Our discussion of all the taxpayer dollars our legislators spend to travel out of state leads to an obvious question: why would legislators charge us to go to out-of-state conferences in the first place?
Apparently to sit and watch Deb Peters be awesome:
Sen. Larry Tidemann, R-Brookings, is appropriations co-chairman. Tidemann said South Dakota was “in a unique position” because Sen. Deb Peters, R-Hartford, is chairwoman for the National Conference of State Legislature.
Tidemann said more legislators went to the 2017 NCSL convention to watch Peters take office and he expects many would go again this year [Bob Mercer, “Legislative Roundup: Legislators Learning That Lodging Owners Want More,” Watertown Public Opinion, 2018.01.11].
Seriously, Senator Tidemann? We have to pay for legislators to watch someone else win an organizational title? You can’t just follow Senator Peters on Twitter and send her a nice card?
From Wikipedia: “The National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) is a bipartisan non-governmental organization (NGO) established in 1975 to serve the members and staff of state legislatures of the United States (states, commonwealths, and territories).[1] NCSL has three objectives: to improve the quality and effectiveness of state legislatures; to promote policy innovation and communication among state legislatures; and to ensure state legislatures a strong, cohesive voice in the federal system.”
In my opinion, these are worthy goals–especially for the first two objectives.
In my limited experience, NCSL is an organization worthy of participation in by our state legislators. In short, they have already “invented the wheel and tested it” so that we don’t have to pay to reinvent it in SD.
You could argue that our legislators shouldn’t go anywhere on the public dime given our austerity tax and budgeting system, but NCSL provides a valuable service to our state and all states and should be supported. The last thing we should want is for partisan organizations to fill the void left by the absence of an organization like NCSL. If legislators that go to the NCSL conferences are not careful, they may learn something valuable for their job and our state.
Let it go it’s a bipartisan conference- Just as companies send employees to hear about different things in their particular trade so must Legislators do the same. It’s not funded by any corporations so take a spoon full of sugar to help the medicine go down.
Darin, Debbie, I agree that NCSL is a good organization, worth belonging to and spending money on. My issue here is that Tidemann is saying that a bunch of people went not for all the knowledge and benefits NCSL offers but just to spectate, to clap for Deb Peters. I hope they went beyond boosting Deb’s ego and availed themselves if the learning opportunities NSCL offers. But travel for a mere social opportunity remains unacceptable.
Learning opportunities ? Pretty sure the Republicans learn what they really want to learn at ALEC. Any topic of opportunity from both parties was most likely where to dump the homeless, which state is the best state to shelter your wealth, and what can you do with the money you get to keep by kicking the poor off medicaid.
A couple of Senators may have tried to bring up community trusts but pretty sure that was not well attended by anyone.
Still pick your diversions . I can guarantee you that neither party discussed the real problems.