Wiktionary offers the following etymology for nepotism:

From Italian nepotismo, from Latin nepōs (“nephew”), a reference to the practice of popes appointing relatives (most often nephews) as cardinals during the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

The Madison Chamber of Commerce doesn’t do nepotism. No. It does niece-otism:

The Madison Chamber of Commerce has appointed Michelle Ust as interim director.

Ust fills the vacancy left by Executive Director Julie Gross, who has accepted the position as executive director for the Lake Area Improvement Corportation.

Ust begins May 30 and will work for the chamber for up to two months or until a permanent director has been named. Ust, who is originally from Volga, recently moved to the Madison area. She is Gross’ niece and will oversee the day to day duties of the Chamber, attend events and will report to the Chamber Board of Directors [staff, "Madison Chamber Seeks New Executive Director," Madison Daily Leader, 2012.05.17].

Well… I… um… she… what… aaacckk! Should I even have to explain to the Madison Chamber why this looks bad?

Michelle Ust is 30 (or turns 30 this year) and leaves few identifiable traces online. My casual Web browsing offers no indication of Ust’s experience in this field. Whether she is applying for the permanent position remains to be seen… though her service in the interim position gives her an obvious edge in any interview process.

Perhaps the Chamber should revise its fluffily written Executive Director job description to include one straightforward qualification: “Must be prepared to withstand and occasionally rebut Heidelberger’s guff.” Or better yet: “Must be able to make decisions that don’t make Heidelberger’s blogging so darned easy.”

Next Chamber exec’s first official act: changing Madison’s tagline to Discover the Unexpected Hereditary Monarchy.

A number of my Madison neighbors tell KELO they plan to hit the Madison City Commission meeting tonight to demand some flood control action. Frequent Madville Times commenter Tim Higgins, Kelli Stout, and Heather Roling all got heavy flood damage, and they lay some blame on the city:

“I think they should just hear our stories and what we went through and find out why something hasn’t been done to prevent this from happening again. We were told this was not supposed to happen. Last time in 1993, when this town flooded, they told us they fixed the problem and that was a 100 year flood. Twice now, since then we’ve had water,” Roling said.

After that major flood in 1993, Higgins says city leaders proposed a water retention facility to control heavy rains down Memorial Creek, but nothing was built.

“I honestly believe if they had that detention facility in place, this event would not have happened. I do believe it’s time to revisit putting up a detention facility north of town,” Higgins said [Hailey Higgins, "Madison Storm Victims Say Damage Preventable," KELOLand.com, 2012.05.12].

The folks KELO talked to also complain that the city didn’t get the word out about the rising water fast enough. It’s not that the city wasn’t trying: Arlyce Freet told KJAM she learned about the flood from a firefighter who knocked on her door at 2:45 a.m. But Roling thinks the city should implement a phone notification system like the schools use for snow days.

Now Higgins, Roling, and Stout aren’t on the official agenda yet, but I hope the city can squeeze them in and have engineer Chad Comes come in to talk about the fabled detention pond and why the city hasn’t taken on that project yet. It could well be that no pond is going to be big enough to keep six-plus inches of rain from overflowing Memorial Creek. But if Madison can do more flood mitigation, acquiring land for a new detention pond or widening and deepening the creek channel could do more for enhancing Madison’s quality of life than subsidizing the country club.

Related: Folks concerned with emergency management procedures during the May 5–6 flood may want to drop by the Lake County Commission meeting Tuesday around noon: that’s when Don Thomson will present information on the flood and how the county responded.

Madison blogosphere neighbor John Nelson expresses his hope that the promotion of Julie Gross from Chamber of Commerce director to Lake Area Improvement Corporation director means better things for Madison.

I want to be generous and look for signs that Gross’s appointment signals positive change. The press-release language surrounding her appointment at least suggests a repudiation of the Dwaine Chapel regime. The first time I met him, previous LAIC director Chapel told me he was brought here to “fix” Madison. He didn’t. He grew up in Spearfish. He lived in Brookings. But he never carried the lessons of those two successful communities to his work in Madison. Contrary to the delightful hyperbole of a 2007 newsletter, Chapel never “immersed” himself in Madison. He never even moved here, maintaining his residence in Brookings, where he finally landed a better job after six years stuck in the Madison depot.

Chapel’s depot office mate Gross is talking up and being talked up for her longtime commitment to and residence in Lake County. I can’t help getting the feeling that their bad experience with bringing in outsider Chapel solidified our local leader’s commitment to rejecting outside perspectives and hiring locally this time. I hope that Gross’s proven commitment to the community will bring a more committed quest for economic development that builds on Lake County’s strengths.

But is hiring Julie Gross really a change, or is it simply an affirmation of the status quo? (Remember, status quo is Latin for stuck in the mud.) Gross may have more perspective on boosting local retail. But her record doesn’t show a great deal of success in promoting retail from the Chamber perspective. The Chamber’s signature event, Crazy Days, has steadily declined over the past several years, and Gross has not found the magic formula to reverse that decline or the magic event to replace it.

Gross also shows little more appreciation for public input and participation than Chapel did. When I proposed hosting a “Speaker’s Corner” event during Crazy Days, Gross nixed the idea, expressing alarm that in such an uncontrolled setting, people might get up and say anything. And we sure as heck don’t want people saying anything in Madison.

Madison needs new ideas. I respect the idea of local wisdom being able to recognize local problems and come up with new ideas. But Julie Gross is a creature of the local establishment. And the local establishment has a poor record of receptivity to new ideas.

Hope for the best. Expect the worst.

Refreshing and unapologetic! hyperventilates the Gordon Howie right-wing propaganda machine about Gordon Howie’s choke-worthy YouTube echo chamber, Liberty TV Today.

I am sure they will greet with similar enthusiasm the refreshing and unapologetic comedy and commentary from Michael Hope, who is producing Happy Your Head from Hope Studios in beautiful south-of-the-tracks Madison. Included in Hope’s first video offerings is a send-up of Mitt Romney’s robotic pro-corporate pronouncements. Click, watch, and enjoy.

Hope’s work is refreshing indeed! No apologies necessary.

Three weeks after applications closed, we still haven’t heard from the Lake Area Improvement Corporation whom it will pick to direct economic development efforts in and around Madison.

As we eagerly await the golden child to reverse previous LAIC exec Dwaine Chapel’s failures, Madison residents may wish to note the City of Sioux Falls’s advertisement for an economic development coordinator. Where Madison lets its economic development honcho operate in a quasi-public corporation that keeps its records secret and can’t be held directly accountable by taxpayers, the City of Sioux Falls makes its economic development coordinator a city employee.

Sioux Falls also pays that person half of what Madison’s economic development chief gets. Dwaine Chapel pulled down six figures for not doing much. The Sioux Falls economic development coordinator gets up to $2,135 bi-weekly, or just over $51K annually.

Jeepers: the LAIC should have been getting tons of applications.

The Sioux Falls economic development coordinator is also expected to make “downtown development… a key focus.”

So if Madison were to adopt the Sioux Falls approach, the city would get more accountable economic development efforts for half the price. And we’d do something about downtown.

As my commenters eagerly point out, it’s election day in Madison! Residents have five candidates from whom to choose for two city commission spots.

From the press I enjoy from my safe vantage point in Spearfish, it strikes me that the best two men to help run my hometown are incumbent commissioner Nick Abraham and newcomer Jeremiah Corbin. As noted in previous posts, Abraham and Corbin have done the best job articulating nuts-and-bolts policy positions that indicate specific actions they would take to improve Madison.

The responses excerpted by KJAM to a question on new ideas epitomize this distinction. Abraham suggested using the city’s revolving loan fund downtown revitalization. Corbin floated using a tax increment finance (TIF) district for the same purpose. Mike Waldner offered no new idea but said he’d champion “anything that supports quality of life and economic development,” principles we can hardly disagree with but which don’t constitute an answer to the specific question about new ideas. Similarly, Pat Mullen expressed reasonable fiscal caution, but watching our budget isn’t a “new idea” either.

Downtown development is one of the most pressing issues facing Madison. The city has ignored the physical and commercial health of Main Street in favor of its peripheral industrial parks and the Washington Avenue TIF district. The city has resisted using downtown for new cultural events. Visitors want a walkable downtown, and they gauge the quality of a community by what they find on Main Street. At the heart of Madison, they currently find a big vacant Masonic temple, several crumbling buildings with boarded up windows, and a dearth of retail stores.

Rebuilding a thriving city center as a destination for shoppers and tourists could be one of the most fruitful changes Madison could make. Nick Abraham and Jeremiah Corbin sound most tuned in to taking specific action to make downtown revitalization happen. Vote for them, and then hold them accountable for following through.

This just in from surprise guest correspondent Russell Olson: Congresswoman Kristi Noem may have a new haircut!

Rep. Kristi Noem speaks at Lake County Lincoln Day Dinner, Madison, SD, April 9, 2012. Photo by State Senator Russell Olson.

The Congresswoman spoke at tonight’s GOP Lincoln Day Dinner in Madison. Don’t blame Russ for the fuzzy photo: the lighting at Nicky’s is atrocious. But from what I can make out, either Noem is sporting a hasty ponytail, or she’s followed the example of her predecessor, Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, and ditching the long locks for her re-election campaign.

Note the poster looming over Noem’s shoulder. That’s GOP candidate for Public Utilities Commission Kristie Fiegen. Great: now we have a Kristie and a Kristi on the ballot, and they both have short hair! Shouldn’t the school superintendents be writing one of the candidates and telling her to grow her hair back or change her name or just quit so as not to confuse the voters?

Oops: I just checked Russ’s snap of Fiegen from this evening’s festivities: it looks like she is growing her hair out. But now neither Kristi(e) looks like her campaign poster! Arrgghh!!!

Next up from Olson: grainy images of plesiosaurs in Lake Madison… or maybe the Wentworth Sasquatch!

p.s.: Public Utilities Commissioner and candidate Chris Nelson still hasn’t grown his mustache back. I’m telling you, Chris: that mustache would have won you darn near enough votes in West River whisker country to have beaten Noem in the 2010 primary!

Kristi Noem, 2007 Legislature mug shot

Update 2012.04.14 09:06 MDT: The new ‘do is really the old ‘do, as attested by Noem’s 2007 South Dakota Legislature mug shot.

Update 09:38 MDT: Congresswoman Noem tweets her own profile pic of her haircut, from Friday’s visit to the Hot Springs Veterans Administration hospital, where Noem expressed her support for government-run health care. No word on whether the hospital provides its vets with good haircuts.

Incumbent Madison city commissioner Nick Abraham gets the last of five candidate profiles in the Madison Daily Leader. He says just enough of the right things to make me feel comfortable with my Madison neighbors re-electing him tomorrow.

Commissioner Abraham offers cautious praise of the Chamber and the Lake Area Improvement Corporation. I’m uneasy with his statement that “A lot of what they accomplish goes unnoticed.” Why not use this interview to tell us some of those unnoticed things instead of expecting us to just imagine that the LAIC is doing wonderful things?

Abraham salvages his economic development commentary by sending perhaps the clearest signal a Madison politician that the LAIC expects too much from taxpayers:

However, Abraham said the partnerships among Madison, the Chamber and LAIC don’t mean that support needs to be universal.

“The city can’t be playing a major part with all of their projects,” Abraham said. “They need to realize that we don’t need to fund everything that they do.

“For example, they came and asked us to support about a third of Forward Madison II — and that’s a lot” [Chuck Clement, "Abraham Seeks Second Term with City," Madison Daily Leader, 2012.04.02].

That’s a lot—please, please tell me that we can interpret that comment as a signal that Abraham will not vote to give the LAIC more free taxpayer subsidies with no accountability… and that he will push his fellow commission members to follow suit.

Abraham mentions a couple of other policies, which is a couple more than some other candidates mentioned in their profiles. Abraham mentions the challenge of making urgent upgrades to the city’s water system as we struggle with maxed-out bonding capacity. He also mentions the need to strengthen the city’s revolving loan fund to support a downtown improvement project.

Off policy, Abraham makes an apt mention of his ability and willingness to talk to citizens while he’s at his day job:

Up to this point in his adult life, he’s worked as a mechanic at F&M Co-op in Madison, and it’s a job that gives local residents the opportunity to talk to Abraham about his other responsibilities as a city commissioner.

“People will ask questions more often than make complaints,” Abraham said. “It’s a very easy atmosphere for someone to ask for information.

“Many people find that asking informally, face-to-face is a lot easier than coming to a (city) meeting” [Clement, 2012.04.02].

With regret, I’ve had to ding Abraham in the past for being a little too open with some bigoted language about Muslims that isn’t acceptable from a public official trying to put Madison’s best face forward (language for which the commissioner subsequently apologized). But his comments above highlight an important sensitivity to the nature of his political job: as commissioner, he works for the voters, and when they ask him questions, he has an obligation to respond. He may be elbow-deep in grease and grit, fixing their flats or wrestling with fan belts, but he also recognizes that citizens may strike up useful conversations with him at the F&M shop that they won’t have the chance or the courage to start in more formal settings.

Nick Abraham is the only blue-collar worker currently serving on the Madison City Commission. He’s the only blue-collar worker among the five candidates on the ballot tomorrow. Abraham’s working-class background has likely contributed to his willingness to call out the crony capitalism that other commissioners so blithely cheer.