West River Eagle editor Ross DuBray blows the whistle on the Eagle Butte City Council’s failure to publish reliable minutes:
This has been an ongoing issue with the city for some time, with things getting better for awhile, but now in 2015 and the beginning of 2016, the city has devolved into it’s old ways of missing minutes and fabricating meeting happenings that is then included in the unofficial meeting minutes for publication. Those minutes are then officially recognized and voted at the next meeting of the city council as true and accurate, when in fact they aren’t.
What’s missing? In 2015, the city provided regular meeting minutes for January, March, May, November, and December. No regular meeting minutes for February, April, June, July, August, September, and October were turned in for publication. Fifteen special meeting minutes from 2015 were turned in.
West River Eagle employees have repeatedly sent emails to City Finance Officer Sheila Ganje, requesting that the minutes from those months be turned in for publication but to no avail. In those emails city council representatives were also cc’d to make them aware of the situation. When asked about the minutes, a couple council members who won’t be named stated they were aware of the lack of minutes, but had a nonchalant nothing can be done response [Ross DuBray, “Enough Is Enough,” West River Eagle, 2016.02.25].
DuBray tracks open records violations by the Eagle Butte City Council back to 2007, when no minutes were submitted to the newspaper all year. The South Dakota Newspaper Association apparently pushed the council to publish minutes more reliably with a threat of legal action a couple years ago, but the council has slipped back into sloppy minutes that show official actions that are not discussed during meetings.
The South Dakota Open Meetings Commission needs to step in and lay down some fines. Eagle Butte voters need to step in and lay down some new leadership committed to accurately recording the city’s decisions and finances so voters know where their dollars go.
If they publish the minutes, they would have to pay the newspaper for the space. The less voters know about how their money is being spent, the better for the theft that happens in many small communities.