The Gaming Issue

The financial and management issues affecting the Osage Million Dollar Elm Gaming Enterprise deeply concerns and affects every Osage. A situation such as this can also have a direct impact upon our future business arrangements and firms with which we may desire to do business. We are waiting on a response as to the degree of the impact these issues have on our gaming operations.

It's imperative that when the new Osage Nation Congress is seated, that one of its first tasks will be to create a committee to conduct oversight hearings on the MDE operations. This is allowable under the Osage Nation Constitution as part of the oversight responsibility of the Congress.  Aiding the committee should be objective experts and technicians from outside the Congress to assist in the fact finding phase of the committee's efforts.

The committee should gather facts from the Gaming Board, the Osage Gaming Commission, our gaming security management, Executives of MDE and the auditing firm conducting the latest audit of the operations. Furthermore, if that same auditing firm is also performing or managing the daily accounting functions of our gaming enterprise, then this must be clarified, as it is an unusual alignment.

A primary element of the hearings would be an assessment of the financial operations in meeting the requirements of the NIGC regulations and Minimum Internal Control Standards (MICS), including the consideration of creating our own tribal control standards that go beyond the minimum federal standards.

This committee and your new Congress must move quickly through the fact finding processes and strive to aid the Chief and his administration in implementing timely and productive solutions to correct the situation. Naturally, a timely report of the hearings should be published and available for the Executive and Legislative bodies as well as the Osage public.