About 80 lawyers announce support for repealing video lottery in South Dakota

Steven Barrett

Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2000 | 12:40 p.m.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. - Nearly 80 lawyers from across the state announced Wednesday that they are backing an effort to repeal video gambling in South Dakota.

A measure to end the games will be on the ballot Nov. 7.

Notables adding their names to the newest group to come out against the games include former U.S. Sen. James Abourezk and state House Speaker Roger Hunt, R-Brandon.

The attorneys said video gambling exacts a high social cost, which they have seen often in their practices.

A backer of video lottery countered that rich lawyers are not likely to suffer the financial pain of a sales tax increase proposed as a way to make up for lost video lottery revenue.

Dave Knudson launched a blistering attack on the video gambling industry at a news conference during which the lawyers announced their position.

"It's an industry whose first instinct is to look out and find somebody to hurt," said Knudson, a Sioux Falls attorney.

Bankruptcies have risen 82 percent and suicides 42 percent in South Dakota since voters approved video lottery in 1989, he said. He acknowledged that video lottery alone is not to blame for those increases, but he said attorneys often see lives shattered by the games.

"Lawyers are on the front lines," he said. "We've seen the toll it takes."

Sioux Falls attorney Steven Haugaard said he knows a lawyer who tried video lottery once out of curiosity and within a year had squandered his savings and lost his home.

He called video gambling "morally and emotionally devastating."

Patti de Hueck, a Pierre attorney who is running unopposed for the state Senate, disputed the argument of a fellow Republican, Gov. Bill Janklow. He has said the state's residents may see property tax relief disappear as a way to make up for lost video lottery revenue should the games be repealed.

"Unlike Gov. Janklow, I don't see a train wreck coming," de Hueck said.

A 1-cent statewide sales tax increase would raise $120 million, she said, more than compensating for the $95 million the state expects to lose annually without the games. Even if the higher sales tax exempted food, $100 million would be generated, she said.

But Larry Mann, campaign manager for a group opposing the effort to halt the games, said it's easy for wealthy lawyers to back a 25 percent increase in the state's 4-cent sales tax.

"These are well-heeled, wealthy individuals," Mann said. "A sales tax isn't going to impact them. It's not going to have an impact on their lifestyle."

The same holds true for a group of businessmen that opposes video gambling, he said. About 60 businessmen in the Sioux Falls area have organized as the Business Advisory Council to fight video lottery.

The people who will suffer are workers who are trying to put their children through college or care for an elderly parent, Mann said.

If wealthy interests truly oppose video gambling, he said, they should "put their money where their mouth is and advocate a personal or corporate income tax."

Wherever the replacement revenue comes from, however, he said the bottom line is that taxes will go up.

But Catherine Piersol, an attorney in Sioux Falls, said the social costs are not figured into the equation when people discuss lost revenue.

"We have millions of dollars in hidden costs that no one is addressing," she said, including lost work days related to video lottery addiction.

Mann rejected claims that crime, bankruptcy and divorce have risen in connection to video gambling's legalization.

"They're absolutely, unequivocally unsubstantiated," he said. Consumer debt and illnesses are the main contributors to bankruptcy, he said, and South Dakota has the lowest bankruptcy rate in the nation except for Alaska.

In addition, crime has fallen in the state since 1994, when voters last addressed the issue of video gambling, he said.

"What concerns me is that people are trying to say South Dakota is going to hell in a handbasket, and it isn't true," he said.

Hunt said it is essential to get rid of video gambling now, while the economy is comparatively strong, rather than to wait until times are harder.