New Jersey Lottery revenue was growing every year, with the biggest growth occurring in 2013, when the amount jumped by more than 14 percent to top a billion dollars. So whose bright idea was it to listen to the pitch of the people who were losing money in other states and suggesting we privatize one of the state’s biggest income sources? In 2012 when Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto , D-Secaucus, asked State Treasurer Andrew Sidamon-Eristoff about rumors the lottery would be privatized, he was told it was an administrative decision, not the Legislature’s business.