By Denise Ross

Open government is a hot topic this year.

I am a self-identified open government advocate, but at Saturday’s crackerbarrel in Rapid City, two lawmakers described two open government bills as a conflict between common sense and the battle cry of open government. I cannot argue with them.

Rep. Mark Kirkeby, R-Rapid City, noted that under current state law, a majority of the local school board, city council or county commission cannot legally show their faces at the crackerbarrel meetings.

They could not attend a forum such as this.

Senate Bill 199 seeks to change that, so that members of the school board, for example, could attend crackerbarrels without the worry of violating the state’s open meeting’s law. Technically, they could do so now if they followed all the rules of publishing an agenda ahead of time.

While it’s possible that two government bodies could conspire to use SB199 as a way to meet without following the spirit of the law, that would be both cumbersome and quickly protested by the citizenry and media. (And, as a reporter, that’s a story I would love to cover.)

So, I’m with Kirkeby on SB199.

Next is House Bill 1244 -An act to require the county planning and zoning commission to publish certain minutes - which is far more nuanced an issue than it might appear at first blush.

Rep. Gordon Howie, R-Rapid City, got downright fiesty when he called HB1244 “stupid.” His objection rests largely with the expense HB1244 would have placed on counties. (HB1244 died in the House Local Government Committee.)

It’s easy to put a smiley face on a bad bill. … It’s a stupid idea. Open government is not stupid, but some of the bills called open government …

Under current state law, county commissions are required to publish their minutes in designated “legal” newspapers, for which the newspapers charge the commissions and other units of local government for the space.

No such requirement is made of planning and zoning commissions or other similar boards that meet publicly as an extension or sub-unit of the county commission. However, the minutes of these sub-units are typically made available in printed form at county offices and also often online.

Pennington County officials estimate HB1244 would have cost them $40,000 per year, assuming they wouldn’t pare back their minutes to the bare minimum of motions and votes, as they have already done with regular county commission minutes to save space in the newspaper, and by extension, money. (The planning commission minutes, available upon request, include the discussion and arguments made.)

No one who testified against HB1244 objected to making the minutes publicly available or even to publishing them in the newspaper. They objected to paying for the privilege of doing so. One county official said that if the newspaper would publish the minutes free of charge, the county would send the minutes over.

Here’s the rub for newspaper folks - and this will surely get me in hot water with some of my colleagues who publish on the printed page - the harder they hold onto the notion that local units of government must pay them to publish minutes in the dead-tree version of their publication, the more they themselves will be seen as standing in the way of more open government.

With the Internet now ubiquitous, the argument that publishing minutes in a newspaper equates to championing the public’s right to know gets more and more tenuous. And when government officials say they’d gladly have the minutes published if there were no expense involved, that is the sound of the bells tolling for the “legals,” as they’re known amongst newspaper types.  

Soon, this will become a discussion about government subsidies.

Beyond that - and Rep. Tim Rounds, R-Pierre, asked this very question in committee - nothing is stopping newspapers from sending reporters to the meetings and covering them any way they see fit.

No matter the skill level of any given reporter, that would always be my preferred method of dispatch for government proceedings over a government employee, whose livliehood is dependent on the very people he or she is “covering.” (Insert fox/henhouse metaphor here.)

I would be all for a law that requires the publishing of minutes on the government’s own website or anywhere else that’s virtually free. (Even better, the audio archives of meetings and hearings conducted by the Legislature is a wonder, a gem, a model for others to follow.) I’d even be for requiring governments to mail minutes to those who requested that. 

After listening to the hearing - via audio archive, it’s apparent that county officials and legislators would be just fine with that, too.

I can’t agree with Howie that HB1244 was “stupid;” I just think it’s way behind its time.

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