Ken Kramer's public-records tussle with the Department of Social Services shows South Dakota state government's unhealthy addiction to secrecy.
The Florida man made a simple request last summer: he wanted to know the name of every doctor South Dakota had kicked out of Medicaid since 2010. Kramer maintains a website to publish information about fraud and abuse in psychiatry. The Medicaid information helps him identify psychiatrists who take advantage of their patients and the public.
Kramer had little trouble getting the Medicaid-exclusion records from other states. South Dakota was the only state that told him that list of excluded doctors was secret. According to e-mails Mr. Kramer sent to various state officials, we gave him the runaround. DSS officials told him the exclusion of doctors from payment by a public program is not a public record. DSS told him to look for the excluded doctors on a federal database, but finding excluded doctors would require obtaining a list of every doctor in South Dakota and then entering each doctor's name.
On November 1, over three months after their initial response, DSS Director of Legal Services Daniel J. Todd cited South Dakota public records statutes 1-27-1.5 and 1-27-4 to justify withholding these records. The latter refers to the format of open records, which seems not to over DSS any cover for refusing to provide the requested record in any format. The former provides the lengthy list of exceptions South Dakota makes to keep its secrets. The only faintly relevant exception appears to be paragraph 2, which protects medical records... but medical records tell the specific ailments and treatments of specific patients. Kramer wasn't asking for medical records. He wasn't even asking for payment records. He was asking for a list of doctors who could not receive payment from a public program.
After enlisting the help of Rep. Stace Nelson (R-19/Fulton), Kramer got results. On December 19, Mr. Todd told Mr. Kramer that DSS had erred. DSS sent Kramer the names of four doctors—Jeffrey Buckau, Brian O’Connor, Joshua Payer and Edward Wegrzynowicz—excluded from South Dakota Medicaid payments since 2007.
The public nature of the information Kramer wanted seems clear. Citizens covered by Medicaid have an interest in knowing whether the doctor they want to see can accept payment from Medicaid, just as folks with private insurance have an interest in knowing whether their doctors are in their insurer's network. Citizens also have a reasonable interest in knowing whether a doctor has behaved so egregiously as to get kicked out of Medicaid. The state had no problem publicizing the fact that it suspended Medicaid payments to Dr. Annette Bosworth during the litigation over her overbilling of Medicaid, and her accounting errors appear to have done less harm than Buckau's, O'Connor's, Payer's, and Wegrzynowicz's misdeeds.
Why would the state withhold this information? The only explanation I can come up with is that too many officials' default response is to withhold information, to think that telling the public what's going on will harm someone rich or powerful who shouldn't be bothered, and to view citizens seeking information as troublemakers. Unfortunately, that means folks like Ken Kramer and Rep. Stace Nelson really do have to make some trouble to shake loose information that belongs to the public.
Good eye, Cory: Mercer reports that Jackley allowed Benda-gate records to fall through his fingers and Rapid City is being sandbagged by Daugaard donor/developer, Hani Shafai.
You may label is "addiction to secrecy" but it's really just deceit garnished with of fear of change. They're playing the good voters for "hicks from the sticks" and those same voters lick the leg that kicks. VOTE WEILAND
State government corruption and secrecy was rated the #1 story of 2013. And the Rapid City Journal has this story under the headline:
http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/missing-records-delay-probe-of-eb--program/article_780d74a3-610c-5599-96e9-28f4a7d43abf.html
Although the Better Government Association Integrity Index ranks South Dakota 47th in the nation for access to public records, http://www.bettergov.org/assets/1/Page/2013%20BGA-Alper%20Services%20Integrity%20Index.pdf, it does not involve specific requests such as the one covered here during which the state alone was the only to make false citations of law as a pretext for denying public information that affects the well-being of the public. The most frequent pretext for denial is matters of personnel records. Of course, all government matters are enacted by personnel, so the state, the county, and the towns have a ready cover for nefarious schemes, incompetent performance, and acts of fraud.
In your there-ought-to-be-a-law post, I would put the revision of all the state's public record laws plus the addition of a freedom of information act so that people can have some notion of what their public officials are doing and just how they are performing.
The latest news as reported by John Tsitrian today is that the state has not bothered to keep some records. In the case he cited, the absence of records appears to a matter of slovenliness and incompetence, but if there are no records of what officials have done and how they did it, they are safe from public scrutiny and accountability. An example is when Bob Mercer reviewed the minutes of the state's economic development agencies. they did not include the most basic elements of minutes, such as the exact wording of any motions made and a record of who made it and what the vote was. However, for minutes to be published, they should include a transcription of the entire proceedings. That's why Robert' s Rules of Order states that the secretary's assistant should be "a stenographic reporter or recording technician." People who seek and hold public office in South Dakota tend to regard such complete and accessible records as a danger and discouragement for public service.
Ouch!
The people need to know what we tell them.
Again, the premise of Mike Rounds' philosophy of governing is "what I do and what my family members and pals do with your state government is none of your business." Go to Mike Rounds leading the charge to pass the state gag law, which was a political hammer at the direction of Citibank to stop State Treasurer Dick Butler's attempts to create transparency with how Citibank handled other people's money in the Unclaimed Property Fund. They got away with that one in plain sight.
When your boss, the Governor, stands for using the full weight of the state legal system to shut down accountability, what do you think his pals who got their patronage jobs are going to do? They have every reason to believe they will get away with it.
Today's news on the Rounds GOED Scandal that, whoops, guess we lost critical records on what they did with the money, mixed with the sad fact that dead men tell no tales, point to how deep the corruption runs.
Keep in mind that the administration in Pierre has known about this since last spring. They've been working explaining things months before you or I had any inkling they existed.
I would like this story to get major play as it is just not right.
The journal reported that each EB-5 investor paid between 30-50k in fees. For NBP alone, this is between 3.6 and 6 million dollars. Add in the Hutterites and dairies, and it is easy to see why Joop was able to take a pay cut when he and Smiling Mike cooked up the SDRC. And now records are, um...'absent'? Absolutely disgraceful.
I like Stace Nelson, and you're right old guy, this story needs to be in the news.
Are you saying those records disappeared between March 2013 and now Rick? That should show somewhere..
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There was transparency in what Butler was going to do until he was taken down by many. Im quite sure Butler had to go outside of SD to get legal counsel he could trust on this matter. Lucky to be alive after all that. There were similar millions to the 32Mil that recently went off shore in records quieted at the time according to the inside story I was told.
And now with the former director(s) of DSS in DD's inner circle, the loop closes: money for nuthin' and your chicks for free.
We have way too many elected officials that think it is their job to carry the bucket for other elected officials that are from the same party, when their duty belongs to the people who elected them. Somebody please explain to me how the EB5 crony capitalism projects were good Republicanism? It appears to go against everything that Republicans believe in. How is it that the media allows Rounds to hide from debates and not answer candid questions about his involvement?
Two years ago my son was in Utah in a treatment program for his Bi-Polar diagnosis. South Dakota Medicaid was paying the bill. He was having a lot of problems with his tonsils and they needed to come out. I contacted SD Medicaid to get a list of doctors and hospitals in Utah that would accept his SD Medicaid card. I was told that this information was not available. "Why not?" I asked. "Because we do not have a list for any state. All Medicaid providers are in alphabetical order in our files and so we have no way to know what state they are in except to go through all of our files." I asked: "Don't you have that information on a computer?" "NO", our computer system is not current enough to put together such a list". I am not surprised that a list of doctors kicked off the Medicaid program was not available. South Dakota's governmental operations are obviously not being managed to keep it up to date with the rest of the nation. No wonder the Governor doesn't want Medicaid expansion. He would have to pay for a new computer system for the Medicaid Administrative Office.