5 million.

Over the same period, the state's share of the slot-machine winnings generated by Foxwoods Resort Casino and Mohegan Sun has declined annually, except for a small increase in fiscal 2011. The casinos sent $359.3 million into the General Fund in fiscal 2010, $359.6 million in fiscal 2011 and $344.3 million in fiscal 2012.

In fiscal 2013, the lottery overtook the casinos as a source of state revenue, its $312.1 million contribution surpassing the casinos’ $296.4 million. The lottery repeated the feat in fiscal 2014, its $319.5 million payment outstripping the casinos’ $279.9 million.

Now, with the state debating a bill that would authorize more casinos operated by the Mashantucket Pequot and Mohegan tribes that own Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun, respectively, the lottery wants some consideration, too.

"We would like the lottery to be part of any conversation about expanding gambling. We contribute more than anyone else in the state," Anne Noble, the Connecticut Lottery Corp.'s president and chief executive officer, said Thursday.

Noble said any introduction of new casinos in the state could adversely affect the lottery.

“We want to remain in parity with other forms of gaming," she said. "We don’t want to look at declining lottery sales.”

Nevertheless, she said the lottery did not push for House Bill 7054, which the General Assembly's Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee introduced last week. On Thursday, the bill was scheduled for a public hearing Wednesday.

"It's not a bill that the lottery proposed, but we're very much in support of it," said Noble, who noted that keno has long been an annual topic of discussion in the state legislature.

A bill calling on the lottery to introduce keno was approved near the end of the legislature's 2013 session, only to be repealed in 2014, before it could be implemented.

Both tribes, which have the exclusive right to operate gaming in the state, signed off on the measure, which called for the state to pay each of them 12.5 percent of the gross revenue generated by keno.

The new keno bill contains the same provision.

Rep. Jeffrey Berger, D-Waterbury, the finance committee's co-chairman, is among keno's proponents.

"If we're going to allow for this expansion of the casinos, we cannot disallow the expansion of the Connecticut Lottery into keno," he told the Associated Press this week. "One cannot be done without the other."

Chuck Bunnell, a spokesman for the Mohegan Tribe, disputed the idea that the bill authorizing keno and the one that would enable the tribes to open "satellite" casinos to fend off out-of-state competition are linked.

"They are not related and shouldn't be," he said.

Bunnell said the Mohegans are still willing to agree to let the lottery introduce keno around the state in exchange for 12.5 percent of the winnings the game generates.

"Our position is what it was, exactly the same," he said. "If this is something that the state of Connecticut is interested in doing, we're in agreement — we executed an agreement — with the state."

The Mashantuckets also are agreeable.

"Back in 2013, the Mashantuckets reached an agreement with the state regarding keno related to our gaming exclusivity. Based on that prior agreement, we would be open to reviewing a proposed keno bill," Bill Satti, a spokesman for the tribe, said in an email.

If the keno bill becomes law, the lottery could have the game up and running at its 3,000 existing retailers and at hundreds of restaurants and bars within four to six months thereafter, Noble said.

"We have the infrastructure in place," she said. "It's nothing new; you play it the same way you play the lottery."

Keno typically involves a $1 wager on a subset of numbers randomly drawn from a larger field of numbers by a central computer system, according to language in the proposed bill. Drawings take place every four minutes, with the results displayed on screens and posted on the lottery's website.

"It suffers from an unfortunate stigma of being mischaracterized as electronic gambling," Noble said. "Really, it's just another lottery game."

Typical payouts are $20, $50, $60, she said.

The lottery projects that the state could earn $25 million from keno in its first year. That could grow to $50 million the second year, then to $70 million a year and more.

"It's a win-win for the state," Noble said.

b.hallenbeck@theday.com

Twitter: @bjhallenbeck