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 Yesterday's big North Dakota news -- so big it made page 3B of today's Bismarck Tribune -- is that Dakota Grower's Pasta Company is being sold to a Canadian company for $240 million.
Viterra Inc. is offering to buy Dakota Growers Pasta Co. for $240 million, which would put the Canadian food processing and grain handling company into the pasta business. Viterra's board of directors endorsed the offer Wednesday, the company said in a statement. The board of Dakota Growers, which is based in the central North Dakota community of Carrington, approved it Tuesday, said its chairman, Lt. Gov. Jack Dalrymple. Tim Dodd, Dakota Growers president, said he didn't expect changes in the company's operations. Dakota Growers, the nation's third-largest pasta maker, operates manufacturing plants in Carrington and New Hope, Minn., and has nearly 450 employees, Dodd said. Google (AP)
Remember all the way back to July of 2007, when Bobcat Company was sold to a foreign corporation and everybody -- including Governor Hoeven -- promised there would be "no change in [the company's] presence in North Dakota"? Since then, Bobcat closed its Bismarck, North Dakota, facility and laid off a bunch of workers at its Gwynner, ND, plant. Those formerly-North Dakota jobs are all over in Korea and Slovakia now. Originally Dakota Growers was formed as a cooperative in 1990 and became operational in 1994. It was owned by the ag producers who supplied grain to the company but eventually converted to a corporation. It's an interesting story... Organized as a new generation cooperative in 1990, incorporated in 1991, becoming operational in 1994, and expanding in 1996, 1997and 1998, Dakota Growers Pasta Company had become the third largest producer of pasta in the United States by 1998. Many economists and sociologists had been studied the cooperative extensively, it had been widely heralded as an example of a successful new generation cooperative (Bielik, 1999; Trechter et al., 2001; Zueli et al., 1998; Boland and Martin, 2001; Boland et al, 2002; O’Connor, 2001), and had been held up a model for other similar ventures to emulate. The debate about the merits of conversion occurred in private and in public. The private debate surrounding conversion occurred among members and between members and the board of directors in closed meetings. The board presented its official position in the filing with the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC). The public debate on the issue of conversion occurred through newspaper articles, letters to the editor, and editorials. Through these articles, letters,and editorials, a spirited dialogue developed about the virtues of cooperative as opposed to corporate organization as well as the purposes and relevance of cooperatives. The public debate went to the very soul of North Dakota. In a state with a radical agrarian past and where coopera-tives have drawn upon a history of populist, anti-corporate rhetoric, that the most successful newgeneration cooperative would convert to a corporation was unthinkable and unfathomable. Dakota Growers Pasta Company and the Discourse of Conversion
It's really an interesting story. I also think it's interesting that Lt. Gov. Jack Dalrymple is the chairman of the board of Dakota Growers, and that he's paid $62,000 a year to serve on the board while also serving as Lt. Governor (where he makes over $80,000 a year and his salary will be going up in a couple months). Think of the potential advantage that puts the company (and Dalrymple) in while Dakota Growers negotiated this deal with the Canadian company. "Hey," the folks at Dakota Growers could say, "the tea partiers are going to turn our Board Chairman, Dalrymple, into Governor of North Dakota by this time next year. Chairman Dalrymple might just be predisposed to do all kinds of favors for you Canadians next year if you pay enough to buy the company (and Dalrymple's stock) now. " I don't know about this. I suppose I "get" that wealthy people serve on corporate boards and get paid lots of money to do not much, but having them serve on those boards while they're also serving in elected offices seems a bit sketchy. It's bad enough when our Insurance Commissioner uses his position to pass laws for one company, and then he goes to work as a "consultant" in the industry, billing $600 per hour to the insurance companies he used to regulate. I'm all for making money, but that just seemed like there was an opportunity for a corrupt politician to use his elected position to favor one company and then "get rich quick." Now we've got a Lieutenant Governor who is negotiating deals -- even "recommending" that the shareholders take the deal -- that could ultimately end up in the loss of more American jobs and profits to some other country. It looks bad. I'm against that. And I'm also against having some foreign company calling itself "Dakota Growers Pasta" when, in fact, the company used to -- literally -- be owned by "Dakota Growers," but now it's not. It just seems deceptive. Maybe we need new "elected official ethics rules" (or laws) in North Dakota. Any thoughts on that?
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