Legislators from both parties are considering legislation to make casino owners made public information. Which makes sense.
HUNHOFF:
“Legislators often can’t get the information they need to make good policy decisions,” said Rep.-elect Bernie Hunhoff, a Yankton Democrat who is returning to the Legislature in January after a 10-year hiatus. “It’s been that way in South Dakota for a long time.”
“I do think you lose some of your privacy when you enter into a relationship with government,” Hunhoff said.
KNUDSON
Senate Majority Leader Dave Knudson, who is also a business lawyer, said some said incorporated businesses might have some information, but, “The amount of information that is required to form a limited liability company is virtually nothing.”
Knudson said it’s a “sad commentary” that some basic records about video lottery are confidential. He predicted the Legislature would take up the broader issue of government transparency, which could include video lottery records.
“I’m hopeful there will be significant progress that will be made on the topic in general,” Knudson said.
HEIDEPRIEM
“I do not understand why we can’t know who owns the video lottery businesses in South Dakota and to what extent, and where they’re located,” Heidepriem said.
I applaud their intentions, but have a feeling they are gonna have an uphill battle. First off many legislators benefit from Video Lottery, either as casino owners or vendors who supply casinos and secondly Rounds won’t sign a bill. Why? When you have a majority of these casino big wheels contributing the max to his campaigns (check the list of names and compare to the campaign financials) do you think he would sign something that would put them in jeopardy? Hell no. Like most things with Rounds, follow the money.
So people like Kirby M. can get rich, extremley rich. Though I think VL should be abolished along with taxes on food and clothing (which could be replaced by an income tax on high income people like Kirby) as long as we have it as a funding source I think it should be equitable for the state. The state takes only half of the revenue, it should be closer to 70-80%. Last year that was $111 million dollars. That means a handful of casino owners and investors are taking the other half. It is estimated that there is roughly only about 20 major owners in the state. If you do the math each of them is pocketing about 5.5 million a year. Even if they shared half that wealth with other vendors you can still consider that a pretty good living considering once you have the casinos setup and paid for you don’t have to do a damn thing for the money, except watch the poor miserable f’cks walk through your door and gamble away their paychecks. Must be hard to sleep at night. The worst part about this money faucet that only hurts our state in social costs is that the owners of these casinos can do it all privately.
One name that stuck out in the Argus Leader story was Don Drake. Earlier this year I did a story about Brad Drake, who owns Ultra, Inc. and once(?) had the servicing contract for the laptop program. Not sure how Don and Brad are related but they both gave significant amounts of money to Mike Rounds campaigns. And if you go to the laptop link, there is a link to the Rounds campaign financials, it appears that Don is one of Mike’s biggest campaign contributors. It seems all you have to do these days to find out how Mikey governs is follow the money.