South DaCola

Editorial Cartoonist from South Dakota

SF City Council

Bunker Ramp Downtown Sioux Falls Media SF City Council Sioux Falls

Dakotanews has a peculiar view on Investigative Journalism

l3wis 5Comments


I was a little puzzled by this story they posted yesterday;



The I-Team has learned that the city of Sioux Falls has hired an outside attorney to represent the city in a lawsuit against the Village River Group.



I am assuming the I-Team means investigative team. Besides the fact that I posted about this on January 18, it wasn’t some secret since it was on the public agenda at the January 18 meeting in the consent agenda in which Councilor Starr pulled and asked the city finance director and city attorney where the money was coming from.

They both kind of fibbed a bit (the real story here).

Still wondering why it took supposed investigative journalists 6 weeks to figure something out that was posted on a public agenda?

Elections Mayor TenHaken SF City Council Sioux Falls

Mayor TenHaken Tweets campaign commercials while chairing the City Council meeting tonight

l3wis 6Comments

As you can see while the council meeting is going on (7:24 PM) the mayor is tweeting campaign commercials on his twitter page. Not only is this during a city council meeting he is chairing it is during the discussion of employee bonuses.

WOW!

This reminds me a little of when councilor Knudson was watching the Olympics during a meeting, but what makes this even more egregious is it is the chair of the meeting during a discussion on bonuses for city employees.

I guess you could argue he can multi-task, a candidate for office should not be promoting his candidacy during an official meeting we are paying him to chair.

Can anyone say unethical?

Curt Soehl Emmett Reistroffer for City Council Jim Burzynski SF City Council Sioux Falls

Sioux Falls City Councilor, Soehl is very beatable

l3wis 2Comments

Make no mistake, beating an incumbent city councilor is not an easy task, ask Jensen who had to spend $127K and lucking out by having primary voters (who rarely vote in city elections) help him achieve the task.

Obviously it doesn’t hurt that Soehl now has two challengers, a well-intentioned, all around family guy and a fierce citizen advocate. We could likely see them in the run-off or one of them crushing the 51% threshold.

But what really makes Soehl beatable is that he really isn’t an incumbent because the Central district he was elected in doesn’t exist anymore and you really don’t need the McKennan park elite’s vote to win in Central.

The re-districting commission now have included parts of Whittier and Cathedral neighborhoods. Match that with Pettigrew Heights and you have pretty strong working class voters.

While it will be a challenge for the other two candidates to battle with an incumbent, Soehl is really an incumbent with NO home and will NOT be re-elected.

David Barranco Elections SF City Council

Sioux Falls City Council Candidate Barranco had another ‘VOTE BUYING’ event last month

l3wis 7Comments

Sorry, I just caught this, but it looks like Barranco had another questionable vote buying event. Unlike the event before that at Thunder Road (which was filed as an in-kind donation on his last finance report) this event was NOT at a private facility but one that was owned by taxpayers. I am pretty sure that Great Bear CANNOT provide an in-kind donation to a political candidate and it is likely he paid for this out of campaign funds (at least he should have).

Ironically, I’m not even sure the event took place since Great Bear being open at all is a rarity 🙂

To play the Devil’s advocate, you could argue that candidates hold events all the time at rented facilities where they may provide light foodie and drinkie, but I’m not sure paying for voter’s kids to go tubing is the same.

I have seen many candidates over the years do questionable events that border on unethical, but over the last two election cycles it has exploded into what they can get away with, like the mayor having a FREE two-hour radio ad KELO.

There is a checklist when deciding on a candidate that you should review, and ETHICS should be at the top of that list.

Cody Ingle David Barranco Elections SF City Council Sioux Falls

Perspective Sioux Falls City Council Candidates Zitterich and Bassey didn’t make the ballot

l3wis 2Comments

A news story probably not covered in SF politics yesterday was that two perspective candidates DID NOT make the ballot due to the lack of signatures.

Mike Zitterich who was hoping to run for AT-Large B did send me an email last night explaining to me his disappointment and hoped to run in the future. He said it was due to time constraints.

Immanuel Bassey has said very little except this to AL reporter Trevor Mitchell;

Bassey did not have enough valid signatures to get into the race, he tells me

I found out about Bassey last week and that he was recruited by some local politicians to run. Considering who they were I anticipated that he would make the ballot. I find it odd that if the rumor was true that he was recruited by these folks they didn’t help him gather signatures. Almost looked like a false flag operation to discourage others from running against Barranco.

Thank goodness Ingle qualified for the ballot and I encourage anyone that is on the fence in the SE district about the candidates to reach out to Mr. Ingle and get to know this incredible individual. As for Barranco, I hear very little about him except that he doesn’t pay his property taxes on time.

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