South DaCola

Editorial Cartoonist from South Dakota

August 2012

State Legislature

UPDATED: District 6 Debate Debacle

l3wis 7Comments

UPDATE: Okay, sometimes Detroit gets it wrong. Sorry, I apologize to both candidates and the debate organizer. Apparently there is many conflicting schedules in the debates being proposed. Thanks for clarification from the debate organizer. I do stand by my words though about debating your opponent, and feel it is important. I also put this information out there for these reasons, to get the RIGHT story.

Otten and Schriever, Senate candidates for District 6

From a South DaCola foot soldier;

Lennox HS debate coach has been attempting to put together public debates between District 6 candidates.  He has set them up as two sessions; one, between the four House candidates and the other, between the two Senate candidates. One of the Senate candidates (Ernie Otten) is resisting this – wanting to have all 6 candidates at one time. The debate coordinator feels this would muddy the comparisons between candidates.  Rumor has it Otten has also been using conflict with high school sports season as a reason to reject various dates.

So why doesn’t Otten want a one-on-one with Schriever? If I was Otten I would leap at the opportunity to challenge my opponent one-on-one. Not only would you get more time to argue your case, you can clearly set yourself a part from your opponent. I wonder what Rich thinks of the whole matter?

SF City Council Sioux Falls

The AL Editorial Board seems to have trouble with math

l3wis 12Comments

“They didn’t provide us calculators in journalism school. (Argus Leader media screenshot)”

I’m no math wizard myself, but if the Argue Endorser’s ED Board thinks we can build an indoor pool for $6 million, they need to go take some finance courses at Colorado Tech;

That makes the aquatics center project, which is listed as a $6.7 million facility on the mayor’s budget, logical.

Actually, that is a typo, it is listed at $7.3 million on the mayor’s budget, but let’s not get worried over semantics just aquatics.

The ‘Actual’ cost of the indoor pool at Spellerberg hasn’t even been released to the public, but if you take into account that the Drake Springs indoor pool was supposed to cost $12 million, inflation and the fact that the Spellerberg pool is larger and more complicated, your looking at about $20 million for the facility on the low end.

As for the neighborhood coming together;

This time, it is nice to see citizen leadership, a healthy exchange of ideas and the promise to continue to listen.

Well, that isn’t what DaCola has been hearing. There is already a strong opposition group, and if the council and mayor plan to shove this through, you may see another election, which AL’s Publisher calls ‘fiasco’s’ (Watch this interview with councilor Erpenbach in which Beck called citizens voting on an indoor facility a fiasco.)

But let’s move onto other recreational facilities in Sioux Falls.

Indoor tennis facility
Project details: Seven-court indoor facility at the Sanford Sports Complex, with the potential to expand to eight courts.
Total estimated cost: $3 million
Private fundraising: $750,000 so far. The chamber-approved fundraising campaign begins in April.
Public funding: The 2013 city capital improvement plan budget includes $500,000, pending City Council approval next month.

Talk about a blatant conflict of interest on the mayor’s part! His wife is the president of the SF Tennis Association! It would be like me asking for the city to fund a Boston Terrier dog park if I were mayor. What a bunch of hogwash.

Either you support this stuff or not, go vote at argusleader.com;

Open Government SD Attorney General Secretary of State South Dakotans

Open Government in SD? LOL! (Guest Poster)

l3wis 2Comments

Just got done rereading Randall Beck’s open government committee article under Ellis’ byline in the Argue Endorser and it made me chuckle. We at South Dacola have been real interested in the open.sd.gov website lately. Who wrote this? Under whose guidance? With the results we see, why bother? It kind of reminds us of putting lipstick on a pig.

Was it worth it?

The reporting / contracting agency is responsible for up-loading their contracts and expenditures when and if they want to.  Just go look for a company, law firm, or medical firm you know is doing business with the state.

Try to find the contract and the terms.

How do these outfits get paid? And how many of these companies (individual owners) are donating to the same old yahoos getting elected to run our state every year?

Look for contracts – payments the Attorney General, the Secretary of State, Governor or any other office out of Pierre. You will be hard pressed to find anything out there.  So much for the phoniness of ‘open’ SD government.  With all the legislative hearings without contract questions, no-bid contracts, hidden contracts, Governor’s club arrangements and other special deals reported out of Pierre we at South Dacola want to be able to trust something out of Pierre. But you know what they say, “You can only get the shit so shiny when you polish a turd (Pierre).”

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