How I learned a new word

Lorraine Collins is a writer from Spearfish
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Except for working crossword puzzles, I don’t come across exotic and arcane words much any more and I can usually figure out what a word new to me means. A teacher once scolded me for looking up words in the dictionary all the time, and said I should figure them out by finding their roots and thinking of similar words. This often works, but a couple of weeks ago I had to look up a word in the dictionary.

This was a word I encountered in House Bill 1138 in the current legislative session. The Bill passed both houses of the Legislature and was sent to the governor for his signature. It was “An Act to provide for the defeasance of the Commission on the Status of Women.” Defeasance? Anybody ever heard of defeasance?

I’ve heard of malfeasance, this being what happens when elected or appointed officials embezzle or misspend public funds, but I’d never heard of defeasance. I couldn’t quite figure out what it meant, so I looked it up. What it means is eliminating or terminating an entity.

So this House Bill 1138 was eliminating the South Dakota Commission on the Status of Women as being a governmental entity. That’s understandable. The CSW has not been funded for 28 years. It effectively ceased to exist when Governor Janklow appointed three extremely conservative women to the commission who had campaigned to eliminate the very body they’d been appointed to. No funds were appropriated. The Commission on the Status of Women has been defunct for about a generation.

Still, as one who once headed the Commission, I’m sorry to see that it has been erased from the state of South Dakota. The Commission on the Status of Women was created in 1973 as a statutory body with obligations to report to the Legislature. The 12-member Commission could not have more than seven members of any party. Since Governor Kneip was a Democrat, the Commission had seven Democrats of course. I became one of five Republican members. Due to circumstances too complicated to explain here, the governor eventually appointed me Chairperson of the Commission despite my political affiliation.

When an editorial in a newspaper subsequently objected to the new gender-neutral language and complained about the term “chairperson”, it said that I couldn’t possibly be such a thing. I said yes I could and I had a certificate signed by the governor to prove it.

An article by Dr. Ruth Alexander published twenty years ago in South Dakota History magazine gives us an idea of what the Commission was up to in the 1970’s.

She wrote, “We became a clearing house for problems affecting women’s lives that demanded action---day care for children, sex role stereotyping in the public schools, job discrimination, difficulties in getting credit, teenage mothers, rape, battered women, displaced homemakers, inheritance laws, nontraditional students.”

We held meetings at various locations around the state, published a newsletter and created educational materials of various kinds. I used to fly from Rapid City to Pierre to testify before legislative committees about problems women faced. There was a lot of work to do in those days and I received calls from women all across the state asking for help because they didn’t know where else to turn. Remembering that heady time, I was sad to learn of the defeasance of the Commission on the Status of Women but I suppose it’s best not to pretend such an entity exists in South Dakota when it doesn’t.

Most of the problems we dealt with thirty years ago remain, and some have gotten worse. So I was pleased to learn that President Obama has instituted a White House Council on Women and Girls. If we can’t look to Pierre to take women’s concerns seriously, at least we can look to Washington.

Lorraine Collins can be contacted at collins1@rushmore.com

A change of direction

Since we've been something of a rabble rouser when it comes to open government in South Dakota, we should give credit where credit is due. This is not in any priority order -- in fact, it basically starts with the late comers first.

God bless Governor Mike Rounds for seeing the light and accepting a philosophical change of direction for the state. His signing of a new open records law yesterday (3/19/09) was something of a turnaround for the governor, who has claimed previous versions were not strong enough in protecting individual rights. The new law, which takes effect July 1, importantly contains a presumption that government documents should be open to the public, unless there are good reasons for keeping them under wraps.

The new law is far from perfect, but it's lightyears ahead of what exists right now -- basically allowing bureaucrats at any government level to make decisions about what should and should not be open to the public. In other words, it generally presumed that only documents required to be kept by government would be made available -- if officials wanted to make them available.

I don't know what motivated Republican State Senator Dave Knudson to get behind and push for a new open records law. Perhaps he saw it as a good resume-builder for would-be gubernatorial candidates. Maybe he simply believed South Dakota was due for more open government. Whatever the incentive, he did his homework and navigated his SB-147 handily through the legislature. Thanks, Dave.

Democratic Senator Nancy Turbak Berry should certainly be acknowledged for giving high visibility to open government last year, when she introduced a similar open records law -- but without a lot of the politically-worded baggage necessary to get it through the legislature. Her early spadework, along with that of several others legislators, was critically important.

And, of course, a multitude of candidates last election thought it was important enough to publicly speak out and advocate a stronger open records law. Near the head of that list of folks was Nyla Griffith of Deadwood, a Democrat whose campaign last year for a seat in the State Senate fell short.

Certainly, South Dakota newspapers played a role in pushing through the new law, and they deserve recognition. However, this was NOT just a media deal. It was a citizen movement, and it was growing significantly. I suspect that had as much to do with final approval of the new law as anything. Politicians seem to sense such groundswells --- at least the good ones do.

More sunshine for South Dakota

Last year, we criticized Governor Mike Rounds for vetoing HB-1233 a piece of open government legislation that would have created a website to reveal how the state was spending its money. He said it would cost too much. Up to $600,000 to set it up and $100,000 year to keep it running We suggested he follow the footsteps of Governor Sarah Palin (before her national notoriety as a V-P candidate) who had launched such a site in Alaska.

We don’t know what revelation struck the Governor after legislators went home, but – after snubbing the website project – the Gov suddenly late last year announced Open SD. We’ve never been much impressed with how the site works, but pleased that a step was taken toward more open government.

With passage and signing of SB-143 this year, it looks like we’ll see Open SD continued – and that’s a good thing. We only hope the site will become more robust and user friendly. Knowing state salaries is fine for busybodies who want to know how much their neighbor makes, but the site is far less helpful in areas like state contract expenditures.

While it has its own failings, we like the searchability of Nebraska’s NebraskaSpending.com, which is more user-friendly than Open SD. It’s easy, for example, to find all Historical Society contracts. By the way, the Cornhusker website cost them only $38,000, according to Nebraska State Treasurer Shane Osborn.

Governor Rounds has yet to sign SB-147, the new open records bill that passed both houses of the legislature handily, but I expect he will sign it. An over-ride would seem unstoppable.

So, with a new open records law and a renewed Open SD law, South Dakota finally appears poised to bask in the sunshine of more open government. Better late than never.

Now it’s time to make the Open SD website more functional. Then perhaps we can start looking at ways to strengthen the provisions of the open records legislation.

But let us pause a bit to enjoy these first rays of long-awaited sunshine for South Dakota government.

Little to cheer about

This October 11, 1954 photograph of Deadwood-born actress Dorothy “Dotty” Provine appeared in the once ubiquitous Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Provine was then a 19-year-old co-ed cheering for the University of Washington in their football battle against the University of Oregon.

There was little to cheer about that day, since Washington lost to the Ducks, 26-7.

There’s even less to cheer about today around Seattle. The economy is a mess, Boeing Aircraft is struggling mightily, and the newspaper has gone under.

Unable to find a buyer, Post-Intelligencer has announced that it’s shutting down print operations. This dire situation was suggested in our earlier posting about the Post-Intelligncer. Declining advertising revenue and subscriptions have taken their toll. After 146 years of serving the Pacific northwest with a printed newspaper, today (3/17/09) is their last edition.

More details about the Seattle shutdown can be found in this New York Times story. The upshot is this: while the print version is folding, Hearst Corporation says an on-line version of the Post-Intelligencer will continue. Reports indicate that only about 20 jobs will remain in the newsroom.

Here’s the statement made yesterday in the Post-Intelligencer newsroom by publisher Roger Oglesby:

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for the Post-Intelligencer.

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