Amid scrutiny from past decisions, the new commissioner of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development said the department is working to right past wrongs.
For now, they are looking at one in particular involving a shrimp farming operation.
In December 2018, the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, or GOED, announced plans for a cutting-edge shrimp production facility in Madison, South Dakota. GOED granted $5.5 million to the Madison Lake Area Improvement Corporation for the project.
Lake Area Improvement Corporation loaned the money to Tru Shrimp, the company at 2% interest. The company is now known as Iterro. They planned to build the facility in 2019. Then, they pushed it back to 2024. As of today, it has yet to be built.
Due to projects like this one, GOED has received criticism from state leaders like Speaker of the House Jon Hansen.
"The taxpayers are just out millions of dollars for a business that never even came to South Dakota," Hansen said. "So that’s money that was taxed from some of our businesses, our people, given to this company and they never even came and did anything in South Dakota. It was never a benefit to any of us.”
Newly appointed GOED Commissioner Bill Even answered questions about this at the latest state Government Operations and Audit Committee, or GOAC, meeting. He said he and Gov. Larry Rhoden are looking into projects like this one.
“So right now, the state of South Dakota and Lake Area Development Corporation are actively engaged in understanding the current legal situation we do have, the legal position Iterro has and to, I would say, do a level set to figure out what’s the path forward on this," Even said. "As I said before, my goal here is to try to figure out how we maybe fix some things or remedy some things. We won’t be able to do all of it for everything everywhere all the time. But my active engagement here I think is indicative of the fact that both myself and the governor are interested in ensuring how do you ensure that projects move forward.”
Rep. Marty Overweg is the Vice-Chair of GOAC. He said they need answers.
“They took that out and got private investors, South Dakota investors, to invest in their company also because the state of South Dakota gave them the startup money of $5 million," Overweg said. "So not only did they stick us for $5 million, they also stuck a whole bunch of South Dakota people who privately invested in this company. And this is bad business. I mean this is a drop ball, huge mistake.”
Iterro and the Madison Lake Area Improvement Corporation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
