What Needs to Be An Open Meeting

Let me just get right in front of this and say I know this is not directly discussing South Dakota. But as South Dakota doesn’t provide ANY such resources to understand the issue, I have to look elsewhere. And as every single state has Open Meeting Laws and they are incredibly similar, it’s quite easy to extrapolate from these other sources.

Of course, in order to see the similarities, you’d actually have to read the Open Meeting Laws, something it seems neither the Saddleback Road District Board has bothered with, even after almost a year of me and others urging them to do so, nor the county.

However, until the state takes it seriously and actually imposes fines or even jail time for the wanton abusers, the counties and local districts will continue to do as they wish. Seriously South Dakota, it’s been 20 years since you created the Open Meeting Commission, surely you can start imposing a fine. People who are perfectly comfortable with ignoring the rights of the people they purport to represent, will pay attention to nothing less.

This road district has known they were under investigation for many months, and rather than read the law and start abiding by it, they continued to have secret meetings and are now even ignoring open records laws.

I share this video for those of you who actually want to protect people’s rights.

The discussion on the Open Records Laws is interesting and something to think about. The texts and emails can be subpoenaed. There is a software program that can filter all texts for key words. I learned about it through the Fulton County Georgia circus where the request of Open Records toppled the DA’s office. Ms. Merchant didn’t ask her state office of hearing examiners to step in. She simply filed a lawsuit.

I was ignorant in my belief that the South Dakota Office of Hearing Examiners would take this seriously. I should have just filed a lawsuit. Live and learn. However, it’s not too late. We will just add it to the list. It would be a lot faster with legal help for procedure. Just throwin’ that out there if ya’ll know somebody.

I’m still talking to two lawyers right now, but I don;t think either one of them want to take on ALL of this.