Open Meetings Commission restarted by Attorney General Marty Jackley
PIERRE, S.D. — A newly refurbished and reinvigorated Open Meetings Commission delivered decisions at a recent meeting aimed at correcting local governments that had violated open meeting laws since they last met.
The Commission found violations in five of the six cases it considered during its first meeting in several years. The board, made up of state’s attorneys from across South Dakota, delivered five separate reprimands to four different government entities across the state that had illegally conducted business since the commission last met last met.
The Bennett County Board of Commissioners was the recipient of two of those infractions. Both complaints came from local constituents – the first involved a raise given to a law enforcement officer in July of 2021. Commissioners voted in an executive session that was not a part of the agenda to give a raise to that county employee.
In the second complaint, from February 2023, the Bennett County Commission failed to garner a second on a motion to enter into executive session, thus illegally doing so.
The Lincoln County Commission in eastern South Dakota, too, was the subject of ire.
On Nov. 29, 2023, a quorum of the county commission attended an invitation-only event hosted by Summit Carbon Solutions and NuGen Energy – a company planning to connect its ethanol plants to Summit’s carbon capture pipeline if it is constructed.
Wendi Hogan, the former chair of the county planning and zoning commission who filed the complaint, alleged that the commission broke state law by not providing notice of an event where a quorum of commissioners would be present.
The Piedmont Board of Trustees was deemed to have acted illegally for failing to give proper notice of a meeting in 2023.
The North Sioux City Council did the same on several occasions over a number of years, starting in 2021.
