Mayor High Crimes

Mayor Veto’s recording meetings. Calls transparency a ‘slippery slope’

Yup, like a grumpy old man, our mayor of all he sees says, “stay away”. Keep off the grass. Wash behind your ears. Don’t park there. Shut up when I enter the room. Bow before me. I am in charge, do not question me. Like a President of 40 years ago, Yup, like a grumpy old man, our mayor of all he sees stay away. Keep off the grass. Wash behind your ears. Don’t park there. Shut up when I enter the room. Bow before me. I am in charge, do not question me or my authority.

We now have a Sioux Falls City Council able to question everything and does with regularity. There are things happening in city government the people want to see. The citizens have for quite a while. Due to the way our city charter is set up, we have little choice but accept the authoritarian “take or leave it” way of the leader.

His veto of the publication rules for Park and Recreation Board meetings is another slap in the face of all citizens. He is saying, “things are going well for me, keep out”. These fine citizens have done what Don Kearney and I want so leave them alone.

Nowhere in the discussion have we citizens said the board members have done anything wrong. We just want to be able to see their deliberations. Cameraman Bruce has been to several meetings and seen how it works. Like the other board meetings he has been to, not much happens there not controlled by the department “advisors”.

Maybe the January 24, 2017 veto decision by the mayor was more to protect the advisors than the members?

Mayor Huether uses the power of veto to finally prove once and for all he is vehemently against transparency in government

I have been beating this drum for 7 years. Huether is extremely anti-transparent, he has proven it time and time again. He used the power of the VETO pen today to prove it. He had a very weak argument that these committees are volunteers and didn’t sign up for this? First off, you do have to sign up to get on these boards and committees. You have to fill out an application, you have to submit a resume, then you have to be vetted not only by the mayor but the board itself. So there is a process. If you WANT to be on these boards, you have to do a little work to get there. And secondly, I only want honest and open people serving on these advisory boards, not secretive.

He also calls recording these meetings a ‘slippery slope’. It’s a slippery slope to prohibit recording board meetings.

Anybody who argues against recording these meetings, are what they are, fascists.

B-N-B & Too Late Todd censor Cameraman Bruce, to his amusement

Bruce tried to call in and converse with Hizzoner after the mayor sputtered his normal blather about the internets, facebooks and blogs ‘manipulating’ videos on B-N-B’s show this morning. After getting into a back and forth with Todd on the phone, Bruce just laughed at him. Todd didn’t want the conversation to spin in that direction. In other words, just let the mayor spew what he wants to without anyone holding him accountable. I guess it doesn’t really matter anyway, and why I don’t call in anymore, because Greg and Todd are NOT journalists, they are DJ’s that sell tranny repair and old folks apartments.

As I have argued about the ‘video manipulation’ I will agree with the mayor that we do add commentary to the videos (normally a scrawl across the top or bottom of the screen) but we have NEVER manipulated the video either visually and especially not audio. When the mayor or any other official says what they say, it’s all on them, we don’t do voice overs. MMM acts like we are the Sioux Falls version of Bad Lip Reading, not the case at all.

But what I found ironic is that while B-N-B was actually defending recording the parks board meetings in the name of transparency, Too Late Todd was censoring Bruce. Oh the irony of the conservative and the liberal running a radio show (they are neither BTW, just proud members of the ‘Suck Up’ party).

Mayor Mike has lunch with YPN

Bring a bag lunch and listen to Mayor Mike Huether talk about the things he has learned while he has been the leader of Sioux Falls. He will update us about what is happening in the city, his goals for his remaining time in office, and leave it open for some Q&A time so we can ask anything we want to know about the city’s latest developments!

Make sure to RSVP to save your spot at this great event!

I wonder if CityLink will be hauling their cameras to the event? Wonder what that will cost? Be curious to hear ‘What he learned’ It certainly hasn’t been open government.

Shut Up & Listen session (Jan 17, 2017)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JshxpO9V2k

Once again the mayor stretches the truth or just flat out lies about policies of the city. He didn’t disappoint once again.

I will first start off by saying that isn’t it amazing a film crew can follow the mayor around all over town for these sessions and press conferences and NOT once has his directors, the city council, himself or heck even citizens have questioned the cost. Why? Because we want transparency, and that is why I have never questioned it, so why should he question it when it comes to recording committee meetings? Because he is a hypocrite.

• On the topic of Paratransit, he quickly blames the council for not raising fees. Ironically the reason Paratransit costs us so much is because is poorly run with an out-dated dispatch system. We could probably make money on Paratransit if we just ran it more efficiently.

• He is already pushing the city of Sioux Falls to the 180K mark, his new line is ‘Almost 180,000 people’. Some have asked why he keeps pushing the population number and changes the population signs like he changes his underwear, that’s because our bond rating and borrowing power is based on the population number and the mayor doesn’t care if those people are working or not.

• Mike continued the same half-truth that the city hasn’t built any new administration buildings since 1935. I’m not going to list all the buildings the city has built for administration reasons since then, but If I had to guess it would be well over 20.

• He also claimed that the city council voted FOR the admin building (the second time around) and it passed because of the help of his veto. Huh? That doesn’t even make sense. Mike Huether is the ONLY person who decided to move forward on the administration building by the stroke of his veto pen, don’t let him tell you otherwise.

• He said he supports hiring more police. You can take that statement however you want.

• This session was recorded last Tuesday morning before the council meeting where they voted for gifting the Glory House city land. He was asked about how he would vote if he had to break a tie. He wouldn’t answer the question because he claimed he ‘just learned about it’ that morning and his directors ‘just learned about it’ last Thurday. I call BS on that. The council and Pat Starr have been discussing this with city administration since last October. If the mayor is AGAINST something he plays like he wasn’t informed. Even IF no one told him about it in October there have been several media stories about the potential of gifting the building since then. Play dumb and kill the messenger. Your games are getting old Mike.