Charles E. "Eddie" Clay (1922-2012)

South Dakota has lost one of its outstanding citizens.

Charles "Eddie" Clay of Hot Springs passed away this morning (10/4/12) at the Rapid City Regional Hospital after suffering a stroke yesterday.  He was 90 years old.

And most of those 90 years were dedicated to his family, his country, and his community.

It's sad to see the passing of such a remarkable person, and our heartfelt sympathy goes out to his wife, Clara, his daughter, Bobbi, and the entire Clay family.

Born in Missouri and raised in Iowa, Eddie served with the 8th Air Force in the Pacific during World War II.  Another assignment to Ellsworth Air Force Base allowed him to meet and later marry Clara May Hagen.  Eddie was also called up and served during the Korean War.

Eddie and Clara owned and operated Fall River Abstract in Hot Springs for more than 43 years.  He was devoted to Clara and Bobbi and his grandchildren.

Our sorrow at Eddie's passing  should be quickly tempered by celebration of his numerous and enormous accomplishments during his time on this earth. He was a champion for a wide array of community activities.  The list of his many causes is far too long to enumerate here -- and so we mention only a few.   They each elicited deep passion and commitment from Eddie.  He was not a half-way kind of fellow.  

We wrote the following when Eddie was inducted into the South Dakota Hall of Fame in 2007:

"A tireless worker in civic affairs, Eddie has provided vision and leadership to the Mount Rushmore Society, South Dakota Public Broadcasting, the Mammoth Site at Hot Springs, and numerous other organizations.

His service in the legislature and on Boards of Directors for many educational, tourism and arts organizations has been remarkable. A Mason for 50 years, Eddie Clay has been a role model for me and many South Dakotans. In addition to daughter Bobbi, the Clays have four grandchildren and four great children."

Eddie also served on the powerful Appropriations Committee in the South Dakota House of Representatives from 1967 to 1974.

Funeral services for Charles "Eddie" Clay will be at 10:00 a.m., Monday, at the Mueller Center in Hot Springs.  A viewing is scheduled for Sunday evening.  

You'll find additional information in this news story broadcast earlier today (10/4/12) by KOTA-TV, in which they appropriately acknowledged Eddie as a "visionary."   You'll also find a few photos and narratives that we posted in 2007 in this Hall of Fame gallery.

Just a Graze

by Lorraine Collins

When I was a kid and went to Saturday matinees at the local movie theater, there was often a serial just before the feature, and these usually had cowboys exchanging gunfire. Frequently, just before the episode ended, the hero would be shot off of his horse, so we had to go back the following week to see what happened. At the beginning of the next episode, he'd pick himself up, dust himself off and say, "It was just a graze." That's how I feel about the Legislature this year. They didn't actually kill us all off, but the crease in our skulls might be slightly deeper than a graze.

Yet, it could have been worse. The only bill dealing with abortion this year just made some revisions in the bill passed last year, apparently in the hope to make it more defensible in court. Women and girls seeking an abortion are still required to go to a "pregnancy center" for "counseling", but now counselors have to be "licensed." The bill does not say licensed by whom, or what the licensing requirements are.

Teachers, firemen, and other public employees dodged a bullet when HB 1261, which would have prohibited collective bargaining by public employees, had a short life. Senator Stan Adelstein of Rapid City first proposed this but later he decided this was not a good idea, and said so. Senator Tom Nelson of Lead also abandoned a bill he had thought of introducing, exempting casinos in Deadwood from the smoking ban. It's always a good thing when Legislators realize that the Legislative session just isn't long enough to accommodate every idea that comes to them in the middle of the night or is proposed by a special interest group.

           

Nelson chalked up a victory for gambling, though, when he got the Legislature to  raise limits in Deadwood casinos to $1,000 from $100. I can remember when limits were $5 and folks said that our cozy little historic town would not try to compete with Las Vegas.

By far, the most controversial bill this year was HB 1234, introduced on behalf of the governor, who decided that he had a swell idea for improving education in South Dakota's public schools. This included eliminating "tenure" for teachers and offering thousands of dollars in bonuses for teachers who were in the top 20% of teachers in their schools, as measured by some method yet to be determined. Other bonuses would go to those who taught math or science. This was such an unpopular idea among teachers, school boards, administrators and the general public that the bill was argued about and amended several times. The bill that was finally cobbled together included scholarships for college students who promise to teach for five years in "critical needs areas", not just math or science, and offered some options for local school districts.

I heard a commentator on TV say that she thought the governor wanted to have a "legacy" and that's why he embarked on "educational reform". Personally, I think a great legacy would be to increase all teachers' salaries and lift us from the humiliating position of ranking last of the 50 states in terms of what teachers are paid. Coming up with money for bonuses for a few teachers and leaving the others at the bottom of the barrel doesn't sound like a good idea to me. School boards still cannot count on a sustained level of support from one year to the next, so they continue to cut budgets, drop courses, and lay off teachers.

But one of the more troublesome things about HB 1234 as far as I'm concerned is the provision that will end the "continuing contract" as is current practice in South Dakota. After this is eliminated, any teacher, regardless of how long she or he has been in a school system, can be fired and the administrator is "not required to give further process or reason for non renewal."

Due Process is one of the basic tenets of our Constitution. Due Process has been called "The Shield of the People" and it is also a shield for teachers who are professionals, who have chosen this career not just to make a living, but to make a difference.

Lorraine Collins is a writer who lives in Spearfish. She can be contacted at collins1@midco.net.

Adding up at year's end

by Lorraine Collins

Since this is the time of year when we start summing up things, writing Christmas letters, reflecting on how fast the year has gone by, I thought I'd get out the notebook in which I keep the stack of columns I've written in 2011 to see what they amount to.  There are fewer to review this year because in July I reduced my output to one column a month, inching toward retirement. There are just 16 columns instead of a couple of dozen but it still took a while to read through them as I tried to remember what I'd written about, and why. There were some lines I was quite pleased with when I read them again.

For instance, there's this one from the first column last January. In discussing expiration dates, I said, "How long is too long? That's the question, isn't it? Not only in food safety, but in life, love, professional football careers, reality TV shows, Royal Dynasties, and living in a hospital bed attached to tubes and a respirator." I think that covered quite a few issues, right there, but several months later I'd add Republican primary debates.

In an April column I started out discussing socks and ended up writing about the fact that the gap between rich and poor is getting wider and that "the top one percent of the people have seen their income more than double in recent years while the bottom 90 percent have seen their share shrink." I don't suppose this was the first mention in the media of the infamous one percent, but I did suggest we should be paying attention to the situation. I suggested that again in October when I mentioned that there has been a big increase in needy families coming to our food banks and many people were beginning to gather in America's streets the way they had in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab Spring. You can't say I didn't warn you.

I think I was pretty early in recognizing Texas Governor Rick Perry as being a possible candidate in the Republican Primary as I mentioned him last June before his band wagon really got rolling. I pointed out that one difficulty with the governor was that he has said he wants to amend the Constitution to take away from the people the right to directly elect their U.S. Senators. He wants state Legislators to do this as they did in the old days before the 17th Amendment in 1913. I don't know why Governor Perry trusts state Legislators over the public, but I did point out that the first three words of our Constitution are "We the people," not "We the states."

From time to time I've enjoyed writing about adventures I've had, including spelunking in Jewel Cave and trying to get to Pierre in a small plane and landing on a highway, then hitchhiking to get to the Legislature. I wouldn't want to do either of those things today, but 30 or more years ago they didn't seem unreasonable or hazardous activities. I don't think it's caution so much as exhaustion that makes us think about not doing stuff as we get older.

I do tend to talk about issues that we should be thinking about, including how we treat, or fail to treat, the mentally ill and the number of South Dakota children whose fathers are failing to support them. And again this year, as every year, I have more than once pointed out that South Dakota ranks at or near the bottom in state support for public education.

 Just now, thinking about this, I looked in the collection of my columns I published last spring and found this, published in January 2007: "At a forum during the campaign for Legislature last fall, I asked the candidates whether South Dakota was always going to be so far behind in supporting education, in having the lowest paid teachers in the nation. Was there any hope? Amid laughter, I was assured that of course there was." That was five years ago. I hope nobody is still laughing.

Well, Happy New Year, everybody. Enjoy it while you can. The Legislature doesn't convene until January 10th.

Lorraine Collins is a writer who lives in Spearfish. She can be reached at collins1@rushmore.com

Anonymity breeds a bit of libel...

We’ll shed no tears over the demise of HB-1277 and HB-1278 at the state legislature yesterday (2/22/10).

The bills were crafted to help identify culprits who plaster the internet with anonymous comments that are libelous. Had they become law, they would have required web site operators to provide information about people who post articles or comments on their websites. Specifically, it would have sought logs that contain the Internet Protocol Addresses (IPA) of bloggers and people who post comments and other content onto web sites. Supporters said they were simply trying to give some recourse to people who’d been victimized by anonymous and libelous attacks on the internet.

Most of the speakers who provided testimony before the House State Affairs Committee – both pro and con – seemed to agree that something needs to be done. In the end, committee members indicated that these bills, even if passed into South Dakota law, would likely have little impact upon the worldwide web. They tabled HB-1277 and sent HB-1278 to the 41^st day, effectively killing it.

We’re no fan of anonymity on the internet. Criticism is not regular fare on Black Hills Monitor or our any of our other sites, but we do occasionally take some institutions and individuals to task for what we consider to be their transgressions. That said, we try to keep above the gutter gibberish that adorns some blogs.

We suspect this issue will not go away. Nor should it. The worldwide web is a marvelous tool, but it is increasingly abused by individuals and corporations alike. At some point, the “blogosphere” will need to embrace better tools to keep it from being overrun by a cesspool of unscrupulous marketers and disgruntled rabble-rousers who hide behind anonymity while injecting libelous venom across blog postings.

Something must and something will be done about anonymous internet postings that defame folks. That was part of the message conveyed in this KELO-TV interview (below) with a former colleague of ours, Todd Epp of Sioux Falls. We agree with that position – but it won’t be HB-1277 or HB-1278.

Here we are again already

Our neighbor Lorraine Collins always has an interesting perspective on a wide range of topics. Here's another that should catch your interest -- and perhaps spur a comment or two. Her commentaries appear regularly in the Black Hills Pioneer, and this one appeared in the December 16, 2009 edition. She graciously allows us to share it with on-line readers here.

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Maybe it's because as we get older time seems to go by faster, but it seems to me that it was just yesterday, rather than December a year ago, that Governor Rounds was delivering his 2008 Budget Address and asking Legislators to go home and encourage all their constituents to go out and buy something to help out with sales tax revenue. Apparently this didn't work because last week the governor delivered his 2009 Budget Address and said revenues were "flat" while expenses have been going up. But this time, he didn't ask the Legislators to go home and ask us to spend more money, presumably because he knows many of us can't.

According to his speech, unemployment is the highest since1985 and unemployed people don't buy a lot of stuff. The governor said that the number of people on Medicaid has now reached 110,000, with more people enrolling in the program in the last ten months than in the previous four years. It was pretty clear a year ago that we were going to have what's called a "shortfall" in terms of income versus expenses. That is, the state was in the same trouble many of its citizens are every month. And it still is.

As I listened carefully to the governor's address which largely consisted of a blizzard of statistics, I scribbled down various notes which I now have difficulty reading. But by now, there have been editorial comments, objections, amplifications, and suggested alternatives to the governor's proposed budget and I think I get the gist of it. The governor made a point of saying that 49 cents of every budget dollar goes toward education, from kindergarten to graduate school, and that 36 cents goes toward "taking care of people." So 85% of the state budget goes for education and social services, and one would have to be a Scrooge or a Grinch to object to that.

However, he said he could not increase state aid to education at all, although I thought there was a law that says schools are supposed to get an increase every year amounting to 3% or the rate of inflation, whichever is less. It wouldn't have amounted to much this year, but it would have been something. It will be interesting to see what the Legislature does with that. Every year there are various proposals to increase state aid to education, to revise the formula or change the rules, and every year we seem to go along more or less as we have been.

In talking about a "structural deficit" the governor said the deficit isn't caused "by our spending being out of control." I guess it isn't, since we rank so low in state support to education that it' s embarrassing. However, Representative Bernie Hunhoff of Yankton, minority leader of the House, said that growth of state government has been at twice the rate of inflation and he thought there should be cuts in the bureaucracy. That might be a good idea, but whether that would make any significant difference in making more money available to education is something I tend to doubt.

The fact is, state just doesn't take in enough money to meet current expenses and the only way we've been able to maintain things as well as we have is that the federal government pitches in more money than we do. It was interesting to note that state revenues for the general fund to support the governor's budget amounted to $1.2 billion while federal funds amounted to $1.9 billion. So I don't think we should complain too much about federal interference in our state.

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Governor Rounds closed his speech by remarking "We all believe in the common good." It's a good thing that taxpayers in the other 49 states are helping us out and I hope they continue to believe in our common good, until we can figure out how to come up with more money ourselves.
Lorraine Collins is a writer who lives in Spearfish. She can be reached at collins1@rushmore.com.

Lorraine Collins is a writer who lives in Spearfish. She can be contacted at collins1@rushmore.com.

...into the sunshine: SB-147

We were pleasantly surprised Thursday (1/29) to see a new open records measure introduced by State Senator Dave Knudson and a bi-partisan group of legislative leaders. SB-147 emerges with the presumption that public documents should be accessible to the public unless there is ample justification for keeping them confidential.

That's light years ahead of existing law, which basically presumes that records are closed to the public unless specifically identified as "open." There are lots of exceptions in this new measure -- maybe too many -- but it's a big step in the right direction for South Dakota.

Congratulations to Senators Knudson, Heidepriem, Rhoden, Turbak Berry, and several other legislators in both the Senate and House for stepping forward with this important piece of legislation.

Take a look at SB-147.

I think the legislature will pass this bill -- or some form of it -- this session. But don't expect the Governor to sign it with a smile, if he signs it at all.

With the fiscal crisis enveloping state government, this will likely be one of a handful of "non-fiscal" topics to get much attention. We look forward to watching the story evolve.

Resolutions

Lorraine Collins has a wonderful way with words -- and her approach to resolutions for the new year seems right on target. We've often opined on open government, and we were delighted to see her suggest improving open government as a reasonable resolution for the 2009 South Dakota Legislature. Here is her column penned for the Black Hills Pioneer:

More than once, I’ve pointed out that January is no time to be making resolutions. Resolutions should be made in the spring of the year when everything seems possible, or perhaps in the autumn, when everything seems necessary. Except for this arbitrary calendar, why do we believe that January begins a New Year and therefore requires New Years resolutions? Some time ago, March was considered the beginning of the New Year. That was in the Gregorian calendar, so I’ve often tried to defend my lack of making resolutions in January by saying, “Well, I still go by the Gregorian Calendar. I’ll get around to this in March.”

This does not necessarily convince anybody, but it gives me an excuse for not suddenly, in the dark of winter, trying to think about reforming myself. However, since the South Dakota Legislature meets in January, I guess they cannot wait until March to think about what they should do to improve their previous performance. So I’ve been thinking about what resolutions the South Dakota Legislature should have.

When making resolutions it’s best to be realistic, not choosing a goal that is clearly going to be unattainable. That just leads to early discouragement and abandonment of the effort. So our legislators should not dream of accomplishing something like making our state rank number one in state support for public education. But how about some more modest goal, like attaining the rank of 47th? That would be an improvement over our present ranking of 50th and it would demonstrate that we’re embarrassed by our current status and are serious about trying to improve ourselves. We might make it only to 48th, but we’d have taken that first step and could feel we were on the right road.

If tackling such a difficult subject as improving state support for education seems too daunting, the legislature could try something else, like improving some other area in which our state ranks last. How about improving our status regarding open government? According to the Better Government Association, we rank at the bottom there, too.

The BGA ranked states on matters such as laws pertaining to freedom of information, whistleblower protection, campaign finance, open meetings and disclosure of conflict of interest by lawmakers. If a state got a 100% rating in each of these five areas, it would be rated at 500%. South Dakota achieved just 162%. In terms of freedom of information, we actually got a zero. Our highest rating was in laws relating to disclosure of conflicts of interest where we climbed up to 42nd place.

What excuse do we have for being the most secretive state in the union? We do seem to have a penchant for secrecy, I admit. I was surprised to learn recently that state law keeps secret the names of people who hold video lottery licenses. I suppose that 20 years ago when the state video lottery program was started, there may have been some concern about protecting license holders from gambling opponents, though I don’t know why. We don’t hide the owners of liquor licenses because some people are opposed to alcohol. If there ever was any kind of justification for secrecy regarding video lottery, it certainly wouldn’t seem to exist now. And a business that apparently generates over 200 million dollars a year shouldn’t have a lot of secrecy, should it?

I’ll stop my list of recommended resolutions for our state legislators with just these two: get us off the bottom of the list in education funding and in having open and transparent government. That may provide challenge, but if legislators have open minds and stout hearts, I think they can do it.

Lorraine Collins is a writer who lives in Spearfish. She can be contacted at collins1@rushmore.com.

South Dakota..."failed miserably"

Good friend Bill Kunerth delivered the bad news, which we somehow had managed to avoid for several weeks: South Dakota has again failed miserably in a national survey conducted by the Better Government Association. One of our continuing disappointments is the fact that, in general, South Dakota politicians place little value on open government, and this fact has come home to roost in this report. South Dakota ranks dead last among all 50 states in the 2008 BGA study, which included extensive examination of five critical areas:

Freedom of Information (FOI) Laws
Whistleblower Protection Laws
Campaign Finance Laws
Open Meetings Laws
Conflict of Interest Laws

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Here’s an excerpt from their report:

Overall, the BGA - Alper Integrity Index reveals that states have taken a patchwork approach towards promoting integrity which indicates a lack of the proper amount of concern regarding integrity and corruption. The BGA hopes that this study will help spark a renewed focus and debate on these issues in all the states and ultimately lead to the improvement of the laws we reviewed...

The top five states in our survey were New Jersey, Rhode Island, Hawaii, Washington and Louisiana. The bottom five states were Montana, Tennessee, Alabama, Vermont and South Dakota. The top five states tended to do well relative to their sister states across all the laws while the bottom five under-performed or failed miserably across all the laws we reviewed.

You can find all the gruesome details on-line at BGA-Alper Integrity Index.

We don’t believe there’s widespread corruption in South Dakota government, but it would be naïve to think it doesn’t exist. What should alarm citizens is the fact that conditions exist that readily foster corruption and malfeasance. The BGA study was “conceived as a tool to describe the extent to which each state has protected itself against possible corruption and made its processes open and accountable to its citizens.”

South Dakota has so much about which it can be proud. Open government is not one of them. With a lot of encouragement from interested citizens, perhaps the 2009 legislature will move aggressively to turn this around. There’s no better place to start than by revisiting Senator Nancy Turbak Berry's open records bill that was scuttled by legislative leaders last year.

Shame on GOP leadership

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AN OPEN LETTER TO SOUTH DAKOTA GOP LEADERS

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It’s an unfortunate truth that when we human beings get together in groups, we do silly things that we would not do individually.

Take, for example, some of the honest and well-meaning politicians who serve as leaders of the Republican party in South Dakota. Individually, they may exhibit the thoughtfulness and common sense that we South Dakotans prize in government leaders, whatever their stripe.

But in the fever pitch of campaigning, politicians sometimes go a little nuts. In the 2008 South Dakota State Senate District 31 campaign, state Republican leaders went a lot nuts.

When businesswoman Nyla Griffith of Deadwood, a Democrat, decided to run for the Senate seat being vacated by Republican Jerry Apa, she launched a straightforward campaign in support of education and open government. She beat a path to thousands of doorsteps in Lawrence County, listening to voter concerns and seeking their support. She got lots of it – much more than likely anticipated by opposition GOP candidate Tom Nelson and local/state Republican leaders.

The fear of losing a seat in the Legislature so frightened these folks that they did collectively what a single one of them would probably be averse to doing. They used an 11th hour “Voter Alert” postcard to attack Griffith with information that they knew was not true, and they timed their mailing so she’d have no opportunity to respond before voters went to the polls. They accused her of supporting gun control and the legalization of marijuana – extracting bits and pieces of information that was posted on the non-partisan website Project Vote Smart. Then they cobbled together their venomous and untrue accusations and deposited them in voters mailboxes hours before the election.

Project Vote Smart wasn’t too happy with South Dakota Republican Party over this incident. In a public statement, they rebuked GOP leaders for attacking Nyla Griffith with “information they know to be false.” Read the entire Project Vote Smart Public Statement.

To my knowledge, there’s been no apology for this dastardly deed, and I won’t hold my breath waiting to see one. Hopefully, the few Republican leaders who may have had a hand in this sorry episode will step forward with a bit of contrition and pledge to clean up their act.

This was an unseemly way to try to win votes. Both Republicans and Democrats are not happy over this incident – and persons with an ounce of ethics and common sense understand why. Spearfish writer Lorraine Collins, a Republican, is among the displeased. She shared her thoughts in a Black Hills Pioneer opinion piece this week (11/12/08).

And you can add this Independent blogger to the list of the disenchanted.

Think globally -- act locally!

The United States is in the middle of an eroding economy – a financial crisis the likes of which we’ve not seen in three-quarters of a century. There’s been something of a national debate about a $700 billion federal bailout to save the economy (really to save the big banks and financial institutions – with only “trickle down” benefits to taxpayers, who will foot the bill). Actually, there’s been no real debate about this at all. Not even the presidential candidates have dared candor, assuming they have original thoughts on how to help resolve the crisis. There’s been no public hearing. Nothing. Nada. We’re expected to “trust” the guys who got us in to this mess to get us out.

Indifference, ignorance, and – make no mistake about it – backroom deals with little or no public scrutiny – have led us to this dire point.

As we wring our hands and worry about what will happen next, it’s time to clean house and start rebuilding confidence in government, and we should start locally. We’re within weeks of casting ballots for people and issues that will directly impact our daily lives.

That’s why I’m supporting Nyla Griffith of Deadwood to represent District 31 in the South Dakota State Senate. Her record as a small business owner, service on the Deadwood City Commission, and her many contributions to civic activities have convinced me that she is a smart choice to succeed Jerry Apa in the Senate. Nyla has declared an unswerving commitment to open government. For me, that’s a clincher.

Unless and until we have truly open government, we’re likely to condemn ourselves to the arrogance that many elected officials fall victim to after gaining office. Accountability is the key, and it comes only to the extent that we insist on knowing what our government is up to and what it's doing.

That’s as true in Deadwood and Spearfish as it is in Pierre and Washington, D.C.

A life-long South Dakotan, Nyla Griffith has taken to the streets, going door-to-door in the district, in an effort to garner support for her candidacy. Last I heard, she’d passed the 3,000 mark and is still meeting with would-be constituents at their front doors. That kind of populist campaigning is hard work, but it reflects a real commitment that I believe will serve this area well in the state legislature.

And her commitment to open government is like a breath of fresh air. I’m proud to give my support to Nyla, and I hope others will take a look at her background – and her priorities – and vote for Nyla Griffith on November 4th.

A Chance to Wear a White Hat

It was gratifying to see bi-partisan support for SB-189 today in the South Dakota Senate. The long-needed open records measure passed the State Affairs Committee 6-2 and will proceed to the Senate floor next week. The bill strengthens state open records laws, instituting a presumption of openness for all public records, except those that are identified as being closed.

The beauty of SB-189 is that it safeguards everything already protected as “confidential” or “closed” by state law, while implementing a presumption of openness for all other public documents.

Another bill, SB-186, breezed through the committee. It establishes a procedure for citizens to appeal if they are denied access after requesting a record. It is, in effect, South Dakota’s first-ever process similar to the federal Freedom of Information Act.

Taken as a package, passage of these two bills would mark at huge step forward for South Dakota. Both will arrive on the floor of the Senate next week (Feb. 11-14). Both deserve strong support.

Let’s hope the full Senate will continue the bi-partisan effort that has come forward with this pair of good bills, SB-186 and SB-189, and give them quick approval.

There’s been an expectation that Governor Mike Rounds will veto any open records legislation, but I’m not sure that’s true. I’d like to think that the Governor will re-examine these amended measures and recognize that they have been transformed into very good bills.

He certainly can’t help but notice that there is a growing bi-partisan effort that backs this legislation, and that he has an opportunity to be the "good guy, demonstrating his open-mindedness and a commitment to open government. It’s that simple. Besides, I think the Governor would look good in a white hat!

SB189 - Good Open Records Legislation

It’s hard to imagine why any legislator wouldn’t support SB-189. It’s a good piece of legislation.

It would give South Dakotans the same standing as other citizens of these United States. When we want to see a public record that is on file with a public office, it would put the burden on government to explain why we cannot see that record.

That’s a lot different than walking in to a courthouse and having to identify and cite the state law that says you’re entitled to see it.

Simply put, SB-189 would invoke a presumption of openness. Other legislation being considered (SB-186) would perpetuate a critical flaw in current law, which essentially places the burden on individual citizens to prove why they should have access to public documents.

SB-189 does not mean that all records would be open to the public. In fact, it cites the same laundry list of exceptions that now exists. As I said, it’s hard to imagine why anyone wouldn’t support SB-189.

It’s a fundamental reminder that we are a nation – and state – “…of the people, by the people, and for the people.”

Might it be inconvenient for government officials? Probably. Just like having to conduct open meetings may be inconvenient. That is a small price to pay for helping ensure that our American tradition of open government remains intact.

And yet, there are legislators who would reject the bill simply because Governor Mike Rounds might veto it.

Some say that’s because it would encroach upon our privacy, and that’s poppycock. Those concerned with privacy issues should have kept SB-81 from marching to legislative oblivion. It could have made a real difference in protecting our citizens from identity theft by making it easier for consumers to freeze their own credit records. No, this issue is more of a vendetta between the Governor’s office and the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader newspaper.

Most of us don’t give a tinker’s damn about who hunts with the Governor. And many of us are less than enchanted with the Argus-Leader. But there are more than just a few South Dakotans who believe in open government, and that includes good open records legislation.

Let’s hope SB-189 fares well in Pierre. It’s a chance for the legislature to be the good guys. If not, it’ll be a long year ahead.

Wide Open Spaces?

Lorraine Collins is a free-lance writer whose work appears regularly in the Black Hills Pioneer. We're pleased that she's given permission for us to use this piece.

We out here in the west have liked to think of ourselves as enjoying wide open spaces, and being people of open hearts and open minds, open to new ideas. But for some strange reason, we seem to have quite a bit of difficulty grasping the idea that government needs to be open, too.

Our state constitution still says that a simple majority of the legislature can close the entire legislature to the public and the media and do whatever it wants to in secret. There was an attempt to modify that last year, with Amendment F, which would have required a two-thirds majority to close the legislature, but the Amendment failed because it also included a lot of other things people didn’t like. (I don’t think it was ever explained why the legislature should be closed at all.)

A person who was a legislative page in the 1960’s told me that one of a page’s duties in those days was to stand in the hall to keep the public from coming into the committee room to see members at work. Thank goodness that has changed. But there are still frequent complaints about boards and commissions violating the open meetings laws.


Read the entire article...
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Not Really the Wide Open Spaces
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by Lorraine Collins, a free-lance writer from Spearfish.

Had Your Identity Stolen.....YET?

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AN OPEN LETTER TO SOUTH DAKOTA LEGISLATORS

Jane Kim wrote an excellent article a couple of months ago for the Wall Street Journal, noting that “increasing numbers of people are taking a radical approach to thwart criminals: they are putting their credit reports on permanent freeze.” Take a look at her piece right here.

Freezing access to credit reports from the major credit bureaus is a meaningful way that consumers can help protect themselves from identity theft -- especially for those who are retired and no longer seeking more and more credit.

According to Consumer Reports, which is a prime player in helping consumers, victims of identity theft can have their reports frozen at no cost, if they have a police report to prove it. However, the rest of us in South Dakota have to pay $10 to put such a freeze in place, to temporarily lift such a freeze, or remove it altogether. For elderly consumers on fixed incomes – trying to protect themselves from the growing threat of identity theft – these mounting fees can be extremely burdensome.

Our friends in North Dakota passed a law limiting such charges to $5 per request.

But Nebraska has done even better. The Nebraska Credit Report Protection Act requires there be only a one-time $15 fee to freeze the report. There are no additional fees for lifting the freeze temporarily or removing it altogether.

Lots of stuff going on in Pierre next month; let’s hope this issue can find a place on the legislative agenda.