Watching the Minnesota House met in session yesterday afternoon, I wondered if a Legacy bill had ever passed before on a partisan vote. It seemed that the Republican minority was being contrary for the sake of no on this popular legislation.
Among other provisions, HF1999, as amended, would set this deadline-driven goal so that all waters achieve their designated use, making them swimmable, drinkable, and fishable.
By a 69-59 vote, the House passed the omnibus legacy finance bill Wednesday with its $820.8 million appropriation over the 2024-25 biennium. The bill now moves to the Senate.
“There’s no other state that has this in the entire country,” said Rep. Leon Lillie (DFL-North St. Paul), the bill sponsor.
“Investing in the outdoors, clean water, arts and culture, and parks and trails is an investment in our quality of life,” House Speaker Melissa Hortman (DFL-Brooklyn Park) said in a statement. “For nearly 15 years, the voter-approved Legacy Amendment to Minnesota’s Constitution has funded initiatives that benefit people and communities across our entire state. Today's legislation continues building on that success.”
The Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund would get $195.05 million. Notably, the Minnesota Historical Society could expect $37.5 million to provide statewide historic or cultural grants and support state heritage-related programs. The Indian Affairs Council would receive $4.6 million to preserve Dakota and Ojibwe languages.
For restoration, protection, and enhancement of 121,000 acres of wetlands, prairies, forests, and habitat for fish, game, and wildlife, the Outdoor Heritage Fund would get $171.79 million.
The bill would appropriate $136.61 million to the Parks and Trails Fund, mostly split between the Department of Natural Resources and the Metropolitan Council.
Recipients of both the Parks and Trails Fund and Clean Water Fund appropriations would need to make progress towards providing greater access for people with disabilities “where appropriate.”
Discussion and amendments
In prior hearings, members from both sides of the aisle were upset that few direct appropriations made the cut.
Today, Rep. Kaohly Vang Her (DFL-St. Paul) said she appreciates the structural changes, which she believes makes funding more accessible to smaller, often marginalized groups and organizations.
“It more than doubles the amount of funding for cultural identity grants to BIPOC and LGBTQ organizations … and for the first time ever, the legacy funds are investing $1.5 million in capacity-building for small organizations that have historically lacked resources to submit grant applications or try to get funding in other ways,” said House Majority Leader Jamie Long (DFL-Mpls).
Despite voting against the bill in committee, Rep. Samakab Hussein (DFL-St. Paul) said he now supports the investments for younger Minnesotans.
Rep. Josh Heintzeman (R-Nisswa) successfully offered two amendments, including a provision to prohibit money from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund being used to promote “domestic terrorism or criminal activities.” The other would bar funding for organizations with sexual assault or sexual harassment judgements within the last two years against someone in a leadership position.
House Minority Leader Lisa Demuth (R-Cold Spring) has “grave concerns” about the bill, but is pleased the amendments were adopted, saying: “Those were the right decisions for Minnesotans. Those were the right decisions to make sure that our tax dollars are not going to fund criminals.
Here's the Minnesota House Information Services YpuTube of the floor debate:
With just under six weeks (at most) left in the legislative session, much budget work has now been funneled to the House Ways and Means Committee, a final opportunity to shape omnibus bills before they hit the House Floor.
It’s also an opportunity to better match with similar topical omnibus bills moving through the Senate. That is why five bills on the committee docket became four Tuesday.
That bill was then approved, as amended, on a split-voice vote and sent to the House Floor.
Before the bills were combined, the committee also adopted an amendment to the climate and energy omnibus bill which would codify an agreement between Xcel Energy and the Prairie Island Indian Community about payments for storage of nuclear waste. But Rep. Patty Acomb (DFL-Minnetonka), the bill sponsor, said the Senate may have a different take and conversations on the issue would continue. . . .
Photo: Rep. Leon Lillie introduces HF1999, the omnibus legacy finance bill, on the House Floor April 12. It was passed 69-59. (Photo by Catherine Davis Session Daily).
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Failed South Dakota Senate candidate Joel Koskan was sentenced to a decade in prison on Tuesday, April 11, on two counts of incest.
The 44-year-old Wood, South Dakota, resident appeared in a Hughes County courtroom on Tuesday for what had originally been a case involving one count of child abuse. In the hearing, Koskan pleaded guilty to two counts of incest.
Judge Margo Northrup sentenced Koskan to 10 years in prison, with no time suspended. . . .
. . . Koskan, 44, originally faced felony child abuse charges for acts that allegedly took place between October 2014 and October 2016, according to court documents filed in November. He exposed his victim, a now 20-year-old woman, to "sexual grooming behaviors." . . .
Northrup, in her sentencing decision, explained it is society's duty to protect children, especially foster children. Koskan took advantage of a child, she said. She then looked at the victim, who had been crying off and on during the 30-minute hearing.
Former legislative candidate Joel Koskan was sentenced to 10 years in state prison on Tuesday after pleading guilty to two felony counts of incest, according to the Attorney General’s Office.
The charges stemmed from sexual activity with an adopted child. Charges were filed against Koskan in November, just days before the general election in which he was running as a Republican for a state Senate seat. Koskan, from the rural community of Wood in Mellette County, lost the race but received 42 percent of the votes cast.
Attorney General Marty Jackley praised the victim for showing courage and the investigators and prosecutors for their work.
“Justice has been served in this case because the victim overcame extraordinary conditions to cooperate with the prosecution,” Jackley said in a news release.
Circuit Court Judge Margo Northrup accepted Koskan’s guilty plea Tuesday in a Hughes County courtroom in Pierre. Koskan waived his right to a delay in his sentencing and was immediately sentenced. In addition to the prison time, he was ordered to pay more than $20,000 in fines.
Photo: Koskan leaves the courtroom after pleading guilty to two charges of felony incest. By Anne Todd, Sioux Falls Argus Leader.
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On Tuesday night, though, the Big Lie returns to the town by the Mississippi River, in the person of Midwest Swamp Watch's Rick Weible, a self-proclaimed "tax refugee" whose wife Gretchen Weible, was campaign manager for South Dakota Secretary of State Monae Johnson, who snatched the Republican endorsement and the statewide office from a sitting Republican incumbent.
A former small-town Minnesota mayor and a retired Army captain from Texas have been traveling the state claiming the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump and other Republicans, including GOP U.S. Senate candidate Jason Lewis.
Trump supporters and members of the “America First” movement, armed with the sophisticated-seeming but ultimately debunked statistical analysis, have bombarded local and state election officials with questions, demands for “audits” and even threats about unfounded election conspiracy claims. The secretary of state’s office gets a steady stream of messages on email and social media saying things like “You’re going to jail tomorrow,” or “U.S. marshals are knocking.”
The cowboy and the self-described nerd drew hundreds of people to what they call “Behind the Election Corruption Curtain” events in Brainerd in December, and Monticello last month. . . .
He leaves the “figuring out” to people like Rick Weible, who took the Monticello stage after Keshel, quickly noting that he wears glasses.
“Yeah, I’m that guy,” he said. “I’m a geek. I’m a nerd.”
The former mayor of St. Bonifacius, Minn., Weible has been posting YouTube videos for about a year — he calls it Midwest SwampWatch — laying out election fraud claims in Minnesota.
Weible claims 39% of ballots cast in Minnesota in 2020 can’t be “connected” to registered voters — including 700,000 absentee ballots. In Dakota County, for example, 666 ballots aren’t “connected” to voters, he said.
He’s trying to track the total number of voters with a list of registered voters and their voting histories — which campaigns and political groups use to target voters.
Hailperin said Weible is simply unaware of how the voter file works.
The list of registered voters doesn’t include people who ask to be omitted, or people who have died or moved since the election. It’s not possible for private citizens to match ballots with voters, Hailperin said, especially when counties have six weeks after the election to update the voter histories, and they can get extensions.
Hailperin allowed that it’s reasonable for Weible to ask why some counties were so slow to post voter histories, perhaps because they didn’t have the staff or resources. He added, however, that the voter history file has never been a complete list, nor does it instantly come into existence the day the election is over.
Weible disagreed, saying the two databases should match up.
Hailpersin also said he reached out to Weible and has spoken to him at length, telling him he misunderstands the system. Weible is still doing presentations on what Hailperin calls the “dog and pony show circuit.”
“Weible knows a fair bit, but he also is missing lots of pieces and he is more than happy to blow through what might be stop signs,” Hailperin said. “I think the real thing is just that he’s a very committed believer that our government ought to be in different hands.”
Pushing elected officials, including sheriffs, for action
Weible said he’s done more than 20 such presentations since January 2021. He said they’ve gone from being “data-driven” to “action-oriented,” because the Republican Party’s official apparatus won’t take action.
An estimated 400 people attended the Brainerd event, and surely contributed to a groundswell of conservatives who urged Crow Wing County officials for months to look into unspecified fraud. The county board voted Jan. 4 to call for a “full forensic audit” of the 2020 election — even though Trump won the county by 30 points.
In October, Rep. Glenn Gruenhagen, R-Glencoe, repeated some of Weibel’s claims in a YouTube video, according to theHutchinson Leader.
And a Republican candidate for secretary of state, Kim Crockett, handed out literature at the Brainerd event, and called Weible a “voter data hero” on Facebook.
Simon, who is running for reelection, called Crockett’s behavior “bizarre.”
“It doesn’t inspire confidence that she’s associating herself with fringe conspiracy groups,” Simon said.
Simon said this “cloud of disinformation” is a huge problem, and people are spreading it for political and financial reasons.
“It’s wishful thinking and made-up fantasies,” Simon said. “And it’s very easy to grasp at all the reasons why you lost an election other than the fact that more people voted for the entity that you didn’t like.”
Weible makes other claims, at one point showing a photo of what he said were people with bags of ballots in Dakota County for a post-election review, suggesting they weren’t properly secured.
Simon said the ballots are kept “under lock and key” but they do have to be transported from one place to another. Hailperin said the photo may look bad, it was already offered as evidence in one of many election fraud claims filed by attorney Susan Shogren Smith. The suit went nowhere, and Shogren Smith was socked with a $10,000 sanction in March after a judge said she bamboozled voters into signing on as plaintiffs without their knowledge in a lawsuit contesting election results.
Asked about his background in elections, Weible cited his 10 years as mayor, during which he sat on ballot boards and canvassing boards and helped candidates review, challenge and defend elections. He said he also does forensic data analysis for companies. His business helps small businesses and nonprofits with everything from Quickbooks to advertising, designing software and collecting money.
He said he became a “tax refugee” four years ago and moved across the border to Brookings, S.D. Although the Monticello presentation was sponsored by a “generous donor” and a hat was passed for money, Weible said in the end the presentations cost him money. He said donations are used for web hosting fees, software licensing and voter list fees.
He wants to see Minnesota ban the use of vote drop boxes and mail-in ballots and the practice of “vouching” for other voters. He favors limiting absentee voting to 14 days. He said if he can get the Legislature and secretary of state to take action, “My job is done.”
Which signals what might be the ultimate goal: Not overturning the 2020 election, or even persuading a majority of people it was fixed, but pushing Republicans to enact tighter regulations on voting.
And, it’s no coincidence, Democrats say, that these regulations would likely suppress Democratic turnout. . . .
Bluestem was under the impression that refugees couldn't return to the homelands they fled or were forced from, but perhaps we're old-fashioned.
The earlier meeting in Monticello was covered by the editor of the Patriot News, the local paper in Becker, MN, in an October 28, 2021 article: Does Minnesota have election integrity?. Editor Bill Morgan appears to have done no fact checking on any of Weible's claims. Part of those:
Last Saturday, about a dozen or so concerned citizens from Central Minnesota joined a group of ladies who organized an informational analysis of the 2020 local election. The event was held at a local establishment in Becker.
The integrity of the 2020 election continues to make national headlines and spark debate in numerous states across America, and Minnesota is no exception.
Rick Weible, former Minnesota GOP operative and for St. Bonifacius mayor, was the featured speaker who taught the guests how to participate and prevent voter fraud from happening in future elections.
“I don’t have an official ‘title’ other than curious,” said Weible. “Curious in, ‘what happened in Minnesota?’”
Weible has his own consulting company right here in Minnesota in which he works on computers for small and mid-size companies.
“That has led me into basically two different areas in computer technologies but also analyzing databases and numbers and stuff like that.” he says. I also help people with accounting audits, forensic audits, hard drive recoveries, all that stuff.”
Weible says he looks at data and looks at different connections that help owners re-imagine their business.
Saturday’s event was entitled, “Question the Election Results?” and featured Weible describing the Minnesota election timeline issues, the problems with absentee voting, missing data and ballots and how “39% of Minnesota ballots were not connected to a registered voter as of Nov. 29, 2020, five days after the Minnesota canvassing board met and certified the election on Nov. 24.” ...
And the audience?
Those in attendance at Saturday’s event included Rep. Shane Mekeland, Big Lake Mayor Paul Knier, Big Lake Council Member Paul Seefeld, local citizen Wanda Woolhouse and a couple from Cambridge in Isanti County who stayed around to talk to Weible following the event about a Positive Psychology program called “The Orange Frog/Happiness Advantage Initiative,” which the county commissioners are attempting to pass. . . .
“We have found monsters lurking, we have studied and analyzed these creatures who have manipulated the elections, manipulated the laws — how they say they really care but they don’t,” says Weible.
Weibel returned to the newspaper's coverage area at least twice in 2022. The paper covered his late May presentation to the Big Lake city council in BL City hears voting integrity concerns, and a mid-July Sherburne County Board Meeting in Debate over election security continues. One concern, reported in the latter article's second papagraph:
About 100 people crowded the board room, many to either speak at the open forum or listen to testimony about what could go wrong with the Dominion voting system used in the county.
Images: Top: the announcement for Tuesday's presentation in Monticello, via social media. Bottom: Weibel gave a presentation on the 2020 election and the data problems he has analyzed and reported on to the State of Minnesota. (Patriot Photo by Bill Morgan)
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A massive new report details the University of Minnesota’s long history of mistreating the state’s Native people and lays out recommendations, including “perpetual reparations,” to improve relations between the university and Minnesota’s 11 tribal nations.
Among its troubling findings, the report by the TRUTH (Towards Recognition and University-Tribal Healing) Project concludes:
The U’s founding board of regents “committed genocide and ethnic cleansing of Indigenous peoples for financial gain, using the institution as a shell corporation through which to launder lands and resources.”
The U’s permanent trust fund controls roughly $600 million in royalties from iron ore mining, timber sales and other revenues derived from land taken from the Ojibwe and the Dakota.
The university has contributed to the “erasure” of Native people by failing to teach a full history of the land on which it was founded.
Researchers didn’t put a dollar figure to their call for reparations but urged the University to do more to help tribal nations, including providing full tuition waivers to “all Indigenous people and descendants” and hiring more Native staff and faculty. . . .
The TRUTH effort draws on archival records, oral histories and other sources to examine through an Indigenous lens the troubled history between Native people and the state’s flagship university.
It launched following a series of reports in the publication High Country News in 2020 revealing how universities around the country were founded on the proceeds of land taken from tribes through the 1862 Morrill Act.
That included a financial bonanza — dubbed the “Minnesota windfall” — that channeled more than $500 million to the fledgling University of Minnesota from leases and sales of land taken from the Dakota after the federal government hanged 38 Dakota men in Mankato, Minn., in December 1862, ending the U.S.-Dakota war. . . .
That's certainly a story I've heard about the consequences of the 1862 War from my romantic partner, a Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate citizen whose family lived on the Dakota reservation along the upper Minnesota River before and at the time of the war.
The Towards Recognition and University-Tribal Healing—TRUTH—project is a Native-organized, Native-led, community-driven research movement that offers multiple recommendations on how the University of Minnesota community can be in better relation with Indigenous peoples. Few universities had ever considered the contemporary impacts of their formations from the land dispossession used to create the Morrill Act of 1862 until Robert Lee and Tristan Ahtone published “Land Grab Universities” (High Country News, 2020) and the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council called for such an accounting of Mni Sóta Maḳoce’s land grab. The first of its kind, TRUTH is an exploratory study to assess what has been erased and effaced in order to reclaim what was grabbed by the University of Minnesota. TRUTH uses place-based, Tribally-led research designed to, for the first time, tell the story of Tribal-University relations from an Indigenous perspective. This is done through the centering of land, practicing relationality and amplifying Tribal voices.
Here's the report that's on the TRUTH Project webpage:
Photo: From left, Misty Blue, An Garagiola, and Audrianna Goodwin. The three worked on the TRUTH Project, helping produce the massive report released Tuesday examining the university's long, troubling history of mistreating Minnesota's Native people.Kerem Yücel | MPR News 2022.
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Heat pumps, induction stoves and other electric devices are increasingly seen as key to a clean energy future. And most new homes have electric service robust enough to handle them.
But older homes were not designed for big electrical loads, and millions will require updates before those new appliances can be safely plugged in.
In states like Minnesota, where old homes with natural gas furnaces and water heaters are common, upgrading electric panels “is going to be huge,” said Eric Fowler, senior policy associate for buildings at Fresh Energy, a clean energy advocacy group that also publishes the Energy News Network. “As we move toward electrification, that bottleneck is going to be the electric panel.”
In Minneapolis alone, the Center for Energy and Environment estimates owners of one- to four-unit buildings could spend between $164 million and $213 million to improve electric service. Pecan Street, a national research organization, found at least 48 million homes nationally may need electric panel upgrades.
And while changing out the electrical panel itself is fairly straightforward, bringing an older home with 60 or 100 amp service to a modern standard of 200 amps may require more extensive utility upgrades that can rack up thousands of dollars in additional costs.
Fowler said electricians modernize the panel of circuit breakers and, if needed, conduct a “service upgrade” to improve the wiring to carry more current between the home and the electric grid. “That upgrade cost can vary wildly, especially if it requires digging underground, potentially under pavement that will need repair,” he said.
One potential solution is a “smart panel” that could help manage the load, eliminating the need for a bigger utility line. While all the electrical devices running simultaneously could overwhelm a 100 amp service, a smart panel would manage those loads to ensure that limit is never reached.
“A smart panel lets you do the first upgrade without the second — you can manage more circuits with the same amount of electricity with slight adjustments in the timing of your electricity use,” Fowler said.
Legislature considering incentives
The Minnesota Legislature is considering House and Senate bills offering income-eligible grants to owners of homes and apartments to upgrade their electric panels to a higher amperage or purchase smart panels. The federal Inflation Reduction Act also contains home electrification incentives that could be applied to smart panel investments.
Connexus Energy, the state’s largest member-owned electric cooperative, has been promoting the technology to members. Rob Davis, communications lead for Connexus, said a coalition of businesses and clean energy advocacy groups support the measure and asked legislators to include smart panels.
While smart panels can save money over major utility upgrades, they are still an expensive undertaking. Angie’s List reported the average cost to upgrade an electric panel is $1,230, but that sum increases considerably if the project requires a new panel, additional rewiring and equipment, switches, and so forth. Some upgrades could cost thousands of dollars, especially on older homes.
The SPAN smart panel costs $4,500, not including installation, taxes and shipping. Schneider Electric’s Square D Energy Center Smart Panel lists at $2,999 but for now is only available in California. It also has a smart panel, Pulse, which works in conjunction with other appliances as part of a home energy management system that, if fully installed, will cost around $10,000, according to Wired. Lumin’s smart panel starts at $3,150.
Twin Cities Habitat for Humanity’s Mike Robertson manages Brush With Kindness, which repairs and paints existing homes. He believes the state assistance program would help low-income residents replace aging fuse boxes with devices capable of managing new electric demands.
“Historically, with this kind of technology, the early adopters tend to be rich White people, right?” he said. “If you’re having an equitable approach to decarbonization, then you have to think about disinvested communities, communities of color, where the difference in the utility bill and indoor air quality makes a difference in their lives.”
Common panels versus smart panels
In Minnesota, Connexus has featured SPAN at a contractor event and its staff is familiar with the product. Principal technology engineer Tom Guttormson explained that power from utilities enters buildings through panels, which redistribute electricity through branch circuits to power lights, home sections and devices.
Panels have a main circuit breaker and smaller breakers. If you connect devices that, in the aggregate, draw too much power from one circuit, then it trips the main breaker, cutting power to the entire building. Building owners can usually switch the circuit back on themselves after turning off an appliance that might be causing the problem.
Common electric panels “are not intelligent devices,” he said. “New smart panels can provide the ability to monitor and control power flowing to various devices, and even let the users see the usage with a mobile device app.”
Smart panels will help consumers take advantage of time-of-use rates by allowing them to turn off home heating and cooling, electric vehicle charging, or appliances during peak demand times, he said. Those with solar could benefit, too, by selling energy during high-demand periods.
For utilities, intelligent panels provide an opportunity to improve load management and could reduce the need for widespread and costly capacity upgrades of transformers and other grid infrastructure, Guttormson said.
“We need to work together to optimize how all this works,” he said. “These conversations are ongoing, but it is all starting. This is all new territory.”
‘Great peace of mind’
Hannah Bascom, a vice president at SPAN, learned from working at the thermostat company Nest that consumers need time to understand how new home products can improve their lives. As more companies develop smart panels, a product category will emerge and sales should grow, she said.
“The electrical panel is very well positioned to be the central artery in the brain of the home,” she said. “You can understand whole-home energy consumption by circuit by device type, and that is rich data not from the customer experience perspective but from connecting to load management programs in the future.”
A SPAN customer in Lanesboro, a small southeast tourist outpost in Minnesota, said that after just a few months of using one, he’s discovered the data has helped him save money. Joe Deden, the founder of Eagle Bluff Environmental Learning Center, built a new all-electric home with his wife, Mary, that features Tesla solar shingles on a sharply pitched roof, a Tesla Powerwall battery, and all-electric appliances.
Deden wanted a smart panel to direct energy to heating, battery storage, or other devices and to manage loads. Offering an example, he said during a below-zero day the electric backup boiler started operating, consuming three times the energy of his air-source heat pump.
After turning off the boiler, the heat pump maintained a good temperature in the home, using far less energy. He said with the panel he could show his electrician and heating technician “that something was amiss” in the heating system that would require some adjustments. Accessing household appliance data is one of the strengths of smart panels, Deden said.
Being able to easily turn off power to his office or other parts of the home to “save a load” when not needed is another advantage. “The ability to monitor and shed loads remotely is the key,” he said. “Being able to see remotely what’s happening and to be able to control things is, to me, a great peace of mind.”
This article first appeared on Energy News Network and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Photo: An electrician prepares to upgrade a 100 amp electric panel in a Minneapolis home. Photo by Jo Olson.
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BNSF tracks run through the northern end of Summit, South Dakota, home to Bluestem Prairie world headquarters. Often, long "unit trains" go through town--occasionally, I've had to wait a while at the crossings while the train passes. The tracks are about six blocks from my home.
The True Dangers of Long Trains By Dan Schwartz and Topher Sanders, with additional reporting by Gabriel Sandoval and Danelle Morton, graphics by Haisam Hussein
JUST BEFORE 5 A.M., Harry Shaffer’s wife called to him from across the living room, where he’d fallen asleep on the couch, exhausted from installing an aboveground pool. Did he hear that sound, that metallic screeching from up the valley? She opened the door of their double-wide trailer and walked outside as Shaffer closed his eyes.
A moment later came a thunderous crack of splintering lumber. Debris shot through the living room. Shaffer opened his eyes again to find a hulking train car steps from where he lay. It had shorn off the roof, exposing the murk of the pre-dawn sky. He jumped up and ran outside and saw the garage next door in flames.
Though it sat at the floor of a valley along a busy stretch of railroad tracks, the quiet town of Hyndman, Pennsylvania, hadn’t seen a major derailment in recent memory. Trains didn’t frighten residents like Shaffer even though 21 of them trundled through the town’s center day and night.
But unbeknownst to them, the corporations that ran those trains had recently adopted a moneymaking strategy to move cargo faster than ever, with fewer workers, on trains that are consistently longer than at any time in history. Driven by the efficiency goals of precision scheduled railroading, companies are forgoing long-held safety precautions, such as assembling trains to distribute weight and risk or taking the proper time to inspect them, ProPublica found. Instead, their rushed workers are stringing together trains that stretch for 2 or even 3 miles, sometimes without regard for the delicate physics of keeping heavy, often combustible tanker cars from jumping off the tracks.
Rail safety grabbed headlines this February after a Norfolk Southern train passed sensors designed to flag mechanical issues and catastrophically derailed in East Palestine, Ohio; Republicans and Democrats alike are now calling for tighter regulations on company operations, especially in light of precision scheduled railroading.
ProPublica’s reporting suggests they should start by looking at federal regulators’ ponderous response to the mounting warnings about the dangers of long freight trains.
Before that morning in Hyndman in August 2017, regulators had already investigated seven long-train accidents in which the length was a culprit, and the nation’s largest rail worker union had sounded alarms about a pattern of problems.
None of this caused the Federal Railroad Administration, the agency in charge of train safety, to intercede — even as more long trains crashed in the years after the Hyndman derailment, sending cars spilling into other communities.
Today, the rail administration says it lacks enough evidence that long trains pose a particular risk. But ProPublica discovered it is a quandary of the agency’s own making: It doesn’t require companies to provide certain basic information after accidents — notably, the length of the train — that would allow it to assess once and for all the extent of the danger.
“It’s one of our biggest frustrations, without question,” said Jared Cassity, the alternate national legislative director for the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers, or SMART. The union representative said the agency can track train length for accidents “and they’ve chosen not to.”
In the absence of data, the industry insists that long trains have actually helped to improve rail safety, pointing to an overall decline in derailments. The Association of American Railroads, the industry lobby, says safety is the priority when building long trains and notes that regulators have never cited length as the direct cause of an accident. The nation’s seven largest rail companies, the so-called Class 1s, echo these points, defending their safety practices and saying that PSR has led to fewer problems.
To make sense of this gap in information, ProPublica reviewed court and regulatory records of thousands of incidents involving trains of all lengths, as well as technical and investigative notes in federal files from nearly two decades of long-train incidents. We conducted more than 200 interviews, including candid conversations with rail personnel who described how companies have sidestepped best practices when building and running long trains. Then we went to Hyndman to learn what happens to a community in the aftermath of a preventable catastrophe, uncovering damage that cannot be repaired, even with millions in rail company checks.
That summer morning, the sky was burning red when Shaffer, a thin, stoic man of 50, surveyed his neighborhood. Mounds of what looked like grain had spilled from the train cars and molten sulfur, like lava, crawled across the grass. He spotted his wife standing on a neighbor’s porch, but before he could process the relief, he saw another neighbor, Kristina Sutphin, screaming from a second-story window. “Help me!” she yelled. “I can’t get out!”
Sutphin, 27, had thought it was an earthquake when her house started shaking, and she’d rolled on top of her 2-year-old daughter, Mia, to protect her. When it stopped, she hit the lights and found drywall dust everywhere. Her house, too, had been struck by a train car, knocking a wall panel studded with nails over the stairs, trapping her and her daughter as the fire outside grew.
Shaffer ran for a ladder, but the train car had demolished one side of his home, including the bedroom where, on any other night, he and his wife would have been sleeping and where his German shepherd, Diamond, had her kennel. He couldn’t see Diamond, and he wouldn’t learn until a few days later that she had been crushed to death.
By the time he got to Sutphin, her brother had run across the street and a neighbor had arrived with a ladder. Her brother climbed up and carried Mia down as Sutphin followed behind. Volunteer firefighters, fear on their faces, raced door to door, urging people to evacuate.
For longtime residents, it felt like another dark chapter: In 1949, a Christmas tree fire burned through dozens of businesses and homes; a flood in 1984 lapped at door frames and swamped basements; and in 1996, another flood submerged window sills in brown, swirling water.
But this disaster, thought Bobby Walls, Hyndman’s 36-year-old emergency manager, was something else. He’d grown up in Hyndman, starting a family in the green, peaceful valley. Now a flaming geyser towered over the rooftops, and Walls wondered: Was anyone dead? As he ran toward the blaze in his firefighting gear, Walls didn’t know that the tanker car at its center contained propane — enough that if it erupted and set off the six others around it, the explosion could engulf the entire town of some 900 people.
The tanker car still howled about seven hours later as Walls and a number of first responders waited in a cinderblock-walled classroom for word from a train company crew that was monitoring the fire. Then, the door flung open. The room quieted as a CSX worker hustled to the whiteboard and began to write.
The tanker car is rapidly failing.
An explosion is imminent.
We need to evacuate now.
FOR GENERATIONS, railroad workers considered a 1.4-mile-long train huge.
Then Hunter Harrison came along.
Harrison was a railroading innovator with only a high school education, hired as a car oiler in a Memphis yard in 1963. By the 1980s, he had moved into the top management of Illinois Central, a carrier he viewed as bloated and fatally unprofitable. It was an era when most railroads, including his, had an operating ratio in the 90s, meaning that the company had to spend about 90 cents to make a dollar and was netting less than a dime, or 10%, in profit.
Harrison, a self-described “stern, disciplinarian taskmaster,” was obsessed with efficiency. At a time when other executives feared computers, he used them to track every boxcar and locomotive and learned which ones sat idle. “Railroads,” he once said, according to the biography “Railroader,” “only make money when cars are moving. ... So why would we lay down tracks just to have cars sit idle?”
When he became CEO in 1993, Harrison looked for even the smallest ways to cut costs, from tearing up unused tracks to eliminating document storage and overnight stays for train crews. By 1998, he had managed to drop the operating ratio to 62.3, a significant jump in profitability. But the savings were never enough. He flew around in a corporate jet with a tail number that read OR59, his aspirational operating ratio.
In the years that followed, Harrison made his mark as a senior leader at Canadian National after it acquired Illinois Central; he sold off 35% of its locomotive fleet and focused on moving cars in and out of yards at breakneck speeds. To do this, the employees had to work harder, and so did the trains. “I’m impatient,” he once told Progressive Railroading. “I’m also demanding. But I’m asking people to stretch.” By then, he was CEO.
Longer trains would become integral to the management philosophy he dubbed precision scheduled railroading. The rail industry makes its money by the weight and distance of the freight it hauls. A long train makes in one trip what a short train would make in two or three or four, and with fewer employees. There was no need to design a new breed of super trains; these behemoths could be built from more of the same components: more cars with engines spliced into midsections to help move, and stop, more weight.
By 2013, Harrison was CEO of Canadian Pacific when he wrote in its annual report: “We’re driving longer and longer trains, which means fewer train starts, faster network velocity and better service at lower cost.”
America’s largest railroads took note. They began making their trains longer and their staffing margins smaller; in 2015, companies started laying off what would become a fifth of the workforce at the largest railroads. That year, CSX bragged to its investors about its “train length initiative” and how longer trains helped to reduce staff needs. Harrison left Canadian Pacific to run CSX in 2017; that year, the company reported $249 million in “efficiency savings.” CSX told ProPublica that it “impugns the assertion that its management philosophy promotes dangerous practices.”
Harrison died nine months after taking over CSX, but he’d already secured his legacy. Many of the biggest railroad companies operating in the U.S. had adopted precision scheduled railroading. They were running long trains. The Association of American Railroads told ProPublica the industry has been safely running long trains for more than 80 years. It says they are more fuel efficient and allow companies to run fewer trains, which means fewer chances of collisions at railroad crossings.
In April 2017, the Federal Railroad Administration got a letter from the nation’s largest railroad union, SMART. Workers had been seeing troubling patterns related to these long trains, wrote John Risch, the union’s national legislative director at the time. “While I am fully aware that there are no federal regulations limiting the size of trains, running these monster trains [is] inherently unsafe and FRA has broad authority to investigate the practice and put an end to it.”
By the time Risch sent his note, the agency was well aware that the growing length of trains was creating unique issues. ProPublica’s review of more than 600 investigative reports on train accidents over almost two decades found that the FRA had known of problems for years.
The reports revealed that some long trains were too big to fit into sidings off of main tracks that were often built to accommodate trains no longer than 1.4 miles, and passing trains were crashing into their rear ends. It happened in September 2005 when a 1.5-mile-long BNSF train tried to fit into a siding in Missouri that was 1.4 miles long. The same thing happened the following year in Utah to a 1.5-mile-long Union Pacific train.
The hulking trains could generate forces powerful enough to break the heavy-duty materials their cars were made of. In March 2008, the rear end of a 1.5-mile-long BNSF train ran forward as the front of the train decelerated, sandwiching the train and cracking an old repair on a tanker car. The train broke in two in Minnesota, dumping 20,000 gallons of ethylene glycol, commonly used in antifreeze, into a tributary of the Mississippi River.
And long trains that were assembled with too much weight in the rear and too little up front were hurtling out of control and jumping off of tracks. It happened in Virginia in 2006, in Wisconsin in 2015 and in Iowa in May 2017. Short trains can derail in the same way, but experts say longer trains can cause more damage when they fling dozens of cars and their contents through neighborhoods.
The companies involved in these accidents did not comment on them specifically, but Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern, in separate statements, said they spend more than $1 billion annually maintaining and improving infrastructure for safety and work closely with regulators. See what they said about their broader safety practices here. BNSF did not reply to a request for comment.
On July 31, 2017, CSX assembled Train Q38831 in a rail yard in Chicago, destined for a city outside of Hyndman. It had five locomotives at the front and 136 cars trailing behind, about half hauling hazardous material: propane, isobutane, ethyl alcohol, phosphoric acid and molten sulfur heated to 235 degrees Fahrenheit. It was a bomb train, as some workers refer to them, given its combustible cargo. When it left the yard and traveled east, the train grew. In Lordstown, Ohio, workers added 28 cars. In New Castle, Pennsylvania, they added 14. Now the train was 2 miles long.
Engineer Donald Sager, who boarded the train on the night of Aug. 1 in Connellsville, Pennsylvania, about 50 miles west of Hyndman, was uncomfortable with it. It was, he later told federal investigators, “big and heavy and ugly.” It had 38 empty cars near the front with almost all the train’s tonnage behind them, so the empty cars would be lurching around as all that weight bore down on them. He said the train would be bucking.
Sager took the train with his conductor, James Beitzel, from the Connellsville yard at 8:28 p.m. under a clouded sky and began climbing the backside of the mountain outside Hyndman. The climb was steep and the train needed a push from an extra locomotive, which coupled onto the rear. The locomotive broke off when the bulk of the train crested the mountain, passing a sign that read: “Summit of Alleghenies, Altitude 2258.”
THE LONG, WINDING DESCENT into Hyndman is one of the steepest in all of CSX territory, and the train weighed 18,252 tons, heavier than 200 fueled and loaded Boeing 737s. An engineer on a train like that has to closely watch the speed. It’s best to operate the brakes proactively, but as the train started down the mountain, Sager’s instruments were telling him the air brakes were beginning to fail. He stopped the train at 11:36 p.m. and radioed dispatchers.
“Got a problem with the train.”
Beitzel climbed down from the engine with his light and began walking in the gravel along the tracks. He had to manually set the brakes on 30% of the cars to be sure the train didn’t start moving on its own. Per company rules, he applied them on 58 cars near the front, cranking around and around a big steel wheel at the end of each car. Then Beitzel walked nearly 2 miles to the rear, where he found the problem at Car 159. A brake line had cracked and air was hissing out. That type of malfunction typically affects the brakes on all of the cars, like a chain reaction.
About two and a half hours later, when he finally got back, his shift had ended and Sager was briefing a new crew. Mechanics replaced the brake line while Ron Main, the new engineer, and Michael Bobb, the new conductor, waited. It was around 2 a.m. The train wouldn’t budge with the hand brakes on, so Bobb climbed down and walked back, knocking off brakes as he went. He released 25 and left the remaining set because the descent was steep, a practice at odds with accepted rail safety then and now, investigators and railroad workers say. Then finally, at 4:17 a.m., the train began rolling down the valley into Hyndman.
Bobb’s approach created a dangerous problem, investigators would later conclude. The 33 cars with hand brakes left on were toward the head of the train, and 13 of those were empty. There were also 25 other empty cars near the front. This meant the lightest section of the train was doing the bulk of the braking. It also meant that the heaviest section of the train — literally the rest of it — was bearing down on them. Such forces can pop empties or lightly loaded cars off the tracks, as had already happened in at least three long-train derailments investigated by the FRA.
The other part of the problem was in the hand brakes themselves. They play the same role as emergency brakes in an automobile; conductors usually put them on when they need to park a train. Applied and functioning properly, they immobilize a train car’s wheels. But driving a train with the hand brakes set can damage it, and that’s what happened to the Hyndman train. Its speed fluctuated as its locked steel wheels ground along the tracks, beginning to deform and lose purchase.
It’d be easy to blame Bobb or Main for what was about to happen. But they were only following CSX policy when they set the hand brakes on this huge, heavy train and sent it rolling down the long, steep hill. A safe and proper move would have been to break the train into two at the top of the hill and drive each section down separately, said Grady Cothen, a former FRA attorney who has written a widely cited white paper on the challenges of operating longer trains. But it would have taken more time, and the train was already delayed. CSX at the time was the only one of the seven largest train companies to allow the use of hand brakes to control the speed of a train down a hill.
It would also be easy to blame the crew in New Castle that had added eight empty and six loaded cars to the head of the train, making it longer and less stable. Or the crew before it in Lordstown that added 28 cars, all empty, to the head of the train. But these crews, too, were following a CSX policy, which dictated they could ignore a more sensible policy — don’t put so many loaded cars behind empties — if they were pressed for time. It was a risky edict considering crews are always pressed for time in the age of precision scheduled railroading.
That August morning, the train hit a speed of 29 miles an hour as it reached the bottom of the hill, passing the house where Shaffer slept on his living room couch. Main and Bobb felt a lunge in the cab. The train’s emergency brakes kicked in and it screeched to a stop.
“Hey, Alex,” Main called to the dispatcher. “We just went into emergency. ... I’m not sure what’s going on back there, but the conductor’s getting ready to get on the ground.” (Main, Bobb and Sager could not be reached, and Beitzel declined to comment. Their remarks are from transcripts in the federal investigation of the accident.)
Bobb climbed down from the cab and began walking toward the problem. Suddenly, there was an explosion and a fireball rose into the night about a half-mile back from the engines. Main, up in his locomotive, hadn’t noticed. He didn’t learn about it until a man drove up to his window and yelled the news into the cab.
Federal investigators would later learn that Car 35 — empty, hand brakes set — had jumped the tracks on a curve, and two cars ahead of it and 30 behind it had followed.
After the derailment, the National Transportation Safety Board recommended in a letter that CSX prohibit using hand brakes on empty cars to control a train’s speed down a hill. It also recommended that large blocks of empty cars be placed near the end, not the front. “We would appreciate a response within 90 days of the date of this letter, detailing the actions you have taken or intend to take to implement these recommendations.”
But CSX responded more than two years later and only after ProPublica began asking recently why it had ignored the NTSB. In its response letter, CSX says the agency was wrong; the train’s makeup did not contribute to the crash. However it still reformed the policy, requiring, among other things, placing more weight near front of the train and prohibiting trains from “having more than a third of its weight in the trailing fourth of the train.” It also adopted the NTSB’s other recommendation on hand brakes, prohibiting their use on empty cars in “mountain grade territory,” a company spokesperson told ProPublica. It said the derailment was caused by “hand brakes on empty rail cars to control train speed on steep grade ... not PSR.”
BY THAT AFTERNOON, emergency manager Walls and the other first responders had evacuated everyone who would agree to leave Hyndman. The tanker burned for two days and yet did not explode. Though it came close: The pressure inside the car caused the steel wall of its inner hull to stretch as thin as a credit card. They’d come 1 millimeter, Walls said, from disaster.
The U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee took note of the derailment and asked the Government Accountability Office to study the safety and impacts of long trains. The committee’s two ranking members hadn’t even signed the letter before CSX derailed another long train in Georgia, just two months after Hyndman.
It was 2.4 miles long, and like the Hyndman train, a bulk of its tonnage had been loaded in the rear. When the engineer began to brake, the back of the train slid forward and shoved a car ahead of it off the tracks on a curve, and 13 other cars followed. One car crashed into a home and the person inside was rushed to a hospital. The man survived. CSX did not comment on this accident but did tell ProPublica the company is committed to operating safely and is constantly evaluating its rules, specifically on train handling. See what else it said about its safety practices here.
It was only after all of this happened that the FRA, in March 2018, replied to the union officials who had expressed concerns that previous spring. In a letter, the agency said it “began looking at the length of trains as a potential contributing cause of FRA reportable accidents/incidents” in 2016. The agency still did not have “the sufficient data or evidence to justify an Emergency Order limiting the length of trains.”
In May 2019, the GAO completed its study, coming to a similar conclusion: long trains may be dangerous, but more information was needed. Its effort was partly stymied, the GAO said, because most rail companies refused to hand over enough of their private train-length data to allow investigators to make findings. The FRA also told ProPublica it has asked companies for this data but never gotten it.
On Thursday, the FRA told ProPublica it is starting the process of requiring companies to disclose the train length for every reportable accident, a move prompted by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. But there is no guarantee the regulators will succeed. The FRA said it first needs to publish a notice of the new data-collection effort and ultimately the Office of Management and Budget would need to approve the measure.
Had the FRA issued an emergency order as the union requested in 2017, a rare and extreme step, the railroads would have likely gotten a judge to block it, said Cothen, author of the white paper on longer trains. He acknowledged that most of the long trains in the country arrive at their destinations without incident, but he feels the railroads are operating with an unreasonable degree of risk. He believes the FRA has the evidence it needs to start crafting a rule to limit train lengths, a process that would include input from the industry. “My issue to this point,” Cothen said, “has been that effective action has not been taken.” The FRA says it disagrees.
Across the country, worried state lawmakers have tried to cap the lengths of trains that roll through their communities. Since 2019, in Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Georgia, Nebraska, Washington, Arizona and other states, lawmakers have proposed maximum lengths of 1.4 to about 1.6 miles. But every proposal has died before becoming law. Opponents, which include Class 1 railroad companies, claim that the efforts are driven by unions to create jobs and that the proposals would violate interstate commerce laws.
Georgia state Sen. Rick Williams, a Republican, attempted to work around this angst by offering a simple resolution last year that would have urged the FRA to limit train length. Even that died. “It’s frustrating,” he said, “when you see something that happens, like in East Palestine, Ohio, and you know it very easily could happen here and we could suffer the same consequences.”
Democratic Arizona state Rep. Consuelo Hernandez’s bill to limit train length was approved by two committees this session with bipartisan support. But Republicans refuse to put the bill on the floor for a general vote, and so it has stalled. ProPublica spoke with her the day after a 1.9-mile-long BNSF train derailed there. “The train companies are so powerful,” Hernandez said. “What it comes down to is public safety versus corporations.”
Many states have passed laws that would punish railroads for blocking road crossings, but that power, state courts rule every time, rests solely with the federal government.
At any moment, Congress could intervene and limit the length of trains. If it did, independent experts say, there’d be more trains, moving faster with fewer breakdowns and derailments, and customer service would improve. But the rail companies, which move 40% of the country’s cargo, have a lot of leverage. For more than a century, the industry has convinced lawmakers that the success of America is tied to the success of the rails; it’s a view that persists today, sustained by the $10 million the Association of American Railroads spends some years lobbying Congress.
So long trains have continued jumping the tracks.
In June 2019, one month after the inconclusive GAO study, a 2.2-mile-long Union Pacific train derailed in Nevada. It was so long and the terrain so mountainous that at times sections of the train climbed uphill while other sections climbed downhill, which made driving it a nightmare. Ultimately the engineer couldn’t manage it, and the train lifted a car up and dropped it on the ground. Twenty-seven cars followed.
In September, Union Pacific crashed yet another long train. It was 1.5 miles long and broke in two in Illinois. Half of the train rolled out of control away from the other half. It then slowed, stopped and began rolling back. The two halves collided and exploded. The fire spread underground through a storm drain and ignited a holding pond at a chemical plant. More than 1,000 residents and at least 1,000 schoolchildren were evacuated.
And then in October, in separate instances, Norfolk Southern derailed two long trains, both in Georgia. One was 2 miles long. The engineer had struggled to control it, and his use of the brakes caused the rear of the train to run into the front and lift a car off the tracks. The other train was 1.6 miles long. Its autopilot had the brakes applied in the front and the engine in the middle giving it gas, and as it reached the bottom of a hill the opposing forces popped 32 cars off the tracks. They ruptured a pipeline, which released nearly 2.3 million gallons of natural gas.
The following summer, in June 2020, a 2.3-mile-long Union Pacific train derailed in Idaho because it was too big, the FRA determined. It was constructed unevenly with 34 empty cars coupled near the front and loaded, heavy cars behind them. The heavy cars pushed the light cars off the tracks. The FRA also determined the engineer lacked the training necessary to operate a train of that length.
In July 2020, a 2-mile-long BNSF train derailed in Arizona for similar reasons: a long block of heavy cars coupled behind a set of empty cars squeezed them off the tracks.
The companies involved in these accidents did not comment on them specifically. See what they said about their safety practices here. BNSF did not comment at all.
Finally, in September 2020, the FRA launched a study examining the brake systems in long trains. The agency did not say why it took three years after the Hyndman derailment and the warnings from the union to begin examining the issue. It plans to complete the study this year. Also, late last year, it completed a small survey of rail workers, labor unions and railroad managers. Managers claimed long trains pose no new dangers, but government employees and labor unions said they are concerned.
The National Academies of Sciences, doing a separate assessment of trains longer than 1.4 miles at the request of Congress, must report its findings by June 2024.
THREE DAYS AFTER the evacuation of Hyndman, Walls and his family returned home. They’d been gone only 72 hours, but it felt like a reunion with neighbors they hadn’t seen in years. He mowed his grass. It felt good doing something so pedestrian.
But Shaffer and his wife never returned to their doublewide trailer. It wasn’t safe, Shaffer recalls being told by CSX. “Pretty much had to fight with them to get my guns and stuff out of there,” he said. The company paid out a settlement the couple used to buy a big house with a big porch 7 miles out of town, far away from the railroad tracks. But even years later, the derailment haunts him, whether he is waiting uneasily in his truck at a railroad crossing or watching the news. When the East Palestine disaster appears on his TV, he has to get up and walk away. “It’s definitely still with me,” he said.
Sutphin and Mia bounced from her aunt’s house out of town to a hotel with her stepdad then to a house on Myrtle Beach, an upscale vacation town on the coast of South Carolina, and stayed there for a year. Every time an airplane flew over the house, Sutphin shook and ran to the window, afraid that something was about to crash into them. Mia rarely slept through the night. Sutphin financed their long vacation with a $50,000 check from CSX. The railroad also bought her a brand new Hyundai Santa Fe valued at $32,000.
After it nearly razed the town, CSX handed out a lot of money. It bought residents clothing, medicine, food, gas and hotel rooms. It reimbursed businesses for lost revenue. It paid volunteer firefighters every day about $1,000. It gave residents so-called inconvenience fee payments of about $300 a day. It gave one family $10,000 for veterinarian bills and damage to its property. It gave the fire department $190,000. A church pastor said residents welcomed the payments, but he also said they felt like “hush money,” and that’s the effect the money appears to have had on some residents. When ProPublica asked about the derailment, many said that the railroad did “all right by” them. Cleaning up and rebuilding the town and the tracks, according to the FRA, cost $9.6 million. CSX defended the money it spent around town, saying it did not ask the residents to release their legal rights in exchange for the payments. “Such actions,” a spokesperson told ProPublica, “are part of CSX’s industry-leading standard of care when incidents like the derailment in Hyndman occur.”
Walls remembers a CSX official walking up to him while he was standing on the front steps of the charter school on the morning of the derailment, a gray column of smoke from the tanker car still billowing into the sky. “I know we came in and messed your town up,” the official said, “but we’ll make it right before we leave.” Walls appreciates the money CSX spent on the town and its people. But that was the railroad’s responsibility. What would make things right, he said, is “making sure that the trains coming through here are safe.”
Photo: An aerial view of the Hyndman crashCredit:CSX Train Derailment with Hazardous Materials Release via National Transportation Safety Board/ Via ProPublicA.
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On Wednesday, the troubled Bagley Republican state representative's case went through the next legal step. Minnesota Public Radio political reporter Brian Bakst tweeted:
Rep. Matt Grossell entered a not guilty plea through his attorney in an arraignment hearing today. He wasn't present after waiving appearance.
Grossell's attorney says his client has undergone a chemical dependency evaluation and has been in treatment.
A local state representative was arraigned in Clearwater County Court on Wednesday on DWI charges.
Republican Rep. Matt Grossell of District 2A is charged with DWI-fourth-degree driving while impaired, DWI-operate motor vehicle-alcohol concentration .08 within two hours, and DWI-operate motor vehicle under influence of alcohol.
Grossell was cited on February 11th at 1 a.m. after a State Trooper pulled him over for driving 71 mph in a 55 mph zone near Gonvick. According to court records, Grossell tested at .15 BAC, which is almost twice the legal limit.
Bluestem will stay on the lookout for developments as this story unfolds.
Photo: From the Pioneer Press, Grossell front and center during the Pledge of Allegiance on opening day.
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Affidavits outlining child porn investigation could come by month’s end
Court records ought to be released to the public that could finally shed light on why the property of South Dakota’s richest man was searched as part of a child pornography investigation, the South Dakota Supreme Court ruled on Thursday.
It’s the second loss in a row at the state’s high court for T. Denny Sanford, who was never charged with a crime after searches of his property three years ago. Sanford is a philanthropist and the owner of First Premier Bank and Premier Bankcard.
Sanford initially sought to keep secret the five search warrant affidavits and other materials related to the now-closed investigation. Sanford lost that case in the state Supreme Court in 2021, which precipitated the release of some – but not all – of the records associated with the search warrants.
The affidavits, which would be released near the end of April barring further legal action by Sanford, could expose the underlying information that sparked the investigation.
Affidavits are sworn statements to a judge from law enforcement that explain the reasons for seeking search warrants. Such documents typically present the evidence already known to investigators, outline why a search warrant is necessary and what information the investigators intend to seek.
Minnehaha County Judge James Power ruled that the Sanford affidavits could compromise an ongoing investigation, but that they should be open to the public once the investigation was completed. The investigation ended last spring. Sanford had broken no state laws, detectives found.
Sanford’s legal team once again appealed to block the release of the documents. This time, Sanford’s lawyers did not argue that the affidavits ought to be closed in perpetuity, but rather that their client ought to be allowed to screen them and request that personal and proprietary information be scrubbed prior to any public release.
In their ruling on Thursday, the justices said that Power’s redactions of personal information are sufficient, and that Sanford has no explicit right to request a preview.
Thursday’s 5-0 opinion, authored by Chief Justice Steven Jensen, sides with Power, who “noted that Sanford had not cited any authority that would require the court to permit the parties to participate in the redaction process.”
The state Division of Criminal Investigation, the ruling notes, joined lawyers for media organizations in opposing additional delays. The DCI characterized Sanford’s appeal as a request for “a special right of access” to the documents.
“It is evident that the circuit court viewed Sanford’s most recent motion as a belated and unpersuasive effort to further delay the unsealing of the affidavits required by statute,” the ruling says.
Even so, the ruling says, Judge Power had offered Sanford every opportunity to make his case for delay, and that Power had issued a thoughtful and reasoned decision rejecting it.
Stacy Hegge, who represented Sanford at the March hearing at the Supreme Court, said her team had no comment on the ruling.
This article is republished online under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
Photo: South Dakota Supreme Court Justice Janine Kern speaks during oral arguments March 22, 2023, in Brookings. Also pictured are Justice Scott Myren, left, and Chief Justice Steven Jensen. (Dave Bordewyk/South Dakota Newspaper Association).
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Federal money is the largest chunk of South Dakota’s upcoming budget pie, $3.47 billion making up 47% of our FY2024 revenue, so it’s not like increasing that federal reliance by another 0.086% should set off any alarm bells. Either the Department of Agriculture (and Natural Resources) was too busy hashing out details of Fluffy’s State Fair contract, or our friends in Pierre think climate change somehow won’t affect crop and livestock production in South Dakota.
That's a helpful frame for a quick read about federal funding dollars, rejected and expected, from Joshua Haiar at South Dakota Searchlight.
After the state declined to seek federal grant money to reduce greenhouse gases and other air pollution, Rapid City has decided to apply and Sioux Falls is considering it.
South Dakota is one of four states that have not applied to participate in the Climate Pollution Reduction Grant program. It would have provided state government with $3 million for planning and access to a $4.6 billion fund for implementation. The other states that did not apply by the March 31 deadline are Florida, Iowa and Kentucky.
The program also includes $1 million in planning grants for each of the nation’s largest cities — including Rapid City and Sioux Falls — and access to the $4.6 billion grant pool for implementation if municipalities apply by April 28.
The Rapid City Council voted Monday evening to authorize its staff to apply. Sioux Falls has not yet taken action.
“We intend to gather information over the coming weeks and make a final decision on participation by the program’s deadline,” said Holly Meier, Sioux Falls sustainability coordinator.
A spokesman for Governor Kristi Noem said the state declined to apply because of concerns that more federal spending will make inflation worse, and because of possible “strings attached” to the money.
“We focus on solving long-term problems with one-time investments rather than creating new government programs,” said Ian Fury. “We either decline or return money that we don’t need, as we did when President Trump offered extended unemployment benefits in August 2020, and as we did when we returned more than $80 million in federal renter’s assistance money in 2022.”
The Climate Pollution Reduction funding was allocated by last year’s Inflation Reduction Act and is designated for state and municipal government projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help mitigate climate change. Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane trap heat in the atmosphere.
The funding would have helped South Dakota develop its own approach to climate change, according to Kara Hoving, a climate equity policy researcher and spokesperson for SoDak 350, an affiliate of the international environmental organization 350.org.
Hoving said everything from conservation incentives for farmers to energy efficiency aid for families was on the table.
“There weren’t any mandates about the specific actions you had to include in your plan,” she said. “It could have included agriculture, cover crops, all these things the people in this state support.”
This article is republished online under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
Photo: A fall 2022 view of Rapid City from the hills above the South Dakota Mines campus. (Seth Tupper/South Dakota Searchlight).
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Democratic lawmakers are weighing a ban on anti-competitive health care mergers that could spell the end for the proposed merger between Minneapolis-based Fairview Health Services and Sioux Falls-based Sanford Health.
The deal has sparked fierce resistance from Democratic lawmakers, rural residents and health care unions, who say it would create a health care monopoly in greater Minnesota and likely lead to clinic closures and higher costs. Lawmakers and the University of Minnesota have also expressed concern that the university’s teaching hospital could wind up in the hands of an out-of-state entity.
Since announcing the merger in November, leaders from the two health care giants have buckled to public pressure and pushed back the merger date twice, saying on Monday it would be delayed until at least the end of August.
The bill (HF402/SF1681) put forward by Democrats could lead the deal to be taken off life support and laid to rest for good.
The legislation would prohibit health care transactions that “substantially lessen competition” or “tend to create a monopoly,” which opponents of the deal say it would. Attorney General Keith Ellison is already investigating the deal for potentially running afoul of antitrust and charity laws, but an explicit state prohibition regarding the public’s interest would give him greater latitude in bringing a case in state court.
In a statement, the Office of the Attorney General said it supports the provisions of the bill that bolster its oversight.
“This bill would build upon the attorney general’s existing authority to represent the interests of the public by adding tools to its toolbox that 29 states already have,” said John Stiles, a spokesperson for the Attorney General’s Office.
The legislation seems tailored to the Sanford-Fairview deal, but it would apply to all mergers and acquisitions of health care organizations that have an annual average revenue of at least $40 million.
“There’s a lot of money to be made in health care,” said Rep. Robert Bierman, DFL-Apple Valley. “This helps policymakers going forward to prevent some of the onerous mergers that can take place — even the ones we don’t even know are coming.”
The bill would also require health care organizations to notify state officials 90 days before a merger or acquisition is completed. Sanford and Fairview originally planned to complete their merger less than five months after announcing it.
As part of the notice to state officials, the health care entities would have to disclose the acquisition price, plans to close facilities or eliminate services and any information the attorney general or health commissioner requests.
Ellison has repeatedly said Fairview and Sanford have not fully complied with his requests for significant information and told lawmakers last month that his office had not received information his office should have received months ago.
The proposed legislation would make it harder for control of the University of Minnesota Medical Center, which Fairview purchased in 1997, to go to an out-of-state entity.
The prospect of a South Dakota-based company owning the university’s main teaching hospital has outraged politicians and health care advocates. That was also one of the reasons then-Attorney General Lori Swanson squashed the merger when it was proposed a decade ago.
Former Minnesota Govs. Mark Dayton, a Democrat, and Tim Pawlenty, a Republican, testified last month before lawmakers about their concerns that an out-of-state company could profit off a teaching hospital that receives significant support from Minnesota taxpayers.
The bill says if an out-of-state organization purchases a health system that is organized as a charitable organization — including the university’s medical center — that health system must pay back to the state any charitable assets it received from the state.
Whether Fairview would have to pay the state for the cost of the medical center is contested, however. According to the bill’s fiscal note, the University of Minnesota says Fairview received the medical center from the university, not the state.
For good measure, Bierman has also authored a second bill (HF3108/SF3124) which would outright ban out-of-state entities from owning, either directly or indirectly, University of Minnesota health care facilities.
“We need to do whatever we need to do to keep the University of Minnesota under the auspices of Minnesotans,” Bierman said.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Fairview and Sanford said the companies have been cooperating with the attorney general and have agreed to his request for a 90 days’ notice prior to closing the merger at a future date.
“Since December of last year, our priority has been continued cooperation to support the existing and robust review that is already in place by the attorney general,” the statement says. “We remain confident in the benefits of the merger for our people, patients and communities and our shared vision to advance world-class health care for all we serve.”
The Minnesota Hospital Association in a letter to lawmakers said it was concerned about the attorney general’s oversight in the bill, as health care companies often need to adapt and denying a merger “could result in essential health care services being eliminated from a community in our state.”
Hospital executives are unlikely to be able to dissuade a unified Democratic trifecta from voting against the bills. Republicans, however, appear skeptical of the law, noting that mergers can help rural communities by supporting local clinics and that health care companies don’t want to undergo more government regulation.
House members on Tuesday voted to send the bill to the House Ways and Means Committee, which is usually a bill’s last stop before it goes to the floor.
This article from the Minnesota Reformer is republished online under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
Photo: University of Minnesota Medical Center. Courtesy photo via Minnesota Reformer.
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Former Minneapolis police union president Lt. Bob Kroll is banned from serving as a law enforcement officer in three of the state's most populous counties — including Hennepin County, which encompasses Minneapolis — for 10 years, according to the conditions of a new civil settlement.
A pair of lawsuits filed by the Minnesota affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union accused Minneapolis police of unconstitutional brutality in response to demonstrations following the killing of George Floyd by an MPD officer. The Minneapolis City Council approved four separate settlements totaling more than $700,000 in October. The lawsuit named Kroll as a defendant.
The agreement stipulates Kroll cannot serve as a licensed police officer or in a leadership role in any policing agencies in the counties of Hennepin, Ramsey and Anoka for a decade. Kroll is also banned from being a board member, director, officer or staff member or member of an advisory committee of the Minnesota Board of Peace Officer Standards and Training — the state board that licenses officers — for that period. Kroll also agreed to come to court if he's subpoenaed in the case. . . .
Kroll has stayed mostly out of the public eye since leaving the Police Department in January 2021, though he's made some appearances in conservative-leaning media. He gave an interview alongside Collin last year to right-wing talk show host Candace Owens, where he lambasted Minneapolis and state leaders for their handling of protests and riots after Floyd, alleging they made police and the union as a "scapegoat" for the damage. Kroll more recently appeared in a feature on Alpha News, where Collin now works, reviewing Cowboy's Saloon in Lexington, Minn. . . .
Bluestem has noticed that Kroll seems to have appeared at a recent Liz Collin book tour stop at the Zumbro Community Church near Rochester in Zumbro Falls. Kroll is the man on the right in the photo on the bottom left hand photo:
Award-winning investigative journalist Liz Collin sets the record straight. She uncovers what really happened on a street in Minneapolis that set off the rioting, the demands to defund the police, and the skyrocketing crime everyone across the country has been left to suffer.
Liz exposes how the media and the Left manipulated the facts to dupe and divide America. In between, she explains how her own life was turned upside down. Liz was a familiar face on the news in the Twin Cities. Her husband, Lt. Bob Kroll, was president of the Minneapolis police union—and personally blamed for the rioting by the ACLU, Mayor Jacob Frey, and so many others. Liz and Bob were attacked by social media mobs and cancel-culture vultures. Amid all the chaos, they also watched protesters, politicians, and civil-rights leaders smash piñata effigies on their front lawn.
This book also reveals the cover-ups, hidden political connections, and strange coincidences involving crime and corruption in Minneapolis. It points out those who could have stopped the insanity and given civility a chance. But most of all, it tells the truth about one of the biggest lies the media and the Left have ever told.
And there was a mid-March awards banquet for the McLeod County Police and Peace Officers Association (left in the top left photo:
It's nice to see a couple so devoted to each other that they're willing to travel across Greater Minnesota.
Image: The poster for the Rochester/Zumbro Falls Liz Collin book tour. Via Facebook.
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Those were the days when bills on Chronic Wasting Disease couldn't get a hearing in Minnesota House committees, but a bill based on research by a representative's grandson about feral swine hunts did. Not that that idea has died, as readers will learn below.
We encourage readers to check it out at the Reformer. McVan reports:
Minnesota has long enjoyed its status as a state free of wild pigs, avoiding the billions of dollars of damages suffered each year by other states from invasive feral swine.
Now, Canadian “super pigs” are threatening the state, and pork producers and regulators are concerned about the destruction and disease the animals could bring if they were to establish a population in Minnesota. . . .
A bill introduced in the Minnesota House of Representatives is drawing some attention to the issue. House File 2387 would make it illegal to possess Eurasian wild boars in captivity. Currently, possession of wild boars for commercial purposes, like hunting, is only allowed with a permit from the Minnesota Department of Agriculture.
It also would require the Minnesota DNR to prepare a report for the legislature outlining recommendations for management of feral swine.
The Minnesota Pork Producers Association testified in support of the bill. . , ,
The bill was heard on March 21 in the House Agriculture and Environment Committees, given the jurisdiction of the Agriculture Committee over the Board of Animal Health and the Department of Agriculture, and the oversight of the Environment and Natural Resources committee over the Department of Natural Resources.
The Agriculture Committee hearing, in which minority lead Paul Anderson, R-Starbuck, leads off committee member discussion by wondering aloud about starting a feral hogs season in Minnesota since a friend of his enjoys going to Texas to hunt wild pigs (shades of the 2018 hearing). Never mind what the Pork Producers say.
The Environment and Natural Resources Committee hearing:
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He lost the primary but now he's coming to Minnesota later in the month to serve as the Class Director of 2023 TeenPact Minnesota.
What's TeenPact?
Bluestem had read about TeenPact most recently in a Legislative News and Views email from Rep. Marj Fogelman, R-Fulda. While it didn't look like something I'd send a pet cat to, it might be some parents' notion of ideal Christian leader training.
"Works with" is a kind euphemism for State Coordinator. According to the contact information on the TeenPact Minnesota webpage, Jessica Swedzinski is the state coordinator of TeenPact Minnesota. The Jessica Linz Swedzinski Facebook page, which features a family photo including the state representative as its banner photo.
The email included a link to a March 6, 2023 Legislative update which noted:
Sign up for TeenPact event
Registration is now open to for a pair of TeenPact classes next month at the Capitol in St. Paul as students from around the state gather for a week of hands-on training in leadership and government.
TeenPact is a nationwide Christian non-profit educational ministry, known for its teen-oriented programs on leadership, citizenship, and government. It designed to help students understand the political process, value their liberty, and engage the culture. Through hands-on and practical teaching, TeenPact Students learn how to embrace their call as the next generation of leaders, find encouragement among like-minded peers, and develop the skills to engage the culture.
A four-day class will take place April 24-28 for ages 13-19. A one-day class for ages 8-12 is scheduled for April 29. The class for ages 8-12 is a condensed version of the class for the older group. Students will pray for their leaders during a prayer walk, explore the State House, become legislators in a mock legislature where they discuss bills they’ve written themselves, and more. Additional information and registration details are available at teenpact.com/minnesota.
If reader know of any other lawmakers promoting the TeenPact activities in their constituent emails, please email them to Bluestem at the address at the bottom of this post.
Other than its own webpage and promotions there's not a lot of coverage on the group. Wikipedia entry here.
I suspect that few on my fellow worshippers in the Episcopal communion will be sending their children to this educational opportunity, though it is a free country.
. . . Jack is known more widely from his time as an agent provocateur in 2014, when he requested homophobic cakes from local bakeries in response to a Colorado Civil Rights Division ruling in favor of a same-sex couple who were denied a wedding cake by Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood and its proprietor, Jack Phillips.
Jack told Monson that the Phillips case was a question of “disagreement” rather than “discrimination.”
When the three bakeries refused Jack’s request, he filed discrimination complaints with the Civil Rights Commission. Those cases ultimately influenced the Supreme Court decision in In its Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission decision, when a conservative legal advocacy group, Alliance Defending Freedom, highlighted the commission’s rulings against Jack to support their claims in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case.
Jack is a co-founder and educator at Worldview Academy, which aims to “bring the hope of the Gospel to an increasingly post-Christian culture,” by developing “leaders with a deep-rooted and profoundly biblical faith.”
He has appeared as a guest on Colorado radio programs discussing his activism and co-hosted a program with Kevin Swanson, who has advocated for the death penalty for homosexuals.
In one conversation from 2017, Swanson referred to Washington state schools with programming to address gender identity issues as “whorehouses,” to which Jack responded, “We need to burn ’em down.” . . .
He seems nice. Rep. Swedzinski's wife, state coordinator for TeenPact, wants the kids to learn from him:
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Columns from our state representatives and senators can be essential sources on legislation at the state Capitol that will have an impact on the residents of the district and the roadblocks it faces.
Their columns inform us of their efforts to overcome these roadblocks, and perhaps, how they work with members on the other side of the political aisle. They also give us insight into the personalities of those who serve us in St. Paul.
However, over the years, these columns have become more about tearing down the opposing party and its members than informing constituents. They demean and ridicule. In doing so, they smear every constituent back home who is a member of that opposing party.
When we see a political column that states: “Driver’s License for All is the all-access pass for potential terrorists and criminals,” we know its aim is deception and the creation of fear. When we read the words “hostage,” “extremist,” and “radical,” we see words to inflame passions and heighten anxiety. They are loosely tethered to the truth – just enough to lend legitimacy to the topic but far from accurately telling the story of the legislation under consideration.
Following the lessons learned from social media, political parties include words that trigger deep emotions of outrage and fear to gain the most “likes” and “shares.” And just as the internet has divided us into bitter camps, not trusting or respecting one another, politicians, through their columns, can deepen our divisions rather than heal them.
What we find strange with some of the columns we receive is they don’t reflect the character of people we’ve gotten to know through conversations about their candidacies and eventual public service. In one-on-one conversations with our area’s state senators and representatives, we find them engaging, thoughtful, and civil. . . .
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Rep. Jamie Becker-Finn (DFL-Roseville), the committee chair and bill sponsor, said the dollar figure represents a strong and long-overdue investment in the state’s judiciary system, noting that it includes significant increases in funding for public defenders, civil legal service attorneys, . . .
That's a far cry from the system here in the Rushmore State, although John Hult notes in the South Dakota Searchlight story below,"Minnesota funds all public defense at the state level, but allows counties to pitch in extra money."
All U.S. citizens have a right to an attorney when charged with a crime, even if they can’t afford one.
Only 11 states, including South Dakota, use local rather than state dollars to pay for the vast majority of public defense.
Just one state relies more heavily on counties to pay the cost than South Dakota, and that state – Pennsylvania – is now considering a five-year, $50 million investment in public defense.
South Dakota’s 66 counties, meanwhile, have seen their public defense costs for criminal cases more than double in the last decade.
That’s true even though the state-mandated mileage and drive time reimbursement for the private attorneys who serve as public defenders in all but three counties hasn’t budged in more than 20 years – at $1 a mile.
Those facts were among a flurry of data points on offer Friday during the first meeting of South Dakota’s Indigent Defense Task Force. Gov. Kristi Noem signed legislation to create the task force earlier this year after lawmakers passed a bill supported by South Dakota Supreme Court Chief Justice Steven Jensen.
Jensen is concerned about the sustainability of South Dakota’s “hodgepodge” approach to meeting its constitutional obligation to provide legal services. Three counties have dedicated public defender’s offices. The rest contract with private attorneys or have attorneys on call.
With fewer lawyers in rural areas and higher-paying legal work available through private practice or in federal court, Jensen said, “judges are having more and more difficulty finding counsel to represent indigent defense in criminal and juvenile cases.”
“They’re saying, ‘I just can’t afford to travel three hours to provide defense,’” the chief justice said.
That’s a reality the task force’s co-chair, Judge Mike Day of Belle Fourche, deals with regularly. It’s difficult to find attorneys who are experienced enough to handle cases and willing to give up that much windshield time.
“I have lawyers that are driving over 200 miles one way to get to court in Corson County,” Day said.
The reality of rising costs, meanwhile, has been felt in county commission rooms all across the state.
“I’ve been a commissioner for a couple of years now,” said Hughes County Commissioner and task force member Randy Brown. “But I was extremely shocked by how much we’re spending on court-appointed attorneys and how much that cost continues to keep rising for us every year without any way of figuring out how to fund it.”
Hanging in the balance is each defendant’s right to legal representation, as well as the importance of “effective counsel.” Jensen told the group that appeals often originate with claims of ineffective counsel.
State-by-state comparison offers guidance
The group invited representatives from the nonprofit Sixth Amendment Foundation to speak during the first meeting. The nonpartisan group studies public defense state-by-state, with an eye to effectiveness of counsel and U.S. Supreme Court case law on defendant rights.
It also offers guidance for states that seek to address issues with their own indigent defense funding, but Director David Carroll told the group that it doesn’t file or intervene in lawsuits or push for change in states that haven’t asked for help.
“Every state is unique, and we do not want to presume we understand the strengths and weaknesses of a particular public defense system until we listen and learn from local stakeholders,” Carroll said.
Senior Attorney Aditi Goel of the Center offered a rundown of how differing states have approached and adjusted their models. Many of the states that previously relied on counties to fund legal aid have moved toward greater levels of state funding. Last year, Idaho pledged to move toward 100% state funding by 2024, for example.
Most of South Dakota’s neighbors already have similar setups. North Dakota and Montana fully fund indigent defense at the state level. Iowa funds defense for everything but municipal violations that are punishable by jail time. Minnesota funds all public defense at the state level, but allows counties to pitch in extra money.
Moving from county to state-level funding can help ensure that counties with smaller tax bases – often financially stressed counties with higher poverty rates – can continue to fulfill the constitutional obligation to provide for public defense without facing dire budgetary straits.
“Counties with higher levels of poverty are also called on to spend more of their available funds on social services, such as medical care for the uninsured and housing needs for the unemployed, leaving less money available to spend on the right to counsel for indigent people,” Goel said.
Options for South Dakota
Neil Fulton is the dean of the University of South Dakota Knutson School of Law, and he serves as co-chair of the task force.
Fulton, a former federal public defender, urged task force members to approach discussions on potential changes in South Dakota with an eye to effectiveness and efficiency.
“We should think about what we have an opportunity to do, not an obligation to do,” Fulton said at the start of the meeting. “We have an opportunity to really talk about how we make recommendations on what an effective system for representation is. Everybody here knows that when you have excellent, effective, ethical counsel on both sides of criminal defense, it’s better for everyone.”
That was top of mind for House Majority Leader Will Mortenson, R-Pierre, after hearing from Carroll and Goel of the Sixth Amendment Center. Mortenson is one of two task force members appointed by the Legislature, the other being Sen. Jim Mehlhaff, R-Pierre.
Mortenson told the group he’d like to return to the table in upcoming meetings to look at the experiences of states that have changed their approach to public defense in the past few decades.
Ideally, he said, he’d like to learn the outcome of public defense reform in states that have a few major population centers and a large number of smaller, more rural communities.
“Did it accomplish what it set out to accomplish?” Mortenson said. “Or did they spend a lot more money to get the same system, and different frustrations, but still frustrations?”
Carroll told the group that the Center would be glad to offer more assistance, but he also urged them to compile information on how South Dakota counties approach indigent defense.
Lake County State’s Attorney Wendy Kloeppner offered to reach out to the South Dakota State’s Attorney’s Association for input on individual county issues, since that group’s annual meeting is a little more than a month away.
The Madison attorney said the task force should dive deep into the data and consider the potential ripple effects of any adjustments on the established practices from place to place.
“I feel overwhelmed just thinking about where is the starting point?” Kloeppner said. “Is it personnel? Is it funding? Obviously, money is very important, but how much money and where from?”
The task force will meet again in April.
This article from South Dakota Searchlight is republished online under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
Photo: The Brown County Courthouse in Aberdeen. (Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight).
If you appreciate Bluestem Prairie, you can mail contributions (payable to Sally Jo Sorensen, 600 Maple Street, Summit SD 57266) or use the paypal button in the upper right hand corner of this post.
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