Inaugural Balls January 8: Black Tie and Kazoo?

The tickets for Governor-Elect Dennis Daugaard's balls are $25 a pop. Not bad for hanging out with swanky people and live music.

For a different kind of balls, you can squeeze into the Capitol Rotunda for free at noon on January 8 to watch Dusty Johnson take an oath that we all know he will break. I wonder if we can bring kazoos.

Local Unemployment Down Again: Pierre Area Labor Market TIghtest

The good news: Lake County's unemployment rate dropped another half-percentage point in September to 5.8%. 35 more people jumped into the labor force, but we added 65 new jobs. Not bad!

The bad news: we're still well above Lake County's historical (since 1990) average unemployment of 3.3%. And statewide, the unemployment rate has dropped to 4.4%, a rate the rest of the country would envy and that some economists would argue is unnaturally and dangerously low. (A favored economist of our President felt otherwise.)

Our neighbors in Brookings continue to be the labor leaders in the surrounding seven-county area:

Area	LaborForce	Employment	Unemployment	Rate
Brookings County	19,135	18,530	605	3.20%
McCook County	2,830	2,705	125	4.50%
Minnehaha County	101,350	96,580	4,770	4.70%
Kingsbury County	2,900	2,755	145	5.10%
Miner County	1,250	1,180	70	5.70%
Lake County	6,810	6,415	395	5.80%
Moody County	4,000	3,755	245	6.10%

Source: South Dakota Department of Labor

Stanley County is the current employment champ, with all but 2.1% of its workforce on the job. Among our major metropolitan areas, Pierre is best worker's market, with 2.6% unemployment.

Highest unemployment: Buffalo, Shannon, and Dewey counties. Watertown remains the toughest big town in which to find work, with unemployment at 6.5% (a half-point drop from August).

Blog-MSM Synergy: Pierre Paper Builds Local Story from Madville Times Post

Back at you, David!

Pierre Capital Journal political reporter and blogger David Montgomery isn't afraid to acknowledge that he gets good story ideas from the blogs. Today he tips his hat toward my article last week on the patterns of commuter income flow in South Dakota. Montgomery found the Bureau of Economic Analysis data I discussed so interesting that he whipped up a big story for his paper (not the blog, but the news that pays his rent!) focusing on what those data say about his neck of the prairie around Pierre.

Blogs don't exist solely to compete with the mainstream media. We can work together, putting more eyes on more problems, sharing and expanding ideas, and building stories and understanding together.

David, you're welcome, and thank you for the acknowledgment!

Curb-Gutter Assessments Unconstitutional; Sidewalks Next?

Dakota War College provides plentiful ponder fodder this morning. Mr. Powers points toward a KCCR story (which dang it, those radio guys haven't learned to permalink yet! Memo to management: Fix it! and see also the CapJournal coverage) which says that Circuit Judge Kathleen Trandahl ruled last week that the city of Pierre violated the U.S. and state constitutions by imposing special assessments for curb and gutter work. The court found that "Evidence showed conclusively that replacing curb and gutter provided no physical, material or quantifiable special benefits to the property but did provide significant benefits to the city and community as a whole." The special assessments were therefore a taking of private property without just compensation or due process.

Hear hear for the Fifth Amendment! West River landowners, take note: when TransCanada comes knocking on your door with backhoes and condemnation papers, file your suit in Judge Trandahl's court if you can.

So I wonder: are sidewalks next? I've previously suggested that perhaps sidewalks should be built with municipal funds rather than saddling homeowners with the entire cost. We need sidewalks just like we need curb and gutter, but homeowners give up valuable turf for a public good. And unlike with curb and gutter, homeowners (at least here in Madison) are expected to handle hiring a contractor or installing the sidewalk themselves.

Judge Trandahl's ruling, if it withstands possible appeal, could result in thousands of dollars of refunds for 55–60 Pierre residents who paid the special assessment. Hmmm... might the court's reasoning here form the basis for Madison residents to sue the city for a refund on the work they've done to install sidewalks at the city's behest?

Pierre Implements Performance Measures on Economic Development Corporation

I was reading the Pierre Capitol Journal to learn more about our capital city's economic development efforts when I came across this interesting note:

Tuesday, Jim Protexter, PEDCO executive director, went before the city commission to give the first quarterly update on the organization’s performance measures agreed upon by the city commission and PEDCO....

The measures and quarterly updates before the commission are part of a financing agreement struck between the city and PEDCO, the Convention and Visitor’s Bureau and River Cities Transit to reward work with financing.

“It’s a good guiding post as we go day to day,” said Protexter. “I’ll go a week and not even think about these things because something falls in our lap we absolutely have to deal with. But then get back on track with what is important to the commission and the community ultimately. It’s a nice pattern we can fall back on” [Jeff Bunn, "Jobs Remain for PEDCO," Pierre Capitol Journal, 2009.04.02].

Performance measures for the local economic development corporation, accountability for the local tax dollars that support it... what a novel concept! Does Madison have anything like that?

Of course, if I were PEDCO's exec Jim Protexter, I wouldn't mind having to answer to the city, not when I could point to coups like landing Eagle Creek Software, which Pierre lured to town, winning 49 jobs so far, 150 more to come, with starting salaries of $36,000.

Pierre City Commission Prefers Closed Government

KELO notes a story that the venerable Mr. Powers highlighted last week: the Pierre City Commission is keeping secret the names of people who have applied to fill a vacancy on that board. The commission's excuse: filling a commission vacancy is a "personnel issue."

Mr. Powers decries this thin excuse for shutting out citizens from public decisions, as do I. However, I note that we've had precedent for such closed-door actions here in Lake County. Last year's candidate search for the empty seat on the Madison Central School Board drew five applicants: the district did conduct public interviews of the two finalists, but it never made public the names of the other three candidates who sought consideration (I was one; I still haven't learned the other two). Last fall, the Lake County Commission filled a vacancy with a lightning appointment of the fourth-place finisher in the preceding Republican primary, skipping the public application process in conducted on two previous occasions.

Even my own public office, my seat on the Lake Herman Sanitary District, was filled in without any public discussion. Of course, when Keith Roskens and Larry Dirks appointed me to the seat Roskens was vacating in 2006, the action was cloaked less in secrecy than in apathy—in 30 years, we're never fielded a contested slate of candidates, and for four of the last five years, we've operated with an empty third seat. (What, no one wants to get together a couple times a year to talk about septic tanks?)

If government action pertaining to people holding elected office were just "personnel issues," then the State Senate's hearings against Senator Dan Sutton in 2007 should have been private.

The folks applying for the vacancy on the Pierre city commission understand they're not just applying for a job. They're seeking the privilege of speaking for their fellow citizens. The public deserves to know the names of those applicants and hear every bit of the discussion commissioners have in choosing the next commissioner.

Pierre Sports Broadcast Rights: School Board Appoints Self to FCC?

PP and the Pierre Capital Journal note the controversy in Pierre, where the school district is getting ready to take local radio station KCCR to court to stop them from broadcasting Pierre Governors and Lady Govs sporting events. Last year the Pierre School District asked local stations for proposals to broadcast its athletic. Dakota Radio Group, owner of KGFX Radio, beat out KCCR, with an offer of $40,000 for five years of exclusive broadcast rights. KCCR made no proposal for exclusive rights.

Since then, KCCR has changed ownership, and the new owners, Riverfront Broadcasting, contend they are free to broadcast out-of-town games. WNAX can surely broadcast a Govs-Bucks game when the Pierre team comes to Yankton, so why not KCCR... or so goes the argument.

And I'm liking that argument. Since when are the airwaves, a public resource regulated by the Federal Communications Commission, a commodity any local public body can control and sell? And since when can a local school board assume control over media reporting of public events supported by taxpayers?

A couple hypotheticals for your amusement:

• Suppose my Uncle Dale wanted to get the play-by-play of a Govs game in Brookings and asked me to drive over and report on the game for him. I buy my ticket, sit in the stands, and call on my cell phone to give him play-by-play throughout the game. Do the Pierre School District and Dakota Radio Group sic their lawyers on me?
• What if I drive out to Pierre to see my Uncle Dale, we go to a Govs game in town, and I decide to live-blog the game—more lawyers?

The idea that the school board—any school board—owns the airwaves just isn't making sense to me this morning. The school board just isn't in a position to determine that First Amendment press rights are available only to the highest bidder. Stick with it, KCCR! Not that I'd wish a lawsuit on anyone, but I look forward to getting some legal clarification on this issue from the courts.