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April 19, 2002
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Ramsey County
judge says 2 Indian bands' gambling audits are nonpublic
by Pat Doyle,
Minneapolis Star Tribune
A
Ramsey County judge ruled Tuesday that the gambling audits of two
Indian groups
that own some of Minnesota's biggest casinos should not be made public.
District
Judge Louise Bjorkman ruled that the audits contain trade secrets that
are not
public under the Minnesota Data Practices Act. Bjorkman ordered the
Minnesota
Department of Public Safety, which collected the audits as part of its
efforts
to regulate gambling, not to release them.
The
Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe and the Prairie Island Dakota Tribe sued the
Department of Public Safety to prevent release of their casino audits
after
another state agency issued an opinion that they were public. The Mille
Lacs
band owns Grand Casino Mille Lacs near Garrison and Grand Casino
Hinckley, and
the Prairie Island tribe owns Treasure Island Casino in Red Wing.
There
was no immediate reaction Tuesday from the state on whether it will
appeal.
"We're reviewing the decision," said Leslie Sandberg, spokeswoman for
Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch, whose office represented the
Department
of Public Safety.
The
Mille Lacs band and the Prairie Island Dakota argued that releasing the
audits
would divulge legally protected secrets to potential competitors.
In
the Ramsey County case, Bjorkman granted summary judgment to the Indian
groups,
saying, "The number of requests for the data and nature of the
requesting
parties support the [Indians'] argument about the data's independent
economic
value."
The
battle over the audits began last year, when Bill Lawrence, a Red Lake
band
member and publisher of the Native American Press/Ojibwe News, asked
for them.
Lawrence argued that band members were being denied access to casino
financial
data.
In
June, the Department of Administration issued an advisory opinion that
the
audits were public because they were collected by a state agency. The
tribes
then sued the Department of Public Safety to prevent their release. The
Star
Tribune filed a friend-of-the-court brief in Ramsey County supporting
their
release.
In
addition to arguing that the audits contained trade secrets, the
Prairie Island
and Mille Lacs groups said that they are sovereign governments exempt
from
state public-disclosure laws.
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