Iowa casinos want to stop releasing audits to public

The action is intended to block their proprietary information from being released to competitors, the executive director of the Iowa Gaming Association said.

Sixteen of the 19 state-regulated casinos in Iowa have joined a lawsuit challenging the release of those financial records. The lawsuit was filed after a development executive, who has three Native American casinos in Michigan, requested the documents.

Tribal casinos are federally regulated and have gaming agreements or “compacts” with the states in which they operate, but are not regulated in Iowa to the extent non-tribal gaming establishments are.

Iowa Gaming Association President Wes Ehrecke said the audits include trade secrets that shouldn’t be publicly released. The reports have been public in Iowa for almost 30 years, and they are relied upon to gauge the health of the industry. Last year, Iowa’s casinos paid more than $312 million in gambling taxes and contributed nearly $40 million to charities.

“We have no problem giving that information to our regulators, but it shouldn’t be given to our competitors,” Ehrecke said. Nor, he said, do casinos have a problem with sharing information with their local nonprofit partners which hold their state gaming licenses.

In the Waterloo casino’s case that is the Black Hawk County Gaming Association, which distributes 5.75 percent of the casino’s adjusted gross revenues for community projects.

BHCGA executive Beth Knipp said the casinos’ court action should not impede her organization from receiving the information it needs, since the Waterloo casino is a publicly traded company. She said the association receives no proprietary information.

“We have received any financial information necessary for our operations from the Isle,” Knipp said.

Casino company Wild Rose, which owns three casinos in the state, abstained from joining the lawsuit. The company said not only is some information from reports already public through U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filings, but public transparency has long served Iowa without harming casinos.

“At this point, we didn’t see the benefit of the injunction,” Wild Rose spokeswoman Jamie Buelt said. “Since the first gaming licenses were awarded, the financial statements have been public information. We’re not sure what changed.”

Attorneys for Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller declined to take a position in a response to the lawsuit on whether the records should be confidential or not.