Casino News from www.myrtlebeachonline.com/
Horry County Attorney John Weaver showed impeccable timing Monday in announcing that county government intends to tax the two Little River casino boats the maximum that state law allows - 5 percent of gross profits. SunCruz Casinos, which owns one of the boats, has tried to head off such a move with threats that it will sue to overturn the 2005 S.C. casino boat law. The company is willing to share gamblers\' boarding fees with the county, but has balked at profits taxation.
But Weaver\'s announcement came one day after The Sun News reported that two men with organized crime ties were involved in the company\'s purchase of part of the Little River waterfront for possible conversion to housing. The SunCruz president says the two no longer are part of the real-estate consortium that bought the waterfront properties but declined to provide documentation this is true.
His stonewalling provides county leaders with powerful motivation to dig deeper into the makeup of the real-estate consortium as a condition of issuing building permits. County officials and the S.C. Department of Revenue now also have greater leverage to demand that SunCruz open its balance sheets to public inspection - not only for tax purposes but also for purposes of ensuring that the casino company itself is organized-crime free. SunCruz Casinos now should feel powerful motivation to demonstrate that it\'s sufficiently clean to offer gambling to county residents and visitors.
Also on Monday, the S.C. Supreme Court issued a ruling that suggests SunCruz Casinos and other gambling companies would find no state-court relief if they sue to overturn the 2005 law. The court ruled that Georgetown County erred in 2002 in relying on its home-rule powers to ban casino boats from Murrells Inlet and other county waters.
But the high court also made clear that Monday\'s ruling takes no notice of the 2005 law, which legislators passed after Greenville businessman Wallace Cheeves sued Georgetown County to overturn the 2002 ordinance. It would be foolish, obviously, to predict how justices would handle a SunCruz lawsuit against the law, should one reach them. But the Supreme Court typically is reluctant to second-guess clearly expressed legislative preferences. That it declined to do so in Monday\'s ruling won\'t be lost on SunCruz attorneys.
The wise bet for SunCruz now would be an attitude adjustment that includes full disclosure on its Little River real-estate deals and the willingness to submit to full taxation. Such would hardly be punitive.
It is a plus for any business to demonstrate that it has severed past ties to organized crime. Equally important, the company can still expect to make fat profits if the county taxes its gross profits at 5 percent, as the law allows, while collecting gambler boarding fees. Our county provides the Little River gambling boats with hundreds of thousands of eager gamblers per year. To do business here is a privilege, for that reason, and SunCruz leadership should recognize that.
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