Dean Karsky

Chamber: Calling out Karsky’s conflict of interest is laughable, but nobody is laughing

Well got to hand it to the Chamber, they were quick to respond to me, in a very nice NON public passive aggressive way, (which I expected) with an email story to their members;

During the Council’s public input session, the Council’s constant commentator Scott Ehrisman maintained that Councilor Dean Karsky should recuse himself from any Council agenda item that includes any member of the Sioux Falls Area Chamber of Commerce since he is now a Board member. As is typical, councilors do not respond to the public input sessions.  It seems, however, we should.

Yes, the councilors don’t respond because they don’t give a rat’s ass what a citizen has to say, just the big wheels in town, you know, like Chamber Members. So instead of Karsky or a city attorney responding in a official public meeting, which would have been the appropriate place to do so, the Chicken Little Chamber does it in an email to their members. You must be so proud of their defense Dean. Did you help them type the email?

The comments seem to show an incredible lack of understanding of the nature and role of citizen-composed legislative bodies that are so vital to our state’s history and current function.  Conflicts of interest are inherent in the way we do business, but a conflict is not synonymous with impropriety. The state constitution deals with the issue in Article 3 Section 12 where it prohibits state legislators from having an interest in any contract with the state authorized by any law passed during their term. That makes sense; you can’t authorize a contract or appropriate money for your own gain.  However, in our legislature, farmers vote on ag issues; teachers vote on educational issues; bankers vote on banking issues; and so on. We expect them to and we have the choice to remove them if they abuse their power.

Oh, so when the city charter doesn’t fit your loophole rule book, you run to state law. This is what the city charter says about the issue; Section 35.053 CONFLICTS OF INTEREST; CITY COUNCIL MEMBERS.

Typically, conflict of interest issues rise to the level of impropriety when a public official uses his or her office for personal gain or benefit. Councilor Karsky has noted that he would be willing to recuse himself from votes that affect the Chamber specifically. While a noble thing to do, that’s probably not even necessary. But, to maintain that an improper conflict of interest exists whenever a Chamber member has an issue before the Council and Councilor Karsky votes on it is not just a stretch, it’s somewhat laughable.

The only thing that is laughable is how Dean’s position on the Chamber Board is defended, in an email from the Chamber, not from the city attorney’s office. Secondly, this is more about ethical behavior not if what Dean is doing is legal or not, it is perfectly legal in South Dakota to be unethical. We expect our public officials to have integrity, by serving on both boards, it shows Karsky lacks integrity and the ethics to serve the public. I would much rather he resigned from the city council, the Chamber can have him. But if you do keep him on the board, you should probably try to spell his name correctly. Heck you figured out how to spell mine.

Farmers Insurance Group/Karksy Agency

SF City Council Chair & Chamber Board Member goes back on his promise to the Ethics Commission

karsky-and-hutch-goats

It’s okay to lie about being ethical, because I own goats.

Last night I handed out the below verbage during public testimony. It was concerning Dean Karsky and his dual membership to the city council and Chamber board of directors. Dean did not recuse himself from voting on any of the items, he just sat there. He didn’t even ask a city attorney (the main one was absent) if he should recuse himself. Apparently Dean just lied to the Ethics Commission about recusing himself from voting on Chamber related items.

Tuesday November 4, 2014

Recently Council Chair Dean Karsky attended an Ethics Commission meeting to ask them if it was okay for him to serve on the Sioux Falls Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors. They said it would be okay because Dean proposed he would ‘recuse’ himself from voting on any agenda items that are directly related with the Sioux Falls Chamber of Commerce. The Ethics Commission agreed with Dean’s proposal.

Tonight I submit to you several agenda items that Council Chair & Chamber Board of Directors Member Dean Karsky should recuse himself from due to conflicts of interest with Members of the Sioux Falls Chamber of Commerce. By voting to allow Chamber members to do business with the city you could assume a conflict of interest because Councilor Karsky could give an unfair advantage to Chamber members versus non-members.

The concerning items are as follows;

Item 1) Approval of contracts, several Chamber Members are getting contract approvals with the city. They include; Infrastructure Design Group, Inc., Sayre Associates, Inc., Vision Video Interactive, LLC, Stockwell Engineers, Inc., Short-Elliott-Hendrickson, Inc., Soukup Construction, Inc., Thompson Electric Company, Friessen Construction Co., Inc., and several other snowplow contractors.

Item 2) Change Orders. Chamber Members include; First Rate Excavate, Inc., Beck & Hofer Construction, Inc., Krier & Blain, Inc.

Items 3-8) Fuel contracts, Chamber Member, Howes Oil

Item 10) Liquor Retail License renewal, several businesses are Chamber Members

Items 11-13) Malt Beverage transfers, Chamber Member, Staybridge Suites

Item 17) One day wine license, Chamber Member, Active Generations

Item 18) One day liquor license, Chamber Member, Avera

Item 28) Water tank lease agreement, Chamber members, Soukup Construction, Sioux Falls Two-Way Radio

 

All other items concern internal city business, change in ordinances or re-zone housekeeping, and don’t present a conflict for Council Chair and Chamber Board of Directors member Dean Karsky.

Looks like SF City Council Chair Dean Karsky is going to be recusing himself from A LOT of votes.

I see Dean pulled the trigger and got a seat on the Sioux Falls Chamber of Commerce Board of the Directors (Notice he has doesn’t mention in his title that he is city council chair). Since the SF Ethics Commission Kangaroo Kourt cleared Karsky of any unethical behavior (even though it clearly is) he decided to sit on this conflicting board. Karsky promised the ethics commission (and the citizens of Sioux Falls) he would recuse himself from voting on any council items that have anything to do with Chamber business. It will be interesting to watch the meetings with Dean spending most of his time in the overflow room.

chamber-board

The Villagers have spoken already, LEAVE PUBLIC INPUT ALONE

A friend recently sent some questions to the entire Sioux Falls city council about some different topics, one of them was about the public ‘engaging’ the council during public input (and how it isn’t happening). Council Chair, Dean Karsky responded in this manner;

I have been toying with the idea of moving the public input to the Informational Meeting as it would allow for more interaction with the Council and possibly engage the public more with us.  Still working on the pro’s and con’s of doing so, input on the matter is welcome.

Here is my input Dean, LEAVE IT AS IS!

There is absolutely no reason why the council can’t ‘engage’ the public during public input at the city council meetings. During the Munson administration, the council interacted all the time with the public.

If this is a matter of ‘time’ I should remind the council that they are getting PAID to attend the meetings, and the public, which comes on their own time to testify, pays those wages. If they don’t like hearing public input, or they think the meetings are to long, or they don’t get paid enough, then please, resign. There is nothing more annoying then a politician running for office then complaining about their duties once they get elected. Then why did you run?

Lastly, I do partially agree with public input at the informational. In fact several of the citizen advocates in the community have discussed that it would be nice to have public input at the informational. The problem with only limiting it to the informational is timing. The meeting is at 4 PM when many people cannot attend because of work conflicts. By all means, have public input at the informational, but also keep it at 7 PM to so working folks can testify.

Once again, the council is out of touch with the public on this one, just like snowgates, they seem to want to do the opposite of what the public wants for their convenience. Their convenience is of little importance to good government, the public’s convenience is.

SF City Council Informational Meeting 10/7/12

So now Dean just proposes ordinances without talking to the rest of the council, just the homebuilders association?

While this is a great debate to have, I think the issue isn’t the building permits,

1) There was a bad hailstorm

2) Building services has one speed (very slow) and can’t keep up

3) Dean is trying to look important (again)

At the end of the day, this will probably fail, building services and contractors will catch up, and the head of the department can go back to having a beer at Monk’s at 5:05 each weekday.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJGBR1O4lSg[/youtube]