I got an up close experience a few months ago with how big money corrupts local elections. Randy Dobberpuhl who placed 2nd in the school board election was out spent over 6-1 by Cynthia Mickelson who won the seat. The other two candidate who spent nothing or very little were creamed.

The rumored proposed amendment by Sioux Falls city councilors Rolfing and Erpenbach to garner 51% of the vote in a general election for city council or go to a runoff is a ruse to eliminate the grassroots candidates that don’t have deep pockets.

What is astonishing is that just less than two years ago, Mayor Huether, in a press conference with former city councilor Kenny Anderson Jr., he was begging for people to run for city council;

“I would like to encourage our citizens to get involved in public service. It will make a wonderful difference for our town,” says Mayor Mike Huether.

At the time it seemed MMM was concerned there would not be any candidates for council. We should be doing everything possible to make it easier for regular people to run for office instead of making it more expensive not only for the candidates but for the taxpayers. If we want to make real change, the city needs to do a better job of educating people about upcoming elections instead of playing this game with money.

I’m hoping Kenny Anderson and Randy Dobberpuhl will attend this Tuesday’s council meeting to speak out against the money grab, and all other candidates considering a run this Spring.

If you look at Item #50, it seems harmless enough. They are changing some language pertaining to elections;

Notice there is NO change to the 34% threshold. So why not? With all the talk about councilors Rolfing and Erpenbach changing this, why wasn’t it changed in this 1st Reading?

Because the plan that is rumored they are going to use is a procedural trick. Basically they will wait for the 1st reading to pass, and when it comes up for a second reading they will offer and amendment to the 34% threshold to 51%.

Why would they do that? Because public testimony would be closed before amendments would be offered.

I am still hoping that with the media coverage of this proposed change will get them to back off on the amendment. I guess we will all have to wait and see just how brazen they want to get with our election rules.

Yeah, worked for me, but I still want to ruin it for everyone else.

The rumors I am hearing from my Carnegie Hall moles is that this set of councilors want to change the 34% threshold to be elected to a council seat in a general election to a 51% threshold like the mayor. Not sure where this is even coming from, considering myself, or even other councilors, or the media have never thought there was a problem with the current threshold. In fact, maybe the better thing to change is to have the mayoral percentage match the council’s.

Before I get into the multiple arguments against this, let’s face it, this was cooked up by the mayor to make it harder for grassroots candidates like Stehly, Starr and Nietzert to run for office. Let’s say you win in the general but only get 40% of the vote and 2nd place has deeper pockets than you, guess who will probably win? This is clearly an elitist move, the public is certainly not that naive to think otherwise.

But let’s throw a little common sense behind this;

• A runoff election in NON-mayoral election years could cost taxpayers an extra $80K.

• It is already difficult enough to get people out to vote during a general muni election, think about getting them to come back 2-3 weeks later for a run-off.

• The state legislature, school board and the county commission all go by top vote getters.

• Ironically the two that are proposing this change are out the door this Spring and benefitted from the current set of rules. Rolfing won his first term in 2010 with 45.34% of the vote and Erpenbach won her first term in 2010 with 48.96% of the vote. If you look at other races since the 2000 municipal election, you will see that 7 other councilors won by receiving less than 51% of the vote. (DOC: runoffs)

Like I said, this is a ploy to keep the working class grass roots candidates down and the elitists with deep pockets or donors with deep pockets on the rubberstamp council.

Hopefully Rolfing and Erpenbach will have a change of heart and pull this ridiculous measure from future agendas, or they can face the music.

As you can see, I tested the waters last night to see if Rex Rolfing would have a cow about me wearing a bandana during public input, he didn’t pout and walk out and didn’t say a word. I did give him a show later in the meeting by showing him how I can balance a water bottle on my head while he was staring at me sitting in the back row 🙂

Oh Rex, why do we enjoy watching you try to be the leader?

He has only been on the council for 7 years and almost 2 years in leadership, we should give him a break at knowing these things? Right?

We have been accused of making snippets so it gave Cameraman Bruce an idea, “Why not piece together snippet of the wise decisions and comments Rex Rolfing made during the meeting?” Well, here it is, 16 minutes of precedent setting activity while Mayor Mike was missing for the Tuesday, February 21, 2017 Sioux Falls City Council meeting.

Council members asked questions during input, invited citizens to come forward to make comments and we saw sever Points of Order called to get the meeting back on track.

Robert’s Rules in action, first time we are able to watch and enjoy the mess. Should we buy the Robert’s Rules for Dummys to keep up”

Why does everything fall apart when you least expect it? We now have Council members who are exercising their right to speak up. Enjoy as we did.