Now a year old, the North Carolina Education Lottery is meeting its goal of keeping residents from crossing the border to buy tickets.

But it's failing to reach financial expectations initially touted by lawmakers and Governor Easley.

The lottery has set aside 220 million dollars in profits for state education programs since the first tickets were sold March 30th, 2006.

But lottery ticket sales are below initial projections because of low prize payouts, particularly for scratch-off games.

Lottery executive director Tom Shaheen says that means education programs could get 350 million dollars from the lottery in its first fiscal year. That's about 70 million dollars less than expected.