South DaCola

Editorial Cartoonist from South Dakota

February 2017

SF City Council Sioux Falls

UPDATE: Sioux Falls City Council Meetings TONIGHT (Monday)

l3wis 7Comments

UPDATE: The City Council didn’t get the 6 votes needed to overturn the Mayor’s VETO on transparency. The Patsy Three; Rolfing, Kiley and Erpenbach voted with mayor, but not before some bizarre public input from parks board members about being scared of cameras. But I will applaud councilors for letting the mayor and the Patsy 3 have it before the vote. Especially Councilor Neitzert who called the VETO indefensible and Erickson saying it was a frivolous use of the VETO pen.

The city council had a change of scheduling due to visiting the legislature tomorrow.

But they still have a busy agenda. During the informational, they will be briefed on Police Union wage negotiations, re-districting, downtown parking ramp and legislative update. It all must be pretty top secret, because there is only supporting documents in SIRE about re-districting. You know, that whole ‘transparency being a slippery slope’ thingy.

Speaking of slippery slopes, they decided to NOT livestream and record the Fiscal Committee, even though they will all be present in Carnegie for the meeting anyway after the informational. They are calling it a ‘work session’. Guess what, that is what a committee meeting is anyway, a council work session. Not sure why we can’t record a meeting about giving money to a non-profit?

During the City Council meeting they will take up the mayor’s veto on recording meeting. Don’t expect the vote to change. The Patsy Three will probably vote with the mayor upholding his idiotic VETO against open government. Pretty scary that out of 8 city councilors 3 of them are for closed and secretive government. Passing the recording ordinance should have been a slam dunk.

Sioux Falls State Funding State Legislature

Legislative Coffee, Feb 4, 2017, Sioux Falls

l3wis 4Comments

Look for the pauses, blank looks, dumb stares and empty comments at the first 2017 Legislative Coffee in Sioux Falls on February 4 at the Ramada Inn. Wow, some of the answers to good questions were less than stellar. Granted it was less than 24 hours since the close of bill submission but why does everyone have to go to their computers to even know what had been submitted?

The next coffee is in one week, let’s see how quick the next group is when answering questions. This Sioux Falls area group hails from Districts 6, 9 and 11, all Republicans.

District 6 attendees: Isaac Latterell, Herman Otten, Ernie Otten
District 9 attendees: Michael Clark, Wayne Steinhauer
District 11 attendees: Chris Karr, Jim Stalzer, Mark Willadsen

IM 22 Isaac Latterell State Funding State Legislature

The Wisdom(?) of Isaac Latterell

l3wis 4Comments

Oh Isaak says some funny things sometimes or is it always? We were looking forward to a boring SD Legislative cracker barrel to finish up when we finally got our morsel of funny. Rep Isaac Latterell didn’t disappoint us. The end is always near when a starry-eyed follower of something decides to drive home a point about non-believers.

IM22 and the ethics of South Dakota are a hot topic this year. Somehow the legislative players are always right and never hoodwinked by power players, only the majority of South Dakota voters. In 2016 an out of state ethics group with an idea decided to follow the example of other out of state no-ethics groups to bring a measure for us to vote on. South Dakota voters thought about the shenanigans of the powerful and decided IM22 was better than the nothing we had.

Isaac decided to get the crowd going home on a boisterous high by calling out the voters as uneducated? Uninformed? Stupid for using an idea from an east coast group? What about being hoodwink attempt by the Georgia high interest credit group? How about the expensive and worrisome west coast amendment set to destroy our rights called Marsy’s law?

There is a reason South Dakota ranks so low in ethics laws, because of the way Isaac was talking. Oh brother…

Ethics Open Government Open Meetings SF City Council Sioux Falls State Funding State Legislature

Government Secrecy in closed settlements serves no one

l3wis 1Comments

Ellis says something I try to bang in people’s heads all the time, it’s your money, you are the boss;

Put aside the corruption issue. It’s a matter of good government. And good government is about understanding who the boss is. And the boss is you, the taxpayer.

YOU pay the money that gets secretly negotiated away in these confidential settlements to who knows who for who knows what. It’s YOU, the taxpayer, who pays the salaries of the public officials who negotiated the confidential settlements. They work for YOU, not the other way around. And besides the potential for abuse, confidential settlements also allow government officials to hide their incompetence from you, the employer. What if the government is negligent in some matter? They can hide it from the taxpayer with a confidential settlement.

You can bet that when Jamison’s bill gets its hearing, the defenders of this practice will argue that confidential settlements give local governments leverage to negotiate better deals. That they save taxpayer money.

They can say it all they want. But you know what they can’t do? Prove it.

That has been my argument for ages. They tell us it must be secret, but they can’t tell us why. Because if they did, a lot of them would be in jail.

Developers Development Downtown Sioux Falls Sioux Falls

Maybe we should heed Legacy CEO’s own words in choosing them for the parking ramp project

l3wis 12Comments

Sometimes people present the obvious to us without realizing it. Many people in the community are concerned about Legacy being chosen to build a publicly funded parking ramp DT after their involvement with the Copper Lounge building collapse. Maybe Mr. Drake has a solution;

“I’m not going to address any questions about that site and the events that have taken place,” Drake said. “It’s an ongoing investigation, and until all the facts come out and are determined, we don’t feel like it’s prudent to make additional assumptions at any point there.”

I agree 100%. And until assumptions are turned into facts or falsehoods, we should hold off determining you are the correct choice for the project. I encourage the city council to hold the brakes on this project until the results of the investigation have been presented, or pick another contractor.

« Previous Page — Next Page »

You Missed

1st Amendment Downtown Sioux Falls Elections SF City Council Sioux Falls Vernon Brown

UPDATE: The more things change, the more they stay the same

1st Amendment Developers Development SF City Council Sioux Falls

UPDATE II: Sioux Falls City Councilor could be facing ethics violations after tonight’s vote on Tre Ministries project

1st Amendment Developers Development Planning Commission religion SF City Council SFPD Sioux Falls

UPDATE: City Council Agenda (Dec 2-3)

1st Amendment Sioux Falls snow removal Snowgates Uncategorized

Seems we are a we bit behind on snow plowing