December
7, 2001
Minnesota tribes resist
making casino audits public
Indian
tribes that own some of Minnesota’s biggest casinos fought attempts
Friday to require the state to release gambling audits to the public,
amid a rare dispute between top state officials over what should be
done.
The Prairie Island Dakota and Mille Lacs Chippewa told a Ramsey County
judge that the audits should not be released because they include trade
secrets that could help competitors, including backers of a state-run
casino. That claim is disputed by officials who say the audits are too
old to have valuable trade secrets.
But the audits would provide a more detailed account of the
billion-dollar casino industry for the public.
The Department of Public Safety, which collected casino audits to help
regulate gambling, has long sided with the tribes in refusing to
disclose the documents. But the Minnesota attorney general’s office
disagreed in September, saying the state Data Practices Act classifies
the audits as public. The tribes then sued the Public Safety Department
to prevent it from releasing the audits.
On Friday, the department sent District Judge Louise Bjorkman a letter
objecting to the attorney general’s position of representing the
department.
“A conflict of interest exists in the department being represented by
the Minnesota office of attorney general,” wrote Laurie
Beyer-Kropuenske, an attorney for the Public Safety Department.
Bjorkman mentioned the letter in court but took no action.
“We represent the state,” Attorney General Mike Hatch countered in an
interview Friday. “We are responsible for enforcing the laws of the
state.”
Hatch said that longstanding policy prevents someone who is thinking of
suing the state from “selecting the most friendly defendant” — in this
case, Public Safety — and then working out a quick deal that is
contrary to state law or not in the state’s best interest.
The state signed compacts with tribes in 1989 and 1991. The tribes
agreed to send audits to Public Safety upon request; the department
doesn’t always ask for them. Prairie Island has sent audits to Public
Safety with cover letters that noted its understanding that the audits
were confidential, said its attorney, Julie Fishel.
Over the years, “the state never objects, never questions that they
will treat this information as nonpublic,” Fishel said.
But in June, David Fisher, state commissioner of administration, ruled
in a Red Lake Chippewa case that casino audits were public. Public
Safety Commissioner Charlie Weaver objected to their release, saying
that could cause tribes not to cooperate in the future with Public
Safety. He asked Fisher to temporarily classify all casino audits
nonpublic, giving the Legislature time to consider the issue. Fisher
agreed.
But in September the attorney general’s office reversed that temporary
classification. Alan Gilbert, chief deputy attorney general and state
solicitor general, said the audit reports are public under the Data
Practices Act and nothing overrides that statute in the state-tribal
compacts.
Since then, Fishel said, state legislators have inquired about
obtaining the audits. “The state is looking at a state-run casino that
would be a direct competitor of these tribes.”
But Assistant Attorney General John Garry told the judge Friday that
the audits held by Public Safety from Prairie Island and Mille Lacs are
from 1991-97. He said the tribes haven’t shown that audits so old
contain trade secrets that would help competitors open a state-run
casino.
“It’s not enough to say it is [a trade secret],” Garry said. “You have
to say how.”
He said some financial information about Grand Casino Mille Lacs and
Grand Casino Hinckley was released by the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission.
Disclosure of the reports had been requested separately by Bill
Lawrence, a Red Lake tribal member and publisher of Native American
Press/Ojibwe News, and by the Star Tribune. Bjorkman on Friday allowed
Lawrence to intervene in the case.
