In her time in office on the city council, the Quen Be De and I agreed on very little. But one night De Knudson decided to take on video lottery, she was on fire, and I was in the chambers. She essentially wanted to close it down in our city and she said, “I’m tired of all these junky casinos on every corner . . . and if the state wants to sue us, bring it on!”
Well, they did, and they won;
And, if a business has a full liquor license (not just wine and/or beer), the city can’t really do anything to stop them from also offering video lottery. That’s because of a 2011 S.D. Supreme Court case – Law vs. Sioux Falls – that I will spare you the details of here.
Our state law on these things is crappy, because, well our state legislature is crappy. I recently talked to a South Dakota parole board member about the attacks on his group by Sheriff Milstead and Mayor TenHaken. I said, ‘Don’t you have to follow state law when granting parole?’ He said yes. Then I said, ‘So wouldn’t it be up to the state legislature to change the laws so parole opportunities are more rare?’ He said yes. ‘So why are they attacking you?’ He laughed.
Councilors Neitzert and Merkouris think they have state law on their side;
Councilors Neitzert and Rich Merkouris in recent weeks have been visiting casinos across the city. Neitzert told Sioux Falls Simplified they’ve seen several violations of state law, as well as some unintended consequences of a 2019 city ordinance change related to video lottery.
Oh, but that pesky SD Supreme Court, that makes it up while they go along, might have a problem with your arm chair lawyering.
I could walk these two into certain bars in this city at any given time and show them health code violations, video lottery violations, public smoking violations, over serving, and a whole host of other problems. To be honest with you, I have not seen POs in a bar doing random ID checks for about a decade.
Maybe enforcement and not state law is the real issue here?
I will commend Rich and Greg for teaming up to combat the ‘Junky’ casinos, but at the end of the day, you will probably lose in court, and I am willing to wager on it.
All the research I have done, I do not now how you regulate nor control the S.D Lottery which is defined by Article 3, Section 25 as “State Owned” property. The “State” being the PEOPLE, own the system, and it has been the people by means of public votes who have expressed their desire to not only maintain and keep S.D Lottery in full effect, but maintain and keep full ownerhsip of the “System”, and also their expressed voting rights, voted to expand S.D Lottery across the State itself.
An assessment of all public votes concerning S.D Lottery fro 1987 to present day, you learn the voters approve of and support the “revenue scheme” of generation public monies, all of which go towards public spirited funds.
While the “State” owns the “System” and the business owners own the machines, the bars, etc, and its true, by law, these casinos can only be owned by a S.D Resident, or at least the majority owner(s) must be S.D residents.
While yes, the CITY can control the Lottery by means of zoning, operational agreements, placement of the machines, once they approve of the location, it is out of their control. The law allows for the city to suppress gambling, but it CANNOT restrict, nor regulate S.D Lottery is owned by the PEOPLE aka the State.
My thoughts, if the city really wants to suppress gambling, thus clean up the city, I would recommend allowing for the Larger Adult like Establishments which hold a Bar, Lounge, Restaurant, Event Hall, let alone hold the S.D Lottery up to 50 Machines under one roof – 1 address and up to 4 Suites.
I also recommend that we use the concept of which we created for Medical Marijuana by placing them 1000 feet from each other, let alone 1000 feet from Sensitive Land Uses, which of course moves them further away from residential areas.
The State Constitution, which is adopted and amended by the PEOPLE, simply places the full control of the S.D Lottery in the hands of the PEOPLE, and that means, removes the right of the city from controlling it, restricting it, to regulating it. The S.D Supreme Court can only assess, rule by opinion, and recommend to the city how it can manage it, that is why the city loses its case.
No, let’s take this to the SD Supreme Court. They entertain me quite immensely. Their creativity is ingenious. But I have to admit, I’m still trying to fully embrace their concept of the “Internal Supremacy Doctrine”, where one part of the constitution can proclaim another part of the constitution unconstitutional. In fact, there are times when I just have to walk away from SD Supreme Court decisions to relax by then just studying quantum physics for a while…. Because the SD Supreme Court’s often superpositioning is quite mind boggling.
( and Woodstock adds: “Say, speaking of quantum physics, I want everyone to watch the following video, then next Tuesday we’ll have a big quiz over it all… Okay?”…)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43vuOpJY46s
But is it superpositioning, or merely entanglement at a partisan bullshit level?
Scientist say that light is a wave (quantum) unless we watch it, then it becomes a collection of particles (classical). Much as South Dakota jurisprudence changes in character depending upon who instigated what, like an initiative or referendum, where watching it, however, doesn’t seem to change it, rather, it just demonstrates it all to be a collection of particle bullshit which is then held up by a wave of electoral naivete, which acts as a gravitational pull in a classical sense.
Lottery casinos are where there’s robberies and drug deals. It’s a strange method for isolating crime. Funding for education gets redirected into common sense for learning to stay out and away from them. Pedophiles who must register use them as landmark offsets for where they can live. The state works subliminally in mysterious ways.