Mitchell

Short Summary: The forecast is bleak with no change foreseen for the SDDP

l3wis December 13, 2016 10Comments

This was sent to me by a reader;

Full Report: I attended the SDDP’s E-Board and Central Committee meeting in Mitchell on Saturday (12/10/2016). I was not in the room for any Quorum count but I am sure they had a Quorum for both meetings. I counted 13 counties toward the Quorum for the Central Committee plus a number of people I didn’t recognize. Electronic attendance was allowed too, though no notice was given.

Ann Tornberg acknowledged things went badly in November but she has no intention of stepping down. She never misses an opportunity to remind listeners that she was elected to a four-year term two years ago.

The Budget was presented to the E-Board without much discussion. Niblink  congratulated the Party for having a $100,000.00 cash surplus at year-end without any material liabilities against it. The meeting then adjourned to executive session to discuss salaries. This lasted at least an hour. ( Not being an E-Board member, I toured the Discovery Museum. (Interesting Museum. I recommend it.)

Meeting reconvened. The Budget was approved without much discussion. (I learned two days later that they approved $10,000.00 in staff salary increases in executive session). (I guess this was a reward for the poor results in November Ann alluded to.)  (The SDDP has 4 staff people, three subsidized by DNC at $2500.00 per month.)

The Black Hills area was promised their own office by Ann when she was elected Chair in December 2014. A motion was made to honor this commitment but it was tabled for further study. Ann reported on the listening sessions the Party has held. She said the take away was that we need a coherent message. She plans to hold more. She also announced she would not be working for the Democratic Caucus this session but instead planned to attend County Party meetings wherever they are.

Lunch Break

Central Committee Meeting:

Was carbon copy of E-board meeting except that 1) no mention during Budget approval of staff salary increases.. 2) I pointed out that it shouldn’t be considered an accomplishment to have a $100,000.00 cash surplus at the end of an election cycle; that the SDDP was not a profit making operation but was supposed to elect Democrats to office and I suggested that such a balance is evidence of poor planning. Staff responded that Republicans have a $300,000.00 surplus and that the SDDP didn’t spend the money because it wasn’t budgeted for. Someone then suggested perhaps they should have a process to approve spending when the SDDP has more cash than they budgeted for.

3) New Budget has projected a surplus of $56,000.00. So I asked if I was correct in understanding that the $100,000.00 surplus and the $56,000.00 surplus projected for 2017 meant the SDDP would end up with a $156,000.00 surplus at the end of next year. I was told this was correct. A discussion then followed about setting aside money for Statewide Candidates.  It was discouraged by Ann and nothing happened. 4) Then followed a discussion of the Black Hills office again with Leonard, Pennington County chair on the phone obviously pushing hard for a commitment. Tom Katus had a written proposal from Joe Lowe which was handed out. Finally, a motion was adopted  “To commit to a study of the proposal and report back at the next meeting” (probably in February).

Adjournment

Oh! And Tom Cool never missed an opportunity to remind the group that the squares on the Party’s organizational chart have been assigned responsibilities which they need to perform. Or else.