HARRISBURG — Democratic lawmakers are taking aim at GOP Gov. Tom Corbett administration’s move to privatize the Pennsylvania Lottery’s management, saying it is shrouded in secrecy and will result in a corporate giveaway that diverts hundreds of millions of dollars from the state’s services for the elderly.

In a Friday letter, Senate Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Allegheny, asked Corbett for a slew of documents, including the proposed management agreement between the state and Britain-based Camelot Global Services, an unredacted copy of Camelot’s bid and a full explanation of the scope of expanded lottery gambling being considered.

“A decision as important as handing over an extremely well-run, efficient, and successful lottery to a foreign company should not be made behind closed doors, by a limited amount of people and without public input,” Costa wrote.

A spokesman for the state Department of Revenue, which runs the lottery, insisted that the drive to award a private management contract had been “a fair and deliberative process.” The agency would share as much as it could with Costa, such as the management agreement, but some information would remain confidential, spokesman Elizabeth Brassell said.

Corbett has said he is exploring privatization of the lottery management to see if a private company can help ensure that lottery profits keep pace with demand for programs that benefit the state’s growing elderly population. Only a couple of states have given private companies the right to manage their lotteries, and a substantial expansion of lottery gambling to keno and online games is expected to be part of Corbett’s plan to produce more revenue.

One of the nation’s largest state lotteries, the 40-year-old Pennsylvania Lottery had $3.5 billion in sales in its last fiscal year. Of that, almost $1.1 billion was profit benefiting programs that the administration says support elderly Pennsylvanians.

Officials expect to decide by Dec. 31 whether to award the contract to Camelot, which runs the national lottery in the United Kingdom. It is the lone bidder after two other companies, which the Corbett administration will not identify, dropped out.

Camelot is pledging to produce more than $34 billion in profits over 20 years if it wins the contract, according to figures released by the Department of Revenue. That amounts to an annual lottery profit increase of about 3 to 4 percent a year, in line with the lottery’s performance over the past decade. Last year, lottery profits rose by more than 10 percent and are on track to exceed that number in this fiscal year, as well.

House Democrats said the proposed agreement would ensure that Camelot stands to reap hundreds of millions of dollars in profits that otherwise would go to help seniors.