Open Government

The City Council giveth and the City Council taketh away

l3wis January 27, 2026 0Comments

Yes, that is councilor Spellerberg and his hot wings show

So in between eating hot wings and hiding from ethical disclosures the Sioux Falls city council decided they were going to fix our transparency problem at committee and board meetings by making more rules instead of less;

(g) Public input shall be received at each City Council budget hearing and at all informational,
committee, task force, joint, and working session meetings that are open to the public. Each
meeting agenda shall include an item labeled “Public Input.” Each speaker shall be permitted to
speak for up to three (3) minutes. A minimum of fifteen (15) minutes shall be allotted for public
input at each meeting. If additional speakers are present and time permits, the public input period
may be extended at the discretion of the City Council Chair or the City Council. All provisions of
this section shall apply to City Council budget hearings and to all informational, committee, task
force, joint, and working session meetings, except to the extent such provisions conflict with this
subsection

So in other words, a violation of FREE speech rights. While a body CAN limit the time a speaker has, it really can’t put a time limit on the amount of speakers. If 20 constituents show up to talk about the same agenda item, you have to listen to them and afford them their free speech rights.

Each agenda will include a time for public input at the start of the meeting. Prior to the start of public input, the presiding officer will announce that public input can be provided on any agenda items and any other topics of interest to the person addressing the city agency, authority, board, committee, or commission. Notwithstanding the previous sentence, if public input is permitted on each agenda item, the city agency, authority, board, committee, or commission is not required to receive public input during an initial public input period and may instead receive general public comment at the conclusion of the meeting.

This is also a violation of the 1st Amendment. If public input time is afforded in the meeting, a constituent can talk about anything that occurred in that meeting, even previous agenda items. This is a ridiculous rule they continue to push, but it is unconstitutional and you don’t have to follow it if they threaten you in a meeting. I just simply say, ‘You are violating my 1st Amendment rights.’ and that usually gets them to shut up.

As you can see, they are making all these changes without consulting with the public. I have said the smartest thing they could do was create a committee by resolution to make transparency recommendations to the council after having several public meetings on the topic. When you make supposed ‘civic engagement’ recommendations, you should engage the public.

Speaking of transparency, look at how many FOIA requests the city has rejected. Also, you must make your requests thru the SFPD. This is incorrect, all FOIA requests should be emailed to the mayor, since he is the top city administrator. I also suggest you CC the city attorney and city clerk.

If we want transparency in city government we are going to have to get it done ourselves. Once we get closer to the city election and I have a better understanding of who will serve on the next council, I will be urging them to put together an open government task force compiled of residents, city employees and city councilors and kick this closed government in the fanny once and for all.

I will also urge the next mayor to hire a director level public information officer to manage open government.

Let’s work on Transparency, Survey Says?

l3wis January 18, 2026 3Comments

Yeah, I know, you can’t make this crap up (Item #7);

It appears the city council is hiring the same company (Polco) who did the National Community Survey to do a survey about government engagement. Council was already told what they need to work on;

For the record, this may be just a back payment for the survey and other consulting work, but that is usually paid in advance, so it appears they are doing another survey to figure out why the first survey turned out so bad. This is insanity. You need to have a public forum at the convention center and have constituents present their open government ideas to your FACE! You are so scared of the general public you have to blow $30K on another survey so you don’t have to interact with the public. Do you even have an inkling on how open government works? Apparently not.

I wonder if the comments will be deleted from this survey also?

You also ONLY have a month to put OPEN GOVERNMENT transparency on the June ballot. That would be my suggestion, let the voters decide how transparent their government needs to be by putting a package of open government ordinances on the general ballot. But that would have taken planning and having public forums on it starting this past summer. They were to busy trying to build a fence around Dudley.

Oh, and I find it funny the city is spending $500K on the Pavilion’s garage, and subsidizes the Lodge restaurant at the ice ribbon to the tune of $300K a year (also ran by the Pavilion). Did you also know the Pavilion offers NO free programming. Zilch! The art museum WAS free, but Mr. Greedy who runs the Pavilion broke that promise and started charging us. IMO, the subsidies to the Pavilion need to end since there is ZERO public benefit without purchasing a ticket. And even though it is a city owned building, upgrades and maintenance should be paid for by the Pavilion, and there should be a lease agreement.

But we need to cut other subsidies;

I would agree with the city that a review of services needed to be conducted with NGO’s receiving city funds, but why weren’t we doing this all along? Oh that’s right, because our elected leaders and city management are incompetent. I also think the city should do zero based budgeting. In other words, the city should start each department with $0 at the beginning of the budgeting process and justify their budget and expenditures. Right now, they just tack a percentage onto last year’s budget and march forward. It is lazy and it costs taxpayers probably over $100 million a year+ in unneeded expenditures and budgeting. We have a full-time finance department, they should be working on this all year long and getting rid of waste!

I agree with Mike Z, that the city council needs to do a full investigation and forensic audit of every single city department if they really want to get unnecessary spending under control.

I’m sure they’ll take another survey before making that decision though.