ETHANOL IS HELPING FUEL THE SUPPORT FOR THE SOUTH DAKOTA CARBON PIPELINE BALLOT MEASURE
SOUTH DAKOTA (Joshua Haiar / South Dakota Searchlight) – Money from ethanol producers is clashing with contributions from individuals and farm-and-ranch corporations — plus some funding from national climate activists — in the fight over a carbon-dioxide pipeline law on South Dakota’s Nov. 5 ballot.
Committees supporting the law have raised at least $2.3 million, all from ethanol companies, since their last reports in May, and they’ve spent $1.5 million. Committees opposing the law have raised at least $224,000 and spent over $160,000. Individuals and farm-and-ranch corporations put forth about $150,000 to defeat the bill, making up a majority of the money raised on the vote-no side.
The information comes from new campaign finance reports filed this week.
State lawmakers and Gov. Kristi Noem adopted Senate Bill 201 during the last legislative session. Opponents collected over 31,000 petition signatures to put the legislation on the ballot as Referred Law 21. A yes vote supports the law, while a no vote opposes it.
The law includes financial and other protections for landowners and counties affected by pipelines. It also shifts a burden to local governments, requiring them to prove their restrictions on pipelines are reasonable, instead of pipeline companies having to prove them unreasonable.
Proponent finances
A ballot question committee backing the law, Protect South Dakota’s Ag Future, is chaired by former South Dakota Agriculture Secretary Walt Bones. The committee spent $167,000 on advertising using a contribution of that amount from Gevo, a company that hopes to produce ethanol-based aviation fuel in South Dakota. Gevo is backing the law as part of its plans to use carbon capture technology in its production process.
Another ballot question committee, Vote Yes for a Strong South Dakota, raised $2.2 million from ethanol producers, including $1 million from POET, the Sioux Falls-based world’s largest ethanol company, and $400,000 from Glacial Lakes Energy, an ethanol producer with multiple locations in South Dakota. Another $200,000 came from Gevo. The committee has spent $1.4 million, mostly on ads.
Opponent finances
Opponents of the law, through the SD Property Rights and Local Control Alliance ballot question committee, raised $189,000. Aside from the individual donations and farm-and-ranch corporation contributions, an additional $27,500 was raised through fundraising events such as silent auctions.
South Dakota Searchlight questioned the committee’s treasurer, Rep. Tina Mulally, R-Rapid City, about the legality of reporting only the amount of the silent auction proceeds without the names of auction buyers. South Dakota requires individual campaign contributions above $100 to be disclosed with the contributor’s name.
“Those silent auctions were for a yard sign, a pie, a print,” Mulally said. “They were all little items. Mostly signs.”
Several county Republican parties donated a combined $4,400. South Dakotans for Safe and Responsible Renewable Energy is one of two political action committees listed as contributing, totaling $2,800; however, no committee by that name is listed on the state campaign finance website.
Jane Fonda and other national money
Another opponent group, a ballot question committee affiliated with Dakota Rural Action, received its $35,000 in funding from the South Dakota Rural Voters political action committee. It received its funding from two national groups – New World Foundation and Jane Fonda Climate PAC – which support social and climate justice efforts.
Referred Law 21 arose from controversy surrounding Iowa-based Summit Carbon Solutions, which has partnered with ethanol plants in the Midwest — including in eastern South Dakota — to capture CO2 and transport it to North Dakota for underground storage.
The project aims to benefit from federal tax credits for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Some landowners along the route oppose the pipeline due to concerns about eminent domain — a legal process for gaining access to land from unwilling owners — and potentially hazardous leaks.
Referred Law 21, described as a compromise bill by Republican legislative leaders, does not address eminent domain but includes landowner protections. It requires pipeline companies to cover damages, mandates CO2 pipelines be buried at least 4 feet deep, and compels companies to share rupture modeling data. The law says counties can also collect up to $1 per linear foot of pipeline for property tax relief and road repairs.
PRISON LEADER RESPONDS TO CRITICISM OVER LOSS OF PRIVATE EMPLOYER AND PRAISES COLLEGE PARTNERSHIP
PIERRE, S.D. (John Hult / South Dakota Searchlight) – A state lawmaker released a letter Thursday from Department of Corrections Secretary Kellie Wasko that addresses allegations of unfairness by a private company that left its prison workshop earlier this year.
The DOC has never granted an interview with Wasko to discuss the exit of Metal Craft Industries, which paid a market wage to inmates in Sioux Falls under the guidelines of a federal program. The business employed inmates for more than two decades.
The letter outlining the DOC’s version of the story wasn’t meant for public consumption. It was offered confidentially Monday to members of the Legislature’s Government Operations and Audit Committee.
Rep. Linda Duba, D-Sioux Falls, who sits on the committee, asked Wasko on Wednesday evening for permission to release the letter to the media and Wasko agreed. Duba sent it Thursday morning.
“This is just to give some clarity and a lot of details,” Duba said.
The letter’s release comes one week after the state Board of Technical Education voted unanimously to endorse the pursuit of a diesel mechanic program for inmates in the space once occupied by Metal Craft Industries.
That program would be run by Southeast Technical College, which already teaches welding to minimum security inmates at its Sioux Falls campus on a daily basis. Wasko argues in the letter that Metal Craft was “putting the safety of our staff and other offenders at risk” by refusing to “modernize” its operations. She goes on to tell lawmakers that the DOC “hopes to have a new program set up soon” through Southeast Tech.
DOC response comes after media spotlight
Several media outlets, including South Dakota Searchlight, have written about the dispute between Metal Craft Industries and the DOC.
Metal Craft’s owner, Terry Van Zanten, said Wasko wanted operational changes too quickly, and that he wasn’t offered enough guidance on how to comply with DOC mandates. The company was forced out, Van Zanten argues.
In the letter released Wednesday, Wasko called that a “very misleading and false narrative,” and accused Van Zanten of slandering the agency by telling it.
She wrote that Metal Craft Industries came under scrutiny after a civilian Metal Craft employee was caught on camera allowing an inmate employee to use a cell phone. A subsequent search of the shop turned up contraband, including a knife, loose drill bits, two iPads, unauthorized snacks and “excess electronics, cooking appliances and other items to which offenders are not allowed to access.”
Metal Craft’s shop was located in the Jameson Annex, which is the prison system’s maximum security facility for male inmates.
The DOC had pushed Van Zanten to work with inmates with shorter sentences, Wasko’s letter said, in order to give them job skills for use outside the prison walls. Most of Van Zanten’s employees were serving life sentences.
Wasko said the company slow-walked changes to its inmate staffing, didn’t take changes to the state’s prison tool control policies seriously and chose to end the partnership rather than comply.
The letter offers new details and a timeline of events, but its narrative aligns broadly with the story Wasko has told to lawmakers in public meetings about the situation.
Van Zanten wanted to use his long-term inmate employees to train new ones, and the letter quotes snippets of an email from him in which he asked to retain some of his “key” inmate employees, even as the DOC moved to reclassify them and move them out of Jameson. Van Zanten wrote in the email that he needed those inmate employees to stay competitive in the market.
“Essentially, MCI was asking for DOC to house offenders in the most restrictive conditions of confinement, even if their classification deemed them less risky, for MCI’s benefit,” Wasko wrote.
Van Zanten said Thursday that he believes Wasko’s letter is meant as cover for an overly rigid approach to change and the failures in communications that he says led to the breakdown of the business relationship.
“We told the truth, and we’re sticking by it,” Van Zanten said. “She’s just pulling things out of her hat at this point.”
Diesel mechanic program planned for vacated space
The DOC aims to refashion the Metal Craft space into an instructional area for inmates.
Currently, inmates on minimum security status who live in a halfway house in Sioux Falls travel to Southeast Tech every day to participate in afternoon sessions of the school’s welding program. The program is jointly funded with the South Dakota Department of Labor.
Over the course of the partnership, more than 50 welders have been certified, according to Ben Valdez, the school’s vice president of academic affairs. Inmate welding students have worked on projects for community organizations, Valdez said, including a series of camera mounts for Howard Wood Field in Sioux Falls that are now used during track and field events.
More than 80% of the program’s graduates have gotten welding jobs upon release, Valdez said.
“Our two new instructors have even taken it up another notch,” Valdez said during a recent visit to the welding program’s workshop. “Instead of just teaching welding, we’re doing a lot of fabrication. Within welding facilities, a lot of times they have to be able to cut, press, shape and redo the welding materials so that they then can actually put them together.”
Inmate students at Southeast Tech are treated “like every other student,” Valdez said, and can participate in on-campus events, including job fairs and a recent visit from television personality and vocational education advocate Mike Rowe.
Pritam Gurung is one of the inmates in the current class of 12 at Southeast Tech. Gurung is looking forward to leaving DOC custody with the skills to land a decent paying job. His family has been disappointed with the repeat drunken driving offenses that landed him in prison over the winter, but “the things that I’m doing with the time that I’ve got in here, they’re happy about that,” Gurung said.
In addition to discussions on a diesel mechanics program, Valdez said there have been preliminary talks on bringing female inmates into programs like medical coding and phlebotomy.
The DOC also offers career and technical education courses in precision machining for male offenders at Mike Durfee State Prison in Springfield through Lake Area Technical College, according to an Oct. 4 news release from the DOC. Offenders from the Rapid City Minimum Center can enroll in a plumbing course at Western Dakota Technical College, the release said.
NEBRASKA SUPERINTENDENT IN HOT WATER OVER COWBOY HAT ISSUE
MAYWOOD, NE – A western Nebraska school superintendent is facing a felony charge after a confrontation with a student who didn’t want to remove his cowboy hat.
The Maywood School District put Mark Bejot on administrative leave after he was charged with child abuse Monday over the Oct. 1 incident in the school’s commons area.
Frontier County Sheriff Michael Jordan said that while the superintendent maintains that the boy inadvertently fell off a stool, surveillance video appears to show Bejot pulling the boy off the stool while reaching for the hat. The sheriff learned about the incident after the boy’s mother called him about it.
Bejot posted $5,000 bond so he could remain free ahead of his next hearing in November. Court records don’t show that he has an attorney yet.
The version of events Bejot described to Jordan differed from the way the boy’s family described him being thrown to the floor, but Jordan said he decided to send the case to the Nebraska Attorney General for review after he saw surveillance video that gave him concerns about the way the superintendent handled it. Prosecutors there decided to charge him after reviewing the evidence.
He told the sheriff the boy initially refused to remove the hat and then intentionally put it where it would be hard to reach. He said the boy fell off a stool as Bejot reached for the cowboy hat despite his efforts to keep him from falling. The boy then threatened to hit the superintendent and stormed out to call his dad, Bejot said.
Jordan said that in the surveillance video, it appeared that Bejot leaped for the hat after the boy took it off, and then hooked his hands under the boy’s armpits and pulled him off the stool. Jordan said the video also showed Bejot pushing the boy’s shoulders down while pulling the hat out of his hands. The boy then got up and raised his fist at the superintendent before grabbing his phone and walking outside.
The Maywood School Board said in a statement that Bejot had been put on administrative leave, but said board members couldn’t discuss details of the situation because it is a personnel matter.
SOUTH DAKOTA SUPREME COURT OVERTURNS CONVICTION BASED ON FAILURES OF COURT-APPOINTED ATTORNEY
PIERRE, S.D. (Joshua Haiar / South Dakota Searchlight) – The South Dakota Supreme Court has overturned an aggravated assault conviction based on the poor performance of the defendant’s court-appointed Sisseton lawyer.
The issue of ineffective public defenders has been top of mind for the state court system over the past two years. The state convened a study group on the issue at the behest of Chief Justice Steven Jensen, who told lawmakers that the state lacks enough well-trained attorneys, especially in rural areas, to protect the rights of defendants.
The study group’s members have noted repeatedly that failure to properly defend clients can lead to appeals and overturned convictions. Lawmakers signed off on the creation of a statewide public defender’s office this year, and the Unified Judicial System recently hired a Sioux Falls lawyer to head up the office.
In the future, that state-level office will handle all criminal appeals to the state Supreme Court by “indigent” defendants who can’t afford an attorney, while counties will continue to pay for those defendants’ attorneys in the lower courts.
Decision has roots in 2019 dispute
Thursday’s ruling offers a window into the sorts of issues that animated concerns about the state’s unique, county-led approach to indigent defense.
Christopher Schocker, 59, was convicted of aggravated assault of a law enforcement officer in 2019 after a tense interaction with an officer from the South Dakota Department of Game, Fish and Parks.
Schocker was upset with the officer for seizing a deer poached by someone else. He refused to help the officer load the deer into his vehicle, cursed at him, and at one point approached the officer slowly with a knife. He put the knife down when ordered to do so by the officer.
He was initially charged with possession of a firearm while intoxicated and possession of a firearm by a person with a prior drug conviction, in addition to the aggravated assault charge. A jury convicted him of the felony assault charge; a judge sentenced him to 25 years in prison and suspended 15 of them.
Schocker appealed his conviction to the state Supreme Court, arguing that there wasn’t enough evidence to convict him.
At his trial, he’d been represented by Robert Doody, who was court-appointed. Doody withdrew from that appeal, leaving it to be argued by another court-appointed attorney.
In his latest appeal, Schocker argued that his conviction was unjust because Doody had been ineffective. Doody had not interviewed two of the witnesses on the scene, and hadn’t kept up communication with his client.
“Schocker and Doody disagree on the number of times Doody and Schocker spoke; however, Schocker claimed that Doody never called him while he was incarcerated and did not answer his letters,” the state Supreme Court’s Thursday ruling says.
At a trial over the matter of ineffective assistance, Doody testified that he didn’t need to interview the two on-scene witnesses, and that not doing so was “part of his trial strategy.”
A bodycam video of the incident was evidence enough, he said.
“I didn’t think that those two gentlemen had anything to really offer that wasn’t already on the videotape,” the Sisseton lawyer said at the trial.
Another defense attorney, however, testified that Doody had done more than missed a chance to interview other witnesses. That attorney, Aberdeen’s Brandon Taliaferro, said Doody had failed to pursue Schocker’s only viable defense, namely that he’d been holding the knife to cut the tag off the deer that the officer was dragging to his vehicle.
Another person at the home where the altercation took place had put her own deer tag on the poached deer prior to the officer’s seizure of the animal. The tag was legitimate, but it belonged to someone who hadn’t shot the deer.
One of the witnesses Doody didn’t interview testified that had he been asked, he could’ve told the jury that Schocker was after the deer tag, not the officer.
A circuit court judge sided with Schocker. In Thursday’s ruling, the state Supreme Court agreed.
Doody’s “incomplete and inadequate investigation of the facts” showed that he’d failed to perform his duties as a defense attorney on Schocker’s behalf.
“Here, there were few witnesses, and their contact information was at Doody’s disposal,” Justice Scott Myren wrote. “Yet, he made no effort even to contact those witnesses. This decision fell below an objective, reasonable standard of performance.”
Chief Justice Steven Jensen and Justice Patricia DeVaney voted with Myren in the 3-2 decision. Justices Janine Kern and Mark Salter dissented.
Kern’s dissent agrees that Doody’s performance was deficient, but she wrote that it ought not be enough to overturn Schocker’s conviction.
“I am unable to conclude that, but for this error, there is a ‘reasonable probability’ that Schocker would not have been convicted,” Kern wrote.
Case does not effect law practice
The Schocker decision is the second time this year the Supreme Court overturned a lower court’s actions for one of Doody’s former clients.
In March, the justices undid the sentence of one of his clients. In that case, the Supreme Court chastised the judge. Doody had asked to be removed from the case on the date of the client’s sentencing because of a “serious communication breakdown,” but the judge said no and sentenced the client anyway.
The justices said that was the wrong decision, and overturned the client’s five-year sentence.
Schocker filed a lawsuit against Doody after the lower court ruled that the lawyer had performed poorly. The case, in which Schocker is asking for damages as a result of his incarceration at the state penitentiary, is ongoing.
Neither the Supreme Court ruling nor Schocker’s lawsuit, should he emerge victorious, would impact Doody’s law license. An ineffective assistance of counsel ruling alone does not affect a lawyer’s good standing with the State Bar of South Dakota, whose director confirmed that Doody is still a member.
The Bar is independent of its disciplinary board, whose investigations, hearings and findings in cases of alleged unethical conduct – an ineffective assistance finding in a case isn’t an ethical breach – are confidential under state law unless the board makes the complaint or reprimand public, the attorney involved asked for it to be made public, or the conduct involves the attorney being convicted of a serious crime.
Doody did not return a message seeking comment on the case.
UPDATE ON WORK PROGRESSING AT ST. MARY’S SCHOOLS IN O’NEILL NEBRASKA FOLLOWING OCTOBER 7TH EXPLOSION
O’NEILL, NE – St. Mary’s Catholic Schools say progress continues to get the high school and grade school ready for students following an explosion on Monday, Oct. 7.
Officials from St. Mary’s say much of the high school has been cleaned by Serv-Pro and work is currently ongoing in the grade school.
According to a statement from the school, many things still need to be finished before students are able to return to school.
Environmental Services is working to remove current carpet and tile underneath to prepare the floors for new carpet. The new carpet has been ordered but not yet delivered.
While the school continues to be cleaned and sanitized, students and teachers are housed in new locations.
The school says the following locations have been planned for the following grades:
Pre-K, Preschool, Kindergarten and First Grade: The former public school administration building
Grades 2-6: Faith Community Church classrooms
Grades 7 – 12: Northeast Community College O’Neill campus
PE classes resumed in grade school. The PE teacher is walking the students to the high school gym for PE classes.
Additionally, kindergarten and 1st grade students have been able to have hot lunch this week.
