The discussion of the closed-door meeting Republican leaders held with District 27 residents trying to push the fake complaint about Representative Peri Pourier’s qualifications for office raises two questions:
- Sarah Mearhoff reports that “House leadership refused to begin Monday’s meeting until all members of the press left the room.” Why didn’t members of the press simply refuse to leave?
- Why not require every action legislators take under the Dome be a matter of public record?
To the latter end, I propose requiring legislators to wear body cameras. Here are the rules:
- The moment legislators walk into the Capitol, they must don and switch on their body cameras.
- Legislators must wear their cameras everywhere in the Capitol but the bathrooms. Legislators must deposit their cameras in special lockboxes outside the bathroom doors before entering and put them back on the moment they step out of the bathroom.
- Legislators may remove their cameras when they leave the Capitol building.
- Cameras will live cast all footage to the Capitol server.
- All bodycam video and audio will be livestreamed and archived on SD.Net.
- Pages will stock every legislator’s desk with two sets of fresh/fully charged battery packs every morning.
- Alternatively, legislator body cams will be equipped with kinetic chargers.
- Legislators switching their cameras off in the Capitol, obscuring the lens, or otherwise interfering with the cameras’ proper recording and broadcasting will forfeit their per diem for the day of the infraction. Violators of body camera policy may face other disciplinary action from their chamber.
Body cameras would be much more useful for protecting legislators from harassment than the handguns Senator Nelson is trying again to bring into the Capitol with his Senate Bill 50. Instead of serving the dangerous impulses of ammosexuals, let’s serve the interests of the public and Governor Noem and promote transparency in government with body cameras on legislators.
Did the House leadership violate the law?
1-25-1. Official meetings open to the public–Exceptions–Teleconferences–Violation as misdemeanor. The official meetings of the state, its political subdivisions, and any public body of the state or its political subdivisions are open to the public unless a specific law is cited by the state, the political subdivision, or the public body to close the official meeting to the public. For the purposes of this section, a political subdivision or a public body of a political subdivision means any association, authority, board, commission, committee, council, task force, school district, county, city, town, township, or other agency of the state that is created or appointed by statute, ordinance, or resolution and is vested with the authority to exercise any sovereign power derived from state law. For the purposes of this section, an official meeting is any meeting of a quorum of a public body at which official business of that public body is discussed or decided, or public policy is formulated, whether in person or by means of teleconference.
I’d like them wearing body cameras too, but the secretive behavior of the SDGOP will never withstand such scrutiny.
David-you may be on to something! Read more than once one can sure see thus! I’m un favor, Cory, of cameras–they bear watching as they gather their nefarious ways into caucuses” to rule over those that would ‘bypass’ us with trying to bring laws on their own accord!!
I’m OK with that.
I also think every school class should be recorded and available to each parent to watch at their convenience.
grudznick was trying to listen to a Veterans Affairs meeting of the legislatures on Monday so I tuned in on the internets. There was an Army meeting before that, but did you know this Committee of Appropriations is taking executive sessions between every other meeting they have and kicking the press and public out of the room? I am told they do this every day. Is it legal for them to have multiple executive sessions and kick everybody out of the rooms and shut off the internet?
The Veterans Affairs is being run by a shadow committee at trumps palace in Florida. Totally illegal, but to the Russian trump, just another crooked deal.
“U.S. Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie doesn’t want any sunlight on his agency’s “shadow rulers.” By blowing off a recent congressional document request, Wilkie is blocking the public from determining whether a secretive trio of outsiders is calling the shots at the VA.
Wilkie was just confirmed by the Senate in late July. His handling of the data request from the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee raises serious questions about his judgment so early in his tenure. After the scandal involving clinic wait times, public faith in the VA is lagging. Yet Wilkie’s stunning refusal last month to turn over the documents undermines trust even further, creating the damning perception that his priority isn’t veterans but protecting the three outsiders, all of whom belong to President Donald Trump’s glitzy Mar-a-Lago club.” http://www.startribune.com/blocking-va-documents-release-protects-shadow-rulers-not-vets/498070451/
Russian Republicans are all for blocking the views of citizens so they can rob us blind by keeping us in the blind. Now you know Mr. grudznick on why they leave you in the dark.
Better yet, keep the camera’s on when attending all the events after the days session is over. Then we would see how things really work in Pierre.
Bathrooms work well to block female legislators from meetings. The boys’ club will use whatever they can to subvert democracy including hiding in the boys’ room
Fair point, Shirley, but I think we have statutes forbidding use of video cameras in the john. SDCL 22-21-4 frowns on recording in places where folks have a “reasonable expectation of privacy.” Likewise with the after-hours activities: I’m actually offering a pleasant compromise proposal that holds legislators accountable when they are at their official place of work but leaves them room to dine and recreate after the gavel where and how they see fit. We’ll just have to secure our own invites to the buffets and bring our cameras.