Among the items the D.C. Council managed to race through in today’s surprisingly zippy legislative session was the long-controversial D.C. Lottery contract. In a 9 to 1 vote, the Council went ahead and gave final approval to a proposal to turn over the lottery to international gaming corporation Intralot. Two Council members, Chairman Vince Gray and At-large member Kwame Brown, abstained from voting, while Ward 4’s Muriel Bowser voted “present,” leaving At-large member Phil Mendelson the only “no” vote.

The vote to approve the contract comes after a year’s worth of trouble. The initial 2008 bid from Intralot, for which the company teamed up with the family of local entrepreneur and Fenty friend Warren Williams, Jr., was rejected by the Council amid a cloud of political accusations. The administration later retracted the proposal and reopened the contract to a new round of bidding, and Intralot won the bid again, this time on its own. But a Council hearing on the contract award last week raised yet more questions about the process, with groups representing the other bidders coming forward to more or less outright accuse the city of having fostered obstacles for any other company besides Intralot.

Before abstaining from voting today, Gray referred to the lottery bidding process as a “picture of ineptitude.”