On April 25, Reo. Kristi Noem joined in a unanimous voice vote approving the “Digital Accountability and Transparency Act,” which would make permanent the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s reporting and oversight board.

What? You mean Kristi thinks something about President Obama’s economic stimulus program actually worked? Must be:

But there is one area where the legislation has had a definitive effect, one clear impact that transcends politics and is almost universally acknowledged: The stimulus has done more to promote transparency at almost all levels of government than any piece of legislation in recent memory. Many states launched or enhanced their open government initiatives around the same time as the stimulus, drawing on both the lessons learned and technical know-how they developed as they implemented the heightened federal reporting requirements that came with ARRA. It’s an impact that seems to excite watchdogs and wonks more than the politicians who bicker over the economic impact of the spending [Ryan Holeywell, "Did the Stimulus Do Anything for Transparency?" Governing, February 2012].

States are worried about the costs associated with tightening practices on how they report the use of federal funds. The CBO says DATA Act will cost Uncle Sam $575 million to implement over five years and may save over $5.1 billion.

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.

Organic farmer and Democrat Charlie Johnson from Orland wants you to know that he has taken out petitions to run for District 8 Senate against Senate Majority Leader Russell Olson. He needs you to know: after lengthy and serious deliberation, after hoping that someone else might take this cup, he decided just this week to take on the challenge of running against one of the biggest-money Republicans in the state. He thus needs signatures fast: the deadline for Johnson to file his 42 valid signatures is Tuesday, March 27.

I relish the prospect of a Johnson-Olson tilt for numerous reasons. When he makes the ballot, I will have all sorts of fun explaining why Charlie Johnson will represent District 8 much more effectively, intelligently, and honestly than Russell Olson.

But let’s start this morning with a comparison of each man’s appreciation of public discourse, as represented by their presence on Facebook. Charlie Johnson speaks to us on two main channels on Facebook, his personal page and his Johnson Farms Natural Farming business page. His Wednesday post on spreading organic fertilizer is clearly a signal of his political intentions. (Ba-dum-bum!)

O.K., seriously, Charlie’s farm Facebook page offers a enlightening combination of straightforward farmwork updates and discussion of important issues related to his business. He mentions hunger in America, the paperwork involved in organic certification, and his dad’s organic farm philosophy, which was that if something wasn’t safe to touch with the tip of his tongue, it wasn’t safe to put on his land. (I’m a little nervous to ask what that means about that pelletized chicken manure!)

Charlie engages his friends and readers in similar substantive conversations on both his own personal Facebook page and in the comment sections on others’. In just this past week, I’ve seen Charlie discuss the Governor’s education reform package (yes, Russ, expect Charlie to hold you accountable for your truth-bending support against the popular will of HB 1234), farm subsidies, the public assistance given to Hutterite colonies (Charlie lives just north of the Orland colony). He explicitly invites readers to share their thoughts. He welcomes opposing views and addresses them civilly and substantively.

So what does Russ use his Facebook page for? Well, not much. The Senate Majority Leader who claims that he uses his Facebook page to keep his constituents updated on his events at the Capitol has posted one update in the last month, three new family photos. The last post directly related to his work in Pierre was a photo of Rep. Kristi Noem not wearing cowboy boots at a Senate caucus meeting. “Great to have Representative Kristi Noem in caucus today,” Russ writes on Feb. 21. Since then, over the last two weeks of session and after legislators left Pierre and had time (and dare I say the obligation?) to sum up what happened, Russ has written nothing for his constituents. So much for updates.

Russ is also absent from the comment sections. Heck, his comment section is absent. As we all know, since he got mad at voters who tried to use his Facebook page to communicate their concerns about legislation, the Senate Majority leader appears to have shut off comments on his Facebook page and scrubbed previous comments from at least one vocal opponent. I click “Like” this morning on his page and still can’t leave a comment.

Where private citizen Charlie Johnson uses Facebook to inform and interact with his neighbors, public figure Russell Olson uses Facebook for one-way marketing, and darned thin marketing at that. Where Charlie responds to online criticism with conversation, Russ responds with censorship.

Get those petitions in, Charlie. We need a Senator who’s not afraid to talk with the people he represents.

The Center for Public Integrity conducted an 18-month investigation of transparency and accountability in all fifty state governments. How’d South Dakota do? Not well:

We got an F, as did seven other states. With our 50% score, we did worse than everybody else but Georgia (49%). What gives?

Many of the states at the bottom of the rankings, meanwhile, are sparsely-populated Western or Plains states like Idaho (40th), Wyoming (48th) and the Dakotas (North Dakota is number 43 and South Dakota comes in at 49). There, libertarianism roots, a small-town, neighborly approach to government and the honest belief that “everybody knows everybody” has overridden any perceived need for strong protections in law.

Peggy Kerns, director of the Center for Ethics in Government at the National Conference of State Legislatures, noted that ethics laws are shaped by the environment and culture of the state. “In smaller states, the culture is different,” she said. “It is harder to disobey the law and go against your own moral core if everyone knows you” [Caitlyn Ginley, "Grading the Nation: How Accountable Is Your State?" Center for Public Integrity, 2012.03.19].

Ah, so it’s not that we’ve got lots of corruption; it’s that we’re so confident that we don’t have corruption that we haven’t our faith-based henhouse leaves the door open for serious foxes. States that have dealt with more foxes have better chicken wire: New Jersey gets the highest score, a B+ at 87%, while Illinois, often reviled for “Chicago-style politics,” ranks tenth with a C at 74%.

The Center for Public Integrity engaged local reporters in each state to gather data on their state governments. South Dakota’s observer was blogger emerita Denise Ross. Here’s how her data broke down by category:

In her write-up of our scores, Ross notes Democrat frustration with Republican domination of the redistricting process, but she gives the state good marks for increasing transparency in that process. We also get a B for internal auditing. On everything else on the scorecard, we stink. Some of the major stinkers:

• lack of a state ethics commission;
• vague campaign finance reporting;
• campaign finance loophole allowing unlimited contributions to candidates via Potemkin PACs;
• closed caucus meetings in the Legislature.

Ross includes comment on the ethics commission from the Governor’s chief of staff Dusty Johnson, who says our current policies and our “free and robust press” sufficiently check corruption. Ross also notes that Secretary Gant is making some improvements with online campaign finance information.

Still, that F doesn’t look good. Even if we all trust each other, we need strong ethics laws and crystal-clear government transparency to protect our public dollars and institutions from inevitable abuses.

Earlier this month Senate Majority Leader Russell Olson (R-8/Wentworth) got mad and told his constituents to shut up, at least on his Facebook page, about the really bad education reforms that he was supporting. He shut off his Facebook comments, and he deleted the comments that I had left on his page criticizing HB 1234 and his own rejection of public discourse.

He justified his silencing and censoring of public Facebook debate thus:

I use this page solely to keep my constituents, and any other followers, updated on my events at the Capitol…. This page is not for public debate, it is to keep my followers updated [Senator Russell Olson, Facebook status, 2012.02.10].

Apparently the most petty Senator in Pierre finds simple updates almost as burdensome as honest public debate. Since his snit-fit, while the Senator has found time to delete and block my comments, he has posted just four updates, 55 words. Only one of those updates directly mention policy, Senator Olson’s SB 77, a tech school scholarship program that requires recipients to maintain a measly 2.5 GPA to get our money. (A slack GPA requirement like that could only come from the academically challenged Senator Olson, who found a 3.0 GPA hard to maintain.)

Senator Olson’s other “updates”:

1. A brown-nosing thank-you to USD President Abbott;
2. A thank-you to the third term pages and his niece Tessa;
3. A note that it was “Great to have Representative Kristi Noem in caucus today,” along with a picture of Noem not wearing her cowgirl boots.

#3 may be fashion news, but it’s not a substantive policy update that helps the voters understand what’s happening in Pierre. Oh, wait, perhaps it does: Senator Olson isn’t nearly as interested in telling us what’s happening as in distracting us from his arrogant one-party rule with cutesy blurbs and pictures of nice people.

District 8, you already have one strong Democratic candidate, Roy Lindsay, circulating petitions to run for House. I hear there may be a second District 8 Dem in the chute. Update 07:58 MST: I hear right! Scott Parsley has filed petitions for House! Get ready to rumble!

Now is the right time to go for the trifecta and find a third Dem who believes in public discourse and good policy to send the whiny Russell Olson back to his cushy Heartland office for good.

Some public officials shun and denigrate blogs and other social media. Some of these blog-wary officials may simply be unfamiliar with the technology; others (like, I speculate, members of the Madison Central School District board and administration) are stung by the criticism voiced and published for the record on such websites and thus try to discourage participation.

Fortunately, it seems that more public officials in South Dakota are realizing that blogs and social media are really extensions of the public sphere, an ongoing crackerbarrel where they can interact with the people they serve just as they are expected to do at their meetings, in their offices, and at the coffee shop.

Example #1: Rep. Steve Hickey. This Sioux Falls pastor has a lot on his plate, yet he manages to make the rounds of the South Dakota blogosphere and make substantive, instructive comments. When he catches heck on controversial issues, he doesn’t run and hide. During his first session as a legislator, Hickey used his own blog to provide a series of posts outlining his thinking on various pieces of legislation, complete with charts and graphs! He left his comment section open and took comments from supporters and opponents alike. He appears ready to do the same this year, offering a blog post summarizing the big topics in Pierre at the opening of the 2012 session. “Let the townhall meeting begin,” says Rep. Hickey, acknowledging exactly what his blog and others can be.

Example #2: Rep. Bernie Hunhoff. The South Dakota Magazine publisher has plenty of practice communicating with South Dakotans. Last year I noticed he started to make great use of his Facebook page to update his constituents on doings and misdeeds in Pierre and provoke discussion. He’s doing the same this year: for example, Wednesday he offered the trenchant observation on the state’s corrections spending:

Chief Justice David Gilbertson just finished his State of the Judiciary speech here in Pierre. He said South Dakota is “dead last” in substance abuse courts even though the one we have in the Northern Black Hills has been a great success. Isn’t that a workforce issue? if we can get our youth off to a healthy and sober start, they might contribute more to the workforce? It costs just $3 to have someone on probation — and $63 a day to incarcerate them. Yet we never question the corrections budget, while we chronically underfund schools and programs for youth. (The conclusion is my own, not the judge’s) [Rep. Bernie Hunhoff, Facebook post, 2012.01.11].

Hmm… $3 for probation, $63 for incarceration… is the Governor ignoring another field where we spend more without getting better results?

Example #3: Rep. Charlie Hoffman. This Republican from Eureka isn’t afraid of online conversation. Of all places, he comes to this liberal blog to hear what folks are saying and add his two cents’ worth. (And hey, Charlie: have you drafted that pipeline tax yet?)

Example #4: Mayor Sam Kooiker. Rapid City’s chief executive has caught heck in the local press for his role in starting the fruitless witch hunt against Fish Garbage Services (see also here and here). One might excuse a mayor for trying to steer clear of such controversy in the blogosphere and the rest of the press. Yet Mayor Kooiker wades right in with the alligators with this comment on Mount Blogmore:

Andrea’s recent articles and your Blogmore post implies that I am some sort of a mastermind who was, as 1 member of a 10 member council, able to: control a human resources department and a police department, a city council (6 of whom voted to censor me), a previous mayor (who was my opponent on four ballots – 2 general elections and 2 runoffs), multiple grand juries, a state’s attorney, DCI and the Attorney General.

So let’s do a brief recap. On 12/22/2009, The PW Director (Robert Ellis), City Attorney (Jason Green) and Mayor (Alan Hanks) held a press conference announcing the revocation of Fish Garbage’s license. I was not present at the press conference nor was I invited to attend. As you may be aware, the previous mayor was not one of my biggest fans. The previous administration signed off on Meidinger’s dismissal from employment. My predecessor’s sudden amnesia in the recent RC Journal article is fun to read about, but perplexing [Mayor Sam Kooiker, comment, Mount Blogmore, 2012.01.12].

Mayor Kooiker goes on to invite his prominent detractors to lunch at Culver’s. Indeed, if there is one shortcoming to blog interaction, it is that we can’t pass the ketchup.

Now some public officials fear engaging in online conversation because they don’t want their words to become part of the public record. They prefer private meetings, quiet lunches, and quick café stops where they can simply chat of the record. But with so many regular folks sharing their thoughts by Facebook and e-mail, even a brief chat with a voter at a restaurant can become a blog post, making diner conversations available to a much broader audience of constituents. That’s not a bad thing; allowing everyone to be “in” on the conversation is quite healthy for democracy.

Reps. Hickey, Hunhoff and Hoffman, Mayor Kooiker, thank you for realizing something that all public officials and the rest of us citizens need to understand. Blogs, Facebook, and other social media are not just a pastime for kids throwing spitballs and sharing beer pictures. The South Dakota blogosphere is also an ongoing public conversation, open to anyone who can hunt and peck. It is a place where we can learn what our fellow citizens and public servants are thinking and provide input, just as we do at other public fora, to help guide public decision-making.

Steve, Bernie, Charlie, and Sam can do it. So can the rest of you.

Congresswoman Kristi Noem dropped in on Mitchell diners yesterday over the noon hour. Her semi-announced visit to Mitchell was somewhat like her controlled town halls by telephone: she doesn’t feel she has to let you know she’s coming; Princess Kristi will deign to visit when she feels like it, and you, dear subjects, will drop what you’re doing and smile and bow on her arrival.

Rep. Noem was relatively hospitable to her guests, taking time even to talk to some guy from Wisconsin who boils his politics down to the simplistic bromide of “Reduce the debt. Nothing else matters.” (Sorry, Chuck Dove of Star Prairie, Wisconsin, but many other things matter.)

Rep. Noem also spoke with Mitchell resident Owen Reitzel, who managed to track her down by piecing together the time announced on the radio and the place announced in the paper. (Seriously, Noem staff? You can’t do better than that?) Reitzel told his Congresswoman about his wife’s struggle with breast cancer. Mrs. Reitzel was diagnosed with cancer last June. Reitzel said they were lucky to have decent insurance and that without it, their choice would have been bankruptcy or death. Reitzel said a good universal health care system would prevent any Americans from facing such a choice.

In response to this call for the moral use of our national wealth, Noem didn’t have much to say, other than to turn to the press and recite the talking points about competition and malpractice reform. Funny: Noem hasn’t done anything about either issue during her first year in Congress. The private insurers want consolidation, not competition. The best competition would come from a robust public option. And malpractice claims make up less than one percent of total health care costs.

So what were you saying about health care reform, Kristi?

Rep. Noem then rode out to Boyds’ Gunstock plant, where “Plant officials declined to allow the media on the tour.” Again, what?!? Why if I’m a Congresswoman running for re-election do I go on a tour of a great local manufacturer if I can’t get pictures and soundbites for the local press? If I’m a Congresswoman, I say to the boss, “Hey, let’s tour the plant. We’ll bring Tom Lawrence and J.P. Skelly along. Your plant gets press, I get press, we both look good.”

But no. Princess Kristi just can’t risk too many unguarded interactions with the public or the media and their darned questions.

Hey, Mitchell voters! Are you eager to talk to Rep. Kristi Noem about her job performance so far? Well boy, howdy, she’s looking forward to talking to you Thursday! Not eager enough, however, to tell you exactly where you can catch her:

The [press] release said Noem, who is up for re-election this year, will visit “Mitchell coffee shops” beginning at 11:30 a.m. Thursday, and will tour the Boyds’ Gunstock plant near Mitchell at 1:45 p.m. Thursday [staff, "Noem to Visit Mitchell on Thursday," Mitchell Daily Republic, 2012.01.04].

I guess you can try to stake Noem out at the gunstock plant, though heaven knows if you’re hanging around private property like that, someone might mistake you for Occupy Mitchell and start singing Lee Greenwood at you. So instead, you should do the sensible thing and drive around all the places that sell coffee in Mitchell from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. hoping to spot a lady with cowboy boots getting out of an SUV with Hamlin County (#32!) license plates.

But we should be grateful for even this much notice from our incumbent Princess. She hasn’t posted any notice of a public meeting on her official website since August 30. It’s almost as if she doesn’t want to have people show up to ask her questions about her vote to raise your taxes by $1000….

Meanwhile, one Democrat who wants Noem’s job, Matt Varilek, says his campaign raised over $103,000 in December.