I continue to be distracted by a surprise late-season tomato bumper crop--none of which I want to throw at South Dakota governor Kristi Noem as she recuperates, now home from back surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.
However tempting that may be in light of her continuing ethics issues, especially with the news dump about the plane on Friday.
Friday, Stephen Groves reported for the Associated Press in Gov. Kristi Noem silent on possible appeal to ethics board:
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem faced a Friday deadline to appeal a state ethics board’s finding that there was evidence she improperly intervened in her daughter’s application for a real estate appraiser license.
The Government Accountability Board voted unanimously last month that there was enough evidence to believe the Republican governor had committed malfeasance and engaged in a conflict of interest.
Noem has maintained she did nothing wrong, but so far the process has been conducted in private. Neither her office nor her reelection campaign answered questions Friday on whether she would proceed to a contested case hearing that would give her a chance to make her case publicly.
The board took unspecified “action” against the governor, and board member Gene Kean said last month that Friday would be the deadline for Noem to respond.
If there is no public hearing, it’s not clear whether the board will release details of the action it took. The board closed the complaint last month but suggested it could be reopened.
A lawyer who has represented the governor before the board also did not respond to questions.
The Associated Press first reported that shortly after a state agency moved in July 2020 to deny Noem’s daughter, Kassidy Peters, an appraiser license, the governor held a meeting with Peters and key decision-makers in her licensure. Days after the meeting, Peters signed an agreement that gave her another opportunity to meet the licensing requirements. The South Dakota Legislature’s audit committee, controlled by Republicans, unanimously approved a report in May that found Noem’s daughter got preferential treatment.
And there's that other inquiry, about the use of the state airplane. Jacob Newton reports in Governor’s Office says flight to daughter’s wedding was part of official business:
Update: KELOLAND News received the following info at 4:43 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 19, 2022.
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — In response to a request for details on the May 30, 2019 flight in question, the South Dakota DOT provided the following info regarding who was on the flight on each leg of the journey.
All legs of the subject flight occurred on May 30, 2019. The legs of the flight and the passengers on board are as follows:
Leg 1 – Pierre to Custer – no passengers on board;
Leg 2 – Custer to Vermillion – Gov. Noem, Beth Hollatz and Ryan Tennyson;
Leg 3 – Vermillion to Aberdeen – Gov. Noem, Beth Hollatz, Ryan Tennyson, Booker Noem,
Nash Grantham, Hunter Arnold, and Jack Ferguson
Leg 4 – Aberdeen to Custer – Gov. Noem, Beth Hollatz, Ryan Tennyson, Booker Noem, Nash
Grantham, Hunter Arnold and Jack Ferguson;
Leg 5 – Custer to Pierre – no passengers on board.The DOT also provided a justification for the flight, echoing Fury’s language from 2021, stating that “if the Governor had not been able to use the state plane that day, hundreds of teenage future community leaders would have been deprived of the opportunity to hear from their Governor and ask her questions.”
The wedding in question occurred three days after Noem was dropped back off in Custer. Along the way, she picked up her son, two nephews and a family friend. . . .
The facts known to KELOLAND are these:
A state plane flew from Pierre to Custer State Park, where it picked up Governor Noem, who was helping prepare her daughter’s wedding, and flew her to speak at Girl’s State in Vermillion. From Vermillion, Noem flew to Aberdeen, where she spoke at Boys State. After Aberdeen, the state plane returned to Pierre, where it is based, but not before detouring back to Custer State Park, where it deposited Noem, along with her son Booker, two nephews and a family friend, all of whom joined the flight at some point. Deputy Chief of Staff Beth Hollatz and Highway Patrol official Ryan Tennyson were also aboard.
Within state law, what exactly constitutes “state business” is not explicitly defined. Fury offered an interpretation that states the entire trip, even the portion from Aberdeen to a private family function before the plane returned to its hanger in Pierre, constitutes state business, because it was returning the Governor from said business. However, that interpretation may be up for debate.
Neil Fulton is the Dean of the University of South Dakota Knutson School of Law. He spoke with KELOLAND News on Friday, noting his views do not represent those of the Law School or the Board of Regents.
Fulton points out an interesting factor in the course of the discussion.
“I think one thing that’s just a little bit curious with some positions, is that it is harder maybe to define the full scope of state business for a constitutional officer, like the governor, or like the Attorney General, who has, you know, a certainly inherent mixing of personal, professional and political to a degree,” Fulton said.
Put simply, there are relatively few situations when the governor is acting fully in personal, political or official capacity. “Sometimes you’re on the clock for all three of those things,” said Fulton.
“Let’s say you go to a college campus and give a speech,” said Fulton. “You’re probably going to talk about higher education, higher education policy, which is very much a state business item. Inherently, there’s a political component of that, right, you’re out in front of potential voters. And in a state like South Dakota, there’s a pretty good chance you’re gonna run into a friend or the kid of a friend and have a personal conversation along the way.” . . .
What may be the crux of the issue is the personal aspect of the trip, which could be argued as being the presence of family, and leg of the flight, from Aberdeen to Custer State Park, of which the entire purpose was to deliver Noem to her daughter’s wedding.
Does the presence of a personal element make the trip a personal one, or does the presence of an official motive override the personal element?
“I would say one of the questions here that I think the statute leaves open is the phrase ‘used only in the conduct of state business’,” said Fulton. “You’re going to have to assess — does that refer to the predominant purpose of a trip? Or are you going to say that if there is any personal component that creeps into it, that trip is tainted?”
Fulton also pointed out that the state statute allows exemptions for personal use for other state vehicles, but not for aircraft.
“I think it’s certainly a plausible reading to look at the statute and say that the legislature thought it could treat airplane usage differently, and more restrictively, in that no one stops off for a gallon of milk on the way home in an airplane,” Fulton said.
This highlights a potential reason for the lack of an exemption for aircraft. While it’s conceivable that an officer driving home in an assigned state vehicle might make a short detour to pick their kid up from school, or to grab a gallon of milk from the store, such detours could seem much less rational in an airplane.
This may be due to the increased distances that planes travel compared to cars, the greater cost of travel, or the regulation with how planes travel, take off and land. There would be a big difference between detouring a few blocks to the local school to pick up your kid, and flying a few hundred miles to do the same.
“There’s a reason you got in your plane and took off and flew to a particular location,” Fulton explained. “You don’t really along the way say, ‘Hey, let’s just swing off and say hi to Bob because we’re driving by his house.’ So I think the different nature of planes and cars is certainly a part of it.”
Fulton says anyone looking to determine if a wrong has been committed will be attempting to parse out the intent of the body that instituted the law in 2006, which was the voting public, who passed it in an election as an initiative. Anyone ruling will likely need to take into account just what the intention was when the law was approved saying “other than in the conduct of state business”.
Currently, that responsibility lies in the Hughes County Courthouse, with State’s Attorney LaMie. . . .
We'll continue processing our harvest and this information.
Photo: Via Associated Press: South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem speaks on Feb. 25, 2022, in Orlando, Fla. A South Dakota ethics board’s finding that Noem may have engaged in misconduct by intervening in her daughter’s application for a real estate appraiser license is likely not the last word on the matter. But exactly how much more comes out on the episode may be up to the Republican governor herself. (AP Photo/John Raoux, File).
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