Mike Waldner gets ink in Chuck Clement’s second Madison City Commission candidate profile. Waldner, a long-time local computer guru, naturally hits some encouraging tech notes, although the specifics don’t shout innovation:

According to Waldner, the community should make certain that it is taking full advantage of the knowledge and innovative ideas that originate from DSU.

“There are many technology ideas that DSU students take as second nature (for themselves). If we don’t take full advantage of that, it will be our loss,” Waldner said.

Waldner said the city could expand its use of Madison’s website similar to the events calendar available at the Madison Chamber of Commerce’s Internet site. He said the city could provide an electronic newsletter similar to the paper publication that arrives with utility bills [Chuck Clement, "Waldner Ties Growth to Quality of Life," Madison Daily Leader, 2012.03.12].

A community calendar… maybe Chuck missed something in editing, but the official City of Madison website already has a calendar. As for a newsletter, well, the city has already been experimenting with Nixle and its own e-mail notification service to share city information. Newsletters are cool, but they’re also a rather rudimentary, Russell Olson concept of the Internet as a one-way communication tool.

I would think that, if we’re looking for Internet innovations for the city, we’d be talking about ways to engage citizens, to share and discuss their views and draw them into participating in crafting local ordinances and budgets. How about some real social media presence for our commissioners and other officials? How about investment in broadband and virtual storefront renovation to promote economic development, as well as real openness, not just propaganda (again, the Russ Olson mindset) from the taxpayer-funded economic development corporation?

Of course, I’d be happy just to see the city keep more than the last four city commission agendas online in a permanent archive.

Clement’s article doesn’t give us much else in terms of specific items on Waldner’s governing agenda. Waldner says we need to give local entrepreneurs “our support and the tools they need to grow.” He says we build great businesses “by attracting and retaining great employees.” He says we need to “support, motivate, and encourage” city employees. He says we need to create affordable housing for younger people in Madison who “currently can’t find what they’re looking for in Madison.” (Careful, Mike: Madison-bashing like that last line will get Dan Lembcke telling you to move to Spearfish.)

Alas, Clement’s article offers no specifics on how Waldner would turn those goals into action. I know our candidates are bigger than any one news article, but compare the Waldner profile with Clement’s write-up of city commission candidate Jeremiah Corbin last week. In about the same amount of ink, Corbin proposes three specific improvements:

• a revolving loan fund for downtown restoration;
• expanding the softball complex
• creating a city campground (hear, hear!)

If you’re just reading the paper, you’re giving Corbin an edge over Waldner on specific ideas for making Madison even better. But Madison gets to pick two out of five candidates. We have yet to hear from Scott Knisley, Pat Mullen, and incumbent Nick Abraham. Stay tuned!

I would send this letter directly to petition signers on Change.org, but that website is misbehaving just when we need it most. Therefore…

Dear Friends of Education in South Dakota:

We lost… but not by much.

Over 2300 of you signed my online petition to stop HB 1234, Governor Dennis Daugaard’s package of education “reforms”, and convene a task force to study K-12 education in South Dakota. Many more of you contacted your legislators by phone, e-mail, and in person to challenge their fantasy that HB 1234 was somehow “the people’s plan.” Thank you for speaking up for our teachers, our schools, and our students.

On Wednesday, the South Dakota House approved HB 1234 on a 36-33 vote. Your efforts and the protests of thousands of other South Dakotans persuaded six legislators who had previously voted for HB 1234 to vote against it yesterday. That would have been enough to defeat the bill, but Governor Daugaard waged a full-court press of arm-twisting and horse-trading to save his bill. The Governor persuaded two legislators who had previously voted no to change their votes yesterday and support the bill.

HB 1234 now goes to the desk of Governor Daugaard, who is sure to sign into law this package of destructive education policies.

The Governor and the legislators supporting HB 1234 are claiming that the bill is completely different from what we protested, that they amended it to address every concern we raised. That is not true. The bill not only keeps merit pay as the state’s preferred default policy but extends the reach of merit pay, mandating that every school give merit bonuses to high-ranking math and science teachers. The bill still eliminates continuing contract; it simply delays the end until 2016.

Most importantly, HB 1234′s supporters still ignore the fundamental fact that they have raced ahead with their solution without identifying the problem we are trying to solve. What’s wrong with South Dakota’s schools that requires this drastic policy change? No one has explained that. No one can explain that. And no one backing HB 1234 wants to say that… because they don’t know.

There are three things you can do now to continue the fight against HB 1234 and the harm it will do to our schools:

1. Many people are talking about referring HB 1234 to a public vote. That may happen, if citizens gather nearly 16,000 signatures by 90 days after the end of the legislative session. If such a petition drive is launched, you can help circulate petitions in your neighborhood. I’ll keep you posted if a referral drive happens.

2. You can keep this issue alive in the fall election. Grill your local candidates for state legislature on the campaign trail. Write letters to the editor about the need for better education policy. If your incumbents voted for HB 1234, vote them out. (You can find the roll call votes on the HB 1234 webpage.)

3. Most immediately, you can run for the Legislature yourself. It’s not an easy job. But the most certain protection we have against HB 1234 is to elect legislators who will repeal it next year and focus on positive policy for our public schools. If your legislators voted for HB 1234, and if no one has yet filed to run against them, go to your courthouse, grab petitions, and get yourself on the ballot. Getting on the ballot for Legislature requires no more than 50 signatures.

We lost this battle, but not the war. We can still stop HB 1234. We now take the fight to the polls in November.

Again, thank you, everyone, for standing up for our schools, our kids, and the will of the people. Keep up the fight!

Cory Allen Heidelberger
Petition organizer, French teacher
MadvilleTimes.com
Spearfish, SD

…and while you’re at it, call the Gang of Four, too!

Real reporter David Montgomery reports that HB 1234, Governor Dennis Daugaard’s train-wreck package of education reforms, is scheduled for a Thursday hearing before the Senate Education Committee. Montgomery says that the “Gang of Six” or “supercommittee,” a unaccountable caucus of faithful Republican legislators, is working intensely on amendments to HB 1234. Those six Republicans:

1. Rep. Thomas Brunner (R-29/Nisland)
2. Rep. Dan Dryden (R-34/Rapid City)
3. Rep. Jacqueline Sly (R-33/Rapid City)
4. Sen. Phyllis Heineman (R-13/Sioux Falls)
5. Sen. Mark Johnston (R-12/Sioux Falls)
6. Sen. Deb Peters (R-9/Hartford)

If you want to save education from the ideological impositions of merit pay, rookie bonuses, and termination of continuing contract due process, click on those six contact links above, and light up those legislators’ phones and inboxes. Ask them just what exactly they think is the problem with South Dakota’s K-12 education system… aside from the obvious problem that we cut its ongoing funding by 8.6% last year.

South Dakota’s schools deserve solutions that work. Sign this petition to tell Governor Daugaard to take time to find the right solutions.

Governor Dennis Daugaard insists that South Dakota’s schools are failing, even though neither he nor anyone else has clearly defined just what the problem with our K-12 system is. The Governor says drastic reforms are needed, even though the three major reforms he’s proposing (competitive merit bonuses for teachers, hiring bonuses for new math and science teachers, and termination of continuing contract rights) won’t increase student achievement.

Rep. Bernie Hunhoff (D-19/Yankton) has proposed putting the brakes on the Governor’s proposals. Rep. Hunhoff doesn’t want complete inaction; he wants informed action. He says if there really is a problem (and again, someone, tell me: What is the problem with our K-12 system? How are we failing our kids?), we should take time to study it, study other school systems, and pick out solutions that will really work.

I agree with Rep. Hunhoff, and I’ve started an online petition to say so. If you think the Governor’s education proposals (House Bill 1234) are bad ideas, please sign the petition. If you think we should not gamble our children’s education on unproven policy reforms, please sign the petition. If you think good education policy requires thoughtful study and open public deliberation, please sign the petition.

We have two weeks before the Legislature wraps up. Rushing Governor Daugaard’s preferred reforms or any other big plan in those two weeks does not serve our kids, our teachers, or our schools well. The best thing we can do right now is tell our legislators to put HB 1234 on the shelf (if not in the garbage can); get some teachers, parents, and policymakers to lead a statewide conversation; and come up with solid, evidence-based solutions for K-12 education.

You can sign the petition at this link. You can also sign via the petition widget in the far right sidebar right here on the Madville Times. If you do sign, please share this petition with all of your South Dakota friends. Thank you!

Update 15:44 MST: Senator Russell Olson responds… even more arrogantly than I expected he would:

If you would like my comments and/or position on this bill, or any other bill, please submit them to my email account Sen.RussellOlson@state.sd.us
I use this page solely to keep my constituents, and any other followers, updated on my events at the Capitol. I would be happy to read your ideas, concerns or questions you have about the bills I support or sponsor.
I would not support a bill I did not fully believe would better the state of South Dakota. This page is not for public debate, it is to keep my followers updated. I encourage you to contact me in Pierre at any time. I look forward to hearing from each and every one you. Thank you.

[Senator Russell Olson (R-8/Wentworth), Facebook post, 2012.02.10]

Because this is important, because it shows that Senator Russell Olson misunderstands the Internet and democracy exactly the way I said he does in my original post, here’s the screen shot of his totally public Facebook page:

Senator Russell Olson tells the public not to discuss issues on his public Facebook page, February 10, 2012.

Among the people hitting “Like” on this “Put a sock in it”: fellow elected official and Madison Central School Board member Jennie Thompson.

[Original Post]: South Dakota Senate Majority Leader Russell Olson is taking a lot of heat on his Facebook page for his support of Governor Daugaard’s destructive education reforms. I present without commentary the comments submitted by constituents to the District 8 Republican. Senator Olson is also letting this commentary go without commentary: demonstrating his obsolete understanding of the Internet as a marketing device to push his message rather than a forum for genuine civic interaction, the Senator has not offered a single public response to any of his constituents.

Russell Olson

So my wife and I were discussing the South Dakota Legislature and civic engagement over dinner last night. One thing led to another, and by the time we were done with our tuna pasta, we’d come up with a plan to make South Dakota democracy even better: turn our legislators into weekend warriors.

Right now, the South Dakota Legislature meets for up to 40 days packed into the winter. This year’s session calendar was originally 35 days, which got knocked down to 33 for Janklow’s funeral. Some legislatures meet for fewer days. North Dakota, Montana, Nevada, and Texas convene their legislatures only every other year. Some states, like Arkansas, Colorado, Iowa, and Nebraska, go for longer sessions.

Under the current system, things move fast. Bills like HB 1234, the Governor’s destructive education reform bill, get revised in closed-door sessions by small all-Republican committees, then thrown up for committee testimony and vote the very next day. Opponents have little chance to review the new bill text, conduct further research, and bring information relevant to the policy changes to the hearing. The Legislature races along, making it hard for citizens to mobilize to oppose or support bills.

The current condensed winter schedule also makes it hard for many workers to serve. Wealthy Establishment members like Senate Majority Leader Russell Olson can get their well-heeled employers to give them two months off each winter to spend their time lobbying for their special interests. But most employees can’t take that big block of time off. Teachers like me can hardly take two straight months off from the classroom.

So what would happen if we changed our Legislature’s calendar thus:

1. The Legislature meets one weekend a month for ten months, January to October.
2. The weekend meetings last three days, coinciding where possible with three-day weekend holidays.
3. Legislators meet for an additional one- or two-week session at some point during the year.

That schedule would give us the same 35 or 40 legislative days that we currently have. But it would produce several advantages:

1. Legislators and the public would have more time to research, discuss, and mobilize support or opposition to legislation. A bill might be proposed in February, pass House committee in March, get House approval in April… that’s a lot of time for folks to look at bills and amendments and contact their legislators.
2. Weekend sessions make it easier for more citizens to go to Pierre and testify and lobby without missing work.
3. More people could feasibly serve in the Legislature. Consider me: I can cover one Friday or Monday a month with personal leave. I can much more easily prepare substitute lesson plans for such periodic absences than I can for two straight months. Other workers would be much better able to keep up with the demands of work given such occasional absences than now when they come back to the home office in March and tackle the two-month mountain of work that accumulated while they were in Pierre.
4. Legislative discussions carry on right into September and October, leaving votes in Pierre fresh in the voters’ minds as they had to the polls in November.
5. Legislators only make two or three winter drives to Pierre.
6. Special sessions become less necessary. If some special circumstance arises, legislators take it up in the course of normal business at the next monthly meeting.
7. The economic boost to Pierre gets spread out over the entire year instead of one hectic rush in winter.

The plan has complications. If we stick with a fiscal year starting on July 1, we’ll need to focus the first few months on hammering out a budget and save muskrat hunting and abortion nuttiness for the summer and fall. And asking legislators to give up weekends is a sacrifice… but arguably no harder than the current demands.

So who’s up for making our legislators into weekend warriors?

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.

The Madville Times now has one full year under its belt with the new domain and the new WordPress template. No hackers, no server disasters… and lots of reader participation! As I riffle through my stats, I find over 11,000 comments from you, dear readers, plus nearly 2000 comments that I wrote in response.

So what got you all reading and talking this year? Let’s take a look at two lists. First, let’s look at the pages that got the most views:

Now this count does not include straight home page views (which numbered over 333,000) where folks come to read the latest stories. That just counts how many times people clicked on a specific story to read and perhaps comment.

The #1 and #9 stories drew a surge of national and international readers searching for information on the weird story of a church buying an entire town. They also drew a lot of Iglesia ni Cristo members who found the link shared on their usual online hangouts and came with their standard fallacious apologetics. The #2 story drew a spike from one bodybuilding forum where someone linked to my Arnold bicycle photo, as well as subsequent Google image searches for Arnold Schwarzenegger and bicycle.

But most of the rest of the most-viewed stories had less to do with riding Google-search waves and more to do with your real interest in mostly local stories. My dairy-related stories may not have drawn as many comments as other stories, but there was a constant interest in the subject of Rick Millner’s bankrupt dairies in Veblen, his partners’ acquisition of a dairy eight miles from my house for him to manage, and the political fallout from Rep. Stace Nelson’s opposition to a mega-dairy in his backyard. the four dairy stories on this list alone garnered over 4,100 views.

Education was another popular read here. The five education stories on this list drew over 5,200 views. Those top five stories covered a range of issues: both Madison bond votes for the new gym, the Madison-Rutland busing controversy, the Yankton opt-out, and the statewide K-12 budget cuts.

I tagged 178 posts with “Kristi Noem.” (What, me obsessed? ;-) ) Of those posts, two made the 20 most-viewed list: the April discussion of Noem’s status as Congressional intern and the story I broke in August on Kristi’s big country club fundraiser with Speaker Boehner.

Now let’s compare what you looked at with what you talked about:

Again, Iglesia ni Cristo drove up the comment count as some of us questioned the whether Christians can logically reject the Trinity and the divinity of Christ and submit to the block-voting diktats of their clergy. But the death penalty provoked a lot of local conversation. The surprise entry on this list is #10, on Rep. Frank Kloucek’s first bill in the 2012 Legislative hopper. Posted just two days ago, this post provoked an instructive discussion of non-compete clauses and issues of contracts and intellectual property in South Dakota (and may well bump up to #9 on the above list before I finish my lunchtime sandwich!)

Over the weekend, I’ll write up my list of the stories I thought were most important in 2011. But dear readers, I welcome your continued (and often surprising!) input on the issues you think we should bring to the fore in the South Dakota blogosphere. Thank you!