Jan 13
Your tax dollars at work?
By Denise Ross
If you can believe Rapid City property developer Doug Hamilton -and that does seem to be a big “if” - our tax dollars helped fund his wild business “successes” in Rapid City’s property market and made him a wealthy man.
He tells the Rapid City Journal:
He said his federally-subsidized properties made him a wealthy man, bringing in a compounded rate of return of 242 percent a year.
“Do you want to work out those numbers?” he asked.
(Of course, the answer to that question should have been an unqualified, “Yes!” The article doesn’t indicate what followed.)
He also says he’s been wiped out personally (again, the credibility of this individual is shaky at best), and the Rapid City news of late has included reports of his loan defaults, bounced checks and his bad business debt that stretches into the 10s of millions. ($18M in foreclosures so far, and possibly up to $45M in total debt, he says.)
It all makes for great news stories and, thanks to Mr. Hamilton’s eccentric and erratic personality, some darned good soap opera.
But I’m more interested in his claim that he leveraged tax dollars intended to help house the poor into the mess he created - and stuck a series of local, small banks with. I have these questions and, unfortunately, no answers yet.
- Exactly which subsidies did Mr. Hamilton avail himself of?
- What kind of oversight is done on such subsidies?
- Did he violate any terms of the subsidies, either in financial or rental practices?
- What recourse do taxpayers have now? Is there any hope of recovering the money?
- Are there any criminal violations in what Hamilton has done?
The banks have the wherewithall and resources to go after Hamilton civilly, possibly criminally. Are taxpayers equally well positioned?
Finally, Hamilton seems to love to talk about his mammoth successes. This must help his ego look itself in the mirror, but he can’t have it both ways - and the public ought not be buffaloed by his braggadocio. Either he’s been legitimately successful and built up wealth, or it’s all been a house of cards and his extravagant lifestyle was nothing more than a leveraged, play-acting fantasy that he could never really pay for.
All signs point to the latter, and to at least some extent the rest of us paid for at least part of it.
2 Comments so far
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Hamilton is being less than truthful in his statements about return on subsidized projects. I think anything he says about his financial acumen is suspect. I he is such a whiz why is he unable to meet even his most basic obligations? He is pathetic.
Right you are, Wally. When the payments came due, Hamilton turned out his empty pockets. He was, however, smart enough to live high on the hog on other people’s money for years. Will there be a penalty for that? -Denise
No, there won’t be a penalty anywhere near equal to the crime. That’s one of the things wrong with the Bush team’s philosophy of letting private industry take over government roles with healthy dollops of government subsidies (think CROP INSURANCE). You can’t write rules tight enough to catch the crooks without crippling the program, so the players are enriched at a rate completely inequitable to the service they are providing.