December 2019

Weekly Tidbits

l3wis December 8, 2019 7Comments

CORY & SD VOICE WILL WIN THEIR CASE

Let’s just chalk it up to another failure in state government;

To refresh your memories, I am challenging two main points of state petition law: first, 2019 House Bill 1094, Rep. Jon Hansen’s (R-25/Dell Rapids) circulator badge and registry scheme now mostly encapsulated in SDCL 2-1-1.3–2.1.1.9, and the state’s requirement that initiative petitions be submitted a full year before the election at which you would get to vote on them.

There are so many constitutional issues with the legislation, I don’t even know where to start. If I had to make a bet on this, I would put $1K down in the first Aberdeen telephone booth video lottery casino I could find that they will win, and win huge.

I sometimes wonder if SD State Legislators take there pocket US Constitutions (if they have ever had one) and burn it before the first day of session.

MINNEHAHA COUNTY COMMISSION SAYS ONE EMT IS A-OK

I still have not figured out why they decided to go for this in the biggest county in the state;

AMBULANCE ORDINANCE HEARING
Mr. Gearman gave a briefing on the proposed amendments as follows: Article 2, Section 6 updating language to align with South Dakota law and administrative rule; Article 6 to remove the requirement of consent and a written agreement between two licensees for special events; and Article 14 updating language to align with South Dakota law and administrative rule regarding minimum personnel requirements Other minor changes were made for the purposes of consistency and formatting. Speaking in favor of the amendments, Dr. Jeff Luther, Rural Ambulance Quality Assurance Director, explained that he believes reducing the requirement from two emergency medical technicians (EMT) to one EMT would not cause a decrease in quality. Tim Haight, 3403 W 93rd Street, Sioux Falls, inquired about the proposed amendment to Article 6. Maggie Gillespie, Senior Deputy State’s Attorney, responded to Mr. Haight’s question explaining that he would need to contact his own legal counsel if he had legal questions, and that the change to Article 6 only removes the requirement to obtain consent from the existing service area ambulance service for a special event. Jay Masur, 25968 476th Ave, Sioux Falls, Med-Star Paramedic Ambulance President & CEO, spoke in opposition to lowering the number of EMTs. Dr. Luther responded to the concerns brought forward by Mr. Masur explaining that smaller ambulance services struggle to find enough people to serve. Therefore, the requirement of two EMTs made it hard to operate. Additionally, many Minnehaha County Sheriff’s Deputies are trained EMTs with impressive response times. Mr. Gearman explained that the ordinance is a minimum standard. Ambulance services may choose to set their standards at any level they want as long as the minimum is met. MOTION by Karsky, seconded by Barth, to approve Ordinance MC31-6-19, the 2019 Ground Ambulance Licensing Ordinance. By roll call vote: 5 ayes. The entire Ordinance is on file and available for inspection at the County Auditor’s Office.

I think it is a cost saving measure for the for profit ambulance services. It will be interesting to see how staffing changes.

SOUTH DAKOTA DEMOCRATIC PARTY FINALLY GETS THEIR SH*T TOGETHER

So this was pretty cool;

The state party’s Central Committee elected Randy Seiler to serve as the chair on Saturday, according to a party announcement. Seiler, the party’s vice chair, has been serving as the interim chair since Paula Hawks resigned as chair in September. SDDP Executive Director Stacey Burnette jointly resigned with Hawks.

Isn’t it crazy that stuff is not so bad with the Dem party in SD?  I kind of wonder what kind of BS has been concocted over the past couple of years. I hope in the name of transparency the party tells us what has been going on and how they are going to fix it. This could be a great moment for them rooting out the corruption. As an Indy, I have never liked the party system. It just seems like a system that needs to go away and make government on all levels non-partisan. I had a friend tell me once that he doesn’t belong to ‘clubs’ because they seem to ‘clubby’ with lots of rules and other stupid crap. It always made me laugh, because I agree.

CITY SHUTS OFF EMERGENCY SIRENS FOR THE WINTER

I just think this is weird. Why wouldn’t you want to make sure they work all year long? There are other ‘disasters’ you might want to warn citizens about in the winter besides tornados. I almost wonder if this has to do with the embarrassment of the tornado warning system failing this summer and they are trying to minimize the failure. Hey, McFly, that is over and done with, time to move on and make sure they work moving forward. Don’t people learn from their mistakes anymore?

WHO IS BEHIND THE STACE NELSON CASE

The rumor mill has been on full cycle that the SD GOP is behind going after Nelson about blocking people of FB. They have been wanting to get Stace for his big mouth for years, and I think they want to bury him with this Federal case. I think it is funny how the SD GOP is concerned about the 1st Amendment when they want to hurt someone, but the rest of the time they are the most secretive party of all time. And corrupt. If you want to apply these rules to Nelson, which I think that is a good thing, you also have to follow them to. So if you want to make sure politicians are not blocking people on FB, maybe in the next session you should pass sweeping open meeting transparency laws . . . wait, maybe that is why Stace in trouble, he told us about the warts of the GOP.