...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.

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.

A step in the right direction

Black Hills Monitor has taken Governor Mike Rounds and his administration to task for giving little leadership in the area of open government. Their active participation in killing a good open records measure (SB-189) offered by Senator Nancy Turbak Berry of Watertown last year was disappointing. Their tactics were unconscionable.

On a separate but related issue, the Rounds administration opposed and defeated HB1233, which would have created a state web site containing public financial information and other state records. Ignoring the fact that such information is not as readily available to folks in Oelrichs, Wanblee, Kidder, Bruce -- or anywhere else outside of Pierre -- Rounds said it wasn't a matter of open government, it was a matter of accessibility. Excuse me? Then the Gov proceeded to say that it would cost too much to create such a web site and too much to maintain.

In a posting last March, we criticized the Governor on this issue and suggested that he might take a lesson from his fellow Republican Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, whose administration had established a site called Checkbook Online, listing all major state expenditures. Yes, this was long before Sarah Palin's star began to rise in national politics.

I'd like to know what prompted Governor Rounds to change his mind about such a web site. Perhaps he found some money tucked away somewhere? In any event, last Friday (September 12) the Governor announced creation of OpenSD, a web site that he says "...will be the one place on the internet to go for government records and information...that will help our citizens be more informed, involved, and efficient...it will become the central portal to government information in South Dakota."

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I doubt that the emergence of this new South Dakota web site had anything to do with Sarah Palin's selection as McCain's running mate. And I'm certain it had nothing to do with Black Hills Monitor advocacy. I'd like to believe that Mike Rounds did it because it's the right thing to do.

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Now that the information is starting to flow, maybe it can be organized in a more user-friendly way. State bureaucrats, lobbyists, and policy wonks in Pierre will no doubt find it reasonably understandable, if they explore it closely. The rest of us will have to work harder navigating through the information -- not because we're incapable of understanding it, but because it's presented in a typically bureaucratic way. Even Alaska's Checkbook Online, which is far more robust that OpenSD, appears created by folks who would find Reader's Digest confusing, because it's clearly written and organized for common folk.

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But OpenSD is a good first step! Congratulations to Governor Mike Rounds and others who've made this happen.

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Now, about that open records legislation...