Casino News from http://www.oregonlive.com/
As long as the investors in a private casino are kept secret, Oregonians should withhold their support for the idea
Saturday, June 10, 2006
O dds are, in the next month someone will stop you on the street, or even knock on your door, and ask you to sign a petition in support of Oregon's first private, nontribal casino.
If that happens, ask something in return: Who's behind this? Who's putting up the money, not just a couple million dollars to hustle the casino resort onto the November ballot, but the several hundred million dollars to build it?
Maybe the petitioner will give you the names of Bruce Studer and Matthew Rossman, the Lake Oswego neighbors, businessmen and friendly public faces of the casino campaign. Studer and Rossman are nice guys, but there is a lot more than their money involved.
Who is really paying for this thing? As long as that remains a secret, Oregonians ought to withhold their support -- and their signatures -- from the private casino proposed at the former Multnomah Kennel Club in Wood Village.
The casino backers are taking advantage of a loophole in Oregon law that allows initiative campaigns to keep secret the identities of the people, businesses or other organizations paying for efforts to get measures onto the ballot.
The state does require groups such as the "Good for Oregon Committee," the pro-casino group headed by Studer and Rossman, to submit campaign contribution and expenditure reports. But the reporting requirements and deadlines are too lax. With court clearance, the Good for Oregon Committee has until July 7 to get 175,000 signatures. But it doesn't have to report until July 24 the sources of the money it used to pay for collection of those signatures. That's no help at all to Oregonians being asked to sign on to the casino.
The casino is not the only initiative taking advantage of Oregon's casual reporting requirements. The national anti-tax, anti-government group bankrolling a state spending limit proposal in Oregon also is able to keep in the shadows while its backers pretend this, too, is a homegrown effort.
Oregonians should never sign on to buy a pig in a poke. There is no more essential question about the private casino than the identity of the money and real power behind it. Without knowing who that is, there is no way to assess the project's credibility, or trust the glowing promises of hundreds of millions of dollars for schools.
Studer and Rossman say they will publicly release the names of all the major financial backers long before Oregonians go to vote on a casino measure in November. That's not good enough. Oregonians ought to know the full dimensions of any project before they give their names to petitions to put it on the ballot.
In the end, full disclosure and good sense are all that Oregonians have to defend themselves against bad ideas at the ballot box. Oregon is among just a handful of states that allow people and groups to spend any amount of money -- even millions of dollars -- to push a signature campaign or promote a ballot initiative.
However, the existing public disclosure rules require too little too late. Oregon law ought to be changed to mandate electronic public disclosure of all campaign contributions and spending within 24 hours. That would require Studer and Rossman to disclose right now, as they prepare to ask Oregonians to sign on to a casino, who's behind their campaign. As it stands, the Good for Oregon Committee is asking the people of this state to just roll the dice.
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