Just a week after the Governor’s Office of Economic Development kicked off its new CAFO bribe campaign, Hamlin County has said no thanks and nixed a 10,000-head factory dairy.
In a meeting that stretched past midnight last week, the Hamlin County Zoning Board rejected an application for a conditional use permit for Riverview Dairy to build a mega-dairy within ten miles of Governor Kristi Noem’s house.
Hamlin County did know about the new bribes from GOED for exempting new dairies from standing zoning rules and letting CAFOs have their way with their county. A local source tells me the dairy developers had been approved for the GOED tax rebate and that GOED bribe program was mentioned later in the meeting but not emphasized.
Riverview’s promised 10,000 new milkers would have provided a significant part of the 85,000 new head of dairy cattle that Canadian cheesemaker Agropur said it would need to support tripled production at its newly expanded, government-subsidized, and electric rate-payer subsidized Lake Norden plant.
Note to GOED: it looks like you’ll have to bribe harder to clear a path for your CAFO friends!
I’m not sure why South Dakota would want to so subsidize Canadian companies that are putting small dairy producers in the United States out of business. Anyway, it seems that when it came down to it, local government decided water and the rule of law won out over bribery.
Ten miles from our governor’s house you say. The county turned down the CAFO CUP? MY, oh my…
Bribe: persuade (someone) to act in one’s favor, typically illegally, by a gift of money or other inducement. Cory would you mind showing how this is illegal? Or is this yet another “intellectually dishonest” writing/biased attempt at those you disagree with?
Funny how guys like Steve discover semantics when they can’t justify a policy. It’s not illegal, so it must be good? Tsk, tsk, Steve.
But counterdefinition (and I cite my source):
Nothing intellectually dishonest here. GOED is bribing counties to get them to rip up their zoning rules, ignore opponents, and bow to big CAFO developers.