an editorial by Dave Baumeister, County Correspondent
Those who follow other news sources, have heard many things about public comments at Sioux Falls City Council meetings over the years. At those meetings all sorts of people come out regularly to talk about a variety of things.
Sometimes comments are about public policy and legitimate citizen concerns, like the guy who measures tree branches over sidewalks and sends out the nasty notes. Or about how a stop light should be put in a certain busy intersection.
Sometimes the comments center around perceived persecutions like, “Why are the cops always picking on me?”
But whomever is talking and whatever they are talking about, our elected officials have an obligation to hear what they have to say.
Until about the last six months ago, the Minnehaha County Commission heard very little during public comment, and most of what they did hear were legitimate matters that were good for the commissioners to know about.
But that all changed last February when the “election denier” crowd started to monopolize public comments, sharing their disproven diatribes from the national stage. When they started, they had one main spokesperson, and we thought she brought up some very legitimate concerns about the large numbers of phantom addresses used for voter registration in South Dakota, but her valid points went downhill quickly when the comments were just taken over by the “Big Lie” people in her group.
However, we never wrote any editorials about those things, as, after all, they were public comments, and therefore being addressed in the proper forum.
Very seldom, but sometimes, their comments were mentioned in news articles, because they played a major role at meetings, but the factual information of what happened at those meetings was always the focus.
We haven’t heard much from the South Dakota Canvassing Group since the primary election in June when their candidate, Leah Anderson, won the Republican nomination for Minnehaha County Auditor through the same “flawed” process they had been complaining about for four months prior, against the same incumbent auditor who they had they also been complaining about during that time, but this week, they were back in force at the commission meeting.
And here is where we saw a disturbing trend. Four of the five people to come up during public comment did not make any comments, they just showed videos of election deniers during a Mike Lindell (the My Pillow Guy) symposium.
The rules for public comment at the county level are that people have five minutes to say whatever they have to say. By splitting up who was showing videos on their phones, they could play everything they wanted.
The one person who didn’t show a video was frequent commenter Gary Meyer of Sioux Falls, who this time talked about non-existent election fraud, CO2 pipelines, his not being allowed to talk about CO2 pipelines, foreign influences of Dan Lederman, and being asked to remove a campaign hat right outside of a polling place.
So, his comments just got lost in a mishmash of “stuff.”
And that was too bad, as Meyer did make some good points.
But we want to suggest to Meyer that he should decide what part of his comments are the most important, and that is what he needs to stick to.
Otherwise, people don’t listen what the speaker may think is most important, they may decide for themselves what is most important, or they may just not listen to anything the speaker has to say.
For ourselves, we are going to conclude what that the county commission might want to make changes in how they conduct public comment.
First, to avoid the situation from Aug. 2, when Meyer didn’t have the oppurtunity to speak on an agenda item during public comment, but then when the agenda item came up, he couldn’t speak because Chairperson Cindy Heiberger announced they would not be taking comment on that particular item, the commissioners may want to move public comment toward the end of their meetings. That way, folks who aren’t allowed to speak at a certain time earlier will always be able to get their “two-cents” in later.
Secondly, “public comment” is time for our Minnehaha County public to talk. It is not for people to play YouTube/Internet streams that people could watch on their own time.
To stop that, commissioners should make a rule to not allow such video presentations.
People can certainly watch the videos on their own, take notes, and report – even verbatim – what was said.
Otherwise, we believe, commissioners and audience members will have to sit through much more internet trash in the future, as people just stand at the podium and show their videos for five minutes, and then pass it on to the next person for five minutes, and so on, until Minnehaha has heard the entire Internet.
At least, if people are required to speak, we know they have put some thought into why they are there.
And we feel our commissioners need to put in some thought, themselves, as to the best ways to make all of their rules better for everyone.
