There are significant concerns about government transparency, whether it is Governor Noem authorizing a payment from the Future Fund to the State Department of Game, Fish, and Parks to pay for a shooting range or her failure to disclose personal charges on the state credit card.
To Governor Noem’s credit, she did make parts of the budget easier to access. In fact, we can see broad parts of the annual budget with openSD.
However, is still very time consuming (requires a lot of manual work) to tie budget expenditures to specific departments and contractors. This specific expenditure information is important because people want to know if there is a connection between campaign contributions and contracts. For example, it would be interesting to know how much Sanford and Avera make on prison contracts, which contractors have the largest percentage of the highway projects, and who has been awarded the food service and maintenance contracts at our universities.
It would also be very helpful if the campaign finance reports included search capabilities and required complete disclosures. For example, entries like “consultants” should have more detail, so people can research the financial ties of a candidate/organization.
Also, it is almost impossible to find details about foreign labor. Since foreign workers appear to be creating downward wage pressure, pushing people into poverty, and increasing the tax load for citizens, complete details on foreign workers should be published monthly. That detail should include the company that is employing the workers, the company address, the wage/salary of each foreign worker, the length of time that foreign worker has been employed at the company, the number of family members that are in South Dakota with the worker, and the number of family members that are attending public schools. This information should be publicly available on the state labor website.
It would also be helpful if our election process was more transparent and counties were not hiring lawyers to keep information from citizens. If vote tallying machines are going to be used, it is imperative that there are random hand count verifications during the tallying process. While there are some people that suggest this is an unnecessary step, it is very easy to alter computer code (via memory stick or software update) to alter the results. The simple step of hand count audits would improve transparency and reduce anxiety.
These are just a few areas of our local and state governments that could use of transparency. What other areas do you think need more focus?
