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Jackley’s bill signals resurrection of Open Meetings Commission
South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley made some news last month when he announced the five bills he’s backing during the 2024 legislative session. Most of the headlines generated by his announcement concerned the attempt to regulate a livestock tranquilizer being used by drug dealers or outlawing the use of artificial intelligence to create child […]
State would benefit if ‘beaten down’ Democrats can rally
Reporters expect a certain amount of spin at legislative news conferences. It’s the nature of the beast. What they don’t expect to hear is some hard truths about politics in South Dakota. That’s what editors and publishers got from Rep. Spencer Hawley, a Brookings Democrat, during a 2016 Newspaper Day at the Legislature news conference […]
Like Republican legislators, citizens want to cut taxes
South Dakota lawmakers went through a bit of a tax cut frenzy in the last legislative session before finally settling on a reduction of the state sales tax. A recent poll shows that citizens favor getting into the tax cut game as well. A poll of registered voters sponsored by South Dakota News Watch and […]
Noem channeling Janklow as she struggles with funding teacher pay
It was New Year’s Eve, sometime back near the start of this century. My wife, sons and I were ready for a family party. The pizza had just been delivered. A PG movie was cued up in the VCR. That’s when the phone rang. My wife didn’t look particularly pleased when she told me, “It’s […]
South Dakota’s new secretary of state still a mystery
In 2022, Monae Johnson was elected South Dakota’s secretary of state. Since then, she has earned another title: Queen of Irony. Her reign started at the state Republican convention when Johnson and her election integrity minions expressed displeasure at the lack of effort by Steve Barnett when it came to ensuring the security of South […]
Now it’s the Legislature’s turn to try to scale the Noem wall of silence
It’s likely that journalists in South Dakota allowed themselves a few self-satisfied chuckles last month. This mirth was inspired by watching the Legislature’s Appropriations Committee fail to get the information it was seeking about the Freedom Works Here campaign from the Governor’s Office of Economic Development. The Freedom Works Here campaign advertisements, which have run […]
Governor shouldn’t be the one to choose replacement legislators
Two Republican legislators from Rapid City have resigned. Sen. Jessica Castleberry of District 35 had to resign so she can get busy repaying $600,000 in pandemic relief funding she received through state government, in violation of the Legislature’s ethics rules. Rep. Jess Olson of District 34 said she resigned for health reasons. According to The […]
Quiet scanners add another layer of opaqueness to law enforcement
Police are called on to “protect and serve.” In South Dakota that’s what they do, but they do it on their own terms. Too often those terms lack transparency. This became apparent again recently with the announcement that on Nov. 13, privately owned police scanners in the state’s two largest counties would go quiet as […]
Noem sets budget mood, but are legislators in a mood to follow?
With her annual budget address set for Dec. 5, Gov. Kristi Noem used her last weekly newspaper column of October to help set the mood for the coming legislative session. The mood she’s going for: overwhelmingly conservative. For the past few years, the state had enjoyed strong economic growth coupled with a windfall of federal […]
Dusty Johnson wrong about Jordan, right about Republicans
Let’s give Rep. Dusty Johnson the benefit of the doubt, and excuse him for delivering a nominating speech for Rep. Jim Jordan during Jordan’s quest to become the speaker of the House. With the way the world is right now, it’s easy to believe that Johnson thought it best to get someone, anyone, elected. As […]
South Dakota taxpayer dollars spent to make governor look good
Gov. Kristi Noem is a little young to be suffering from long-term memory loss, but she seems to be forgetting this statement she made to the Legislature during her 2022 budget address: “I recognize that taxpayer dollars are not our own – they belong to the people of South Dakota. We all must remember throughout […]
Mum’s the word: When questioned, Noem administration stays quiet
It may be best if journalists in South Dakota took a three-year break from asking questions of Gov. Kristi Noem or anyone in her administration. It would be less frustrating for them and they would likely have just as much information as they would if they kept asking questions for the last 36 months of […]