MAN KILLED IN ONE VEHICLE CRASH NEAR WALL, SD INVOLVING MODEL A
WALL, S.D. – A 73-year-old man died Friday morning from injuries sustained in a single vehicle crash in Wall, SD.
The man’s name has not been released pending notification of family members.
The preliminary crash report shows that the man was driving a 1929 Ford Model A westbound on Interstate 90 when the vehicle departed its lane to the left. The driver overcorrected to the right and entered what the highway patrol describes as a yaw, or a sudden shifting of the center of gravity for the vehicle suddenly to the left or right. The vehicle crossed the shoulder, entered the north ditch, tipped and rolled. The driver was ejected from the vehicle and was declared deceased at the scene.
The South Dakota Highway Patrol is investigating the crash.
GIANT SINKHOLES IN A BLACK HILLS NEIGHBORHOOD STILL MAKING FAMILIES FEAR FOR THEIR SAFETY
BLACK HAWK, S.D. (The Associated Press) – Stuart and Tonya Junker loved their quiet neighborhood near South Dakota’s Black Hills — until the earth began collapsing around them, leaving them wondering if their home could tumble into a gaping hole.
They blame the state for selling land that became the Hideaway Hills subdivision despite knowing it was perched above an old mine. Since the sinkholes began opening up, they and about 150 of their neighbors sued the state for $45 million to cover the value of their homes and legal costs.
“Let’s just say it’s really changed our lives a lot,” Tonya Junker said. “The worry, the not sleeping, the ‘what if’ something happens. It’s all of it, all of the above.”
Sinkholes are fairly common, due to collapsed caves, old mines or dissolving material, but the circumstances in South Dakota stand out, said Paul Santi, a professor of geological engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. The combination of such large sinkholes endangering so many homes makes the Hideaway Hills situation one to remember.
“I can say just from having taught classes about case histories with geologic problems that this would be a case that will end up in textbooks,” Santi said.
Crews built Hideaway Hills, located a few miles northwest of Rapid City, from 2002 to 2004 in an area previously owned by the state where the mineral gypsum was mined for use at a nearby state-owned cement plant.
Attorney Kathy Barrow, who represents residents who live in 94 subdivision homes, said the state sold the surface but held on to the subsurface, and it did not disclose it had removed the soil’s natural ability to hold up the surface.
Some of the land slightly sunk over time after the subdivision was built, and a hole opened up beneath a back porch, but the situation escalated after a large sinkhole opened up in 2020 near where a man was mowing his lawn. That prompted residents to connect with Barrow and testing revealed a large, improperly sealed mine beneath the northeastern part of the subdivision, and a 40-foot-deep (12-meter-deep) pit mine in another corner of the neighborhood, Barrow said.
Since that first giant collapse, more holes and sinkings have appeared and there are now “too many to count,” Barrow said. The unstable ground has affected 158 homes plus destabilized roads and utilities.
In one spot, an old truck can be seen in a hole beneath a house porch, still resting where a landowner pushed it into a mine cavern in the 1940s, Barrow said.
The area near the 2020 collapse has been vacated and gated off, but people still live in many of the other homes, usually because they can’t afford to leave.
Residents are panicked but stuck, Barrow said.
“They’re worried about school buses falling into a hole. They worry about their houses collapsing on their children in their beds at night,” Barrow said. “I mean, you spend your whole life putting money and building equity in your home. It’s your most prized asset, and these people’s asset had become not only worthless but almost a negative because they’re dangerous to live in.”
An attorney for the state declined to comment, but the state has asked a judge to dismiss the case.
In court documents, the state entities being sued said they “would like to express their sincerest sympathies for many of the property owners” and called the sinkhole formation “tragic.”
Still, the state argued that it wasn’t the fault of officials.
“Those truly liable in this case are the developer, the initial realtor, and the numerous homebuilders who knowingly chose to build over an abandoned mine while purposefully hiding its existence from the homebuyers purchasing in Hideaway Hills,” the state said.
In court documents, the state traced the area’s mining history to the 1900s, noting a company that mined underground and on the surface before 1930. Beginning in 1986, the state-owned cement plant mined for several years.
The state claimed it wasn’t liable for damages related to the underground mine collapse because the cement plant didn’t mine underground and the mine would have collapsed regardless of the plant’s activities. Around 1994, a horse farmer bought the land and then later sold the property to a developer who encountered a deep hole, the state said in documents.
The state said it couldn’t have known that the developer, homebuilders and the county would move ahead with the neighborhood’s development despite allegedly knowing about the past mining and underground voids.
In 2000, the South Dakota Legislature approved the sale of the state cement plant. A voter-approved trust fund created from proceeds of the sale stands at over $371 million.
For the Junkers, the lawsuit is their best hope of escaping from a nightmare.
Tonya Junker said her husband was going to retire this year, but now he has to work longer, taking on two jobs to save money in case they are evacuated.
“That’s a hard pill to swallow,” she said.
The Junkers have lived 15 years together in the neighborhood, in a home built in 1929 and moved to the subdivision as one of the first homes in the neighborhood. They gutted and remodeled the structure and planned to make the three-bedroom, two-bathroom home their base for retirement.
Stuart Junker said he simply wants to be paid what his house is worth.
“It’s just kind of disappointing that the state won’t take care of us,” he said. “I mean, this is their problem.”
IOWA MAN TAKEN INTO CUSTODY FOLLOWING FRIDAY NIGHT VEHICLE CHASE
STANTON COUNTY, NE – An Iowa man, who was wanted by Stanton County deputies, was taken into custody after a high-speed chase on Friday night.
According to the Stanton County Sheriff’s Office, deputies found a stolen pickup near the Stanton and Wayne County line on Friday evening. The sheriff’s office says the pickup truck was stolen from Wayne County during another incident that took place earlier in the evening.
After the pickup was found, the driver was identified as 46-year-old Jason Waddell. Waddell fled the scene on foot and ran into a bean field north of the county line. Waddell was wanted for an earlier event which led officials to evacuate several farms in the area.
Authorities say a perimeter was set up by the Stanton County Sheriff’s Office, Wayne County Sheriff’s Office and Wayne Police Department with additional help from the Nebraska State Patrol.
Officials say law enforcement found Waddell in the field after a drone search that took about two hours. The sheriff’s office says a thermal drone from the Stanton County Emergency Management team was also used in the search.
Stanton County deputies say Waddell allegedly refused to cooperate after being approached by law enforcement.
The sheriff’s office says Waddell was found bitten several times by a police K-9. He was then taken into custody for felony charges in both Stanton County and Wayne County, Nebraska.
The Stanton County Sheriff’s Office says Waddell was taken to a nearby hospital in Norfolk to be treated for his injuries by Pilger Fire and Rescue. Deputies say he was then jailed on a pending cash bond for both counties.
NEBRASKA LEGISLATORS STUDYING REGULATION OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, WATCHING PENDING LEGISLATION IN OTHER STATES
LINCOLN, NE (Zach Wendling / Nebraska Examiner) – An interim study ahead of possible 2025 legislation to regulate artificial intelligence when it comes to Nebraska elections could depend on the fate of legislation in at least 19 other states.
State Sens. Tom Brewer of north-central Nebraska and John Cavanaugh of Omaha each posed the question to their colleagues Thursday about whether the state should regulate AI. For Brewer’s Legislative Resolution 362, the focus was possible dangers for elections generally, and for Cavanaugh’s LR 412 about the use of AI in political campaigns.
Cavanaugh, who introduced Legislative Bill 1203 this year before it stalled in February, said he and others are still trying to understand AI and how to approach it. That’s especially so when balancing possible dangers with potential uses all under First Amendment protections.
“There won’t be a simple solution as technology is ever changing and we’re struggling to keep up right now,” Cavanaugh said. “But together, with the stakeholders in this room and throughout Nebraska, I believe we can reach some common ground.”
Cavanaugh’s legislation would have put AI regulation under the auspices of the Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission and require clear and conspicuous disclosures for paid state or local advertisements for candidates or ballot questions.
But similar to the February hearing on LB 1203, lawmakers received a frosty response on the interim study from State Sen. Danielle Conrad of Lincoln, an attorney and member of the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee that Brewer chairs.
Conrad repeatedly pushed back and said she was “very skeptical” that new regulations on political speech are needed.
“I think it runs afoul of the First Amendment,” Conrad said. “If not legally, I think it has a chilling effect even on speech that we find confusing or confounding or distasteful or misleading.”
What other states have done
Adam Kuckuk and Ben Williams of the National Conference of State Legislatures, a bipartisan organization that assists lawmakers and their staffs nationwide and tracks legislation, said at least 19 states have explicitly addressed AI and political messaging in legislation across political ideology.
Kuckuk said AI has been the “hottest topic” in the past two years but is “only the latest wrinkle in a long line of technological changes that have impacted state campaigns and elections.” For example, he said, other changes have included television, social media and cryptocurrency campaign contributions.
Many of those laws use different terms for generative AI — such as “synthetic media,” “deceptive media,” or “deepfakes” — but there is no one, accepted definition, even among researchers. No state has completely banned deceptive AI political messaging, either.
Instead, Kuckuk said, states prohibited deceptively created messages at a certain time point before an election or require a disclosure that the material is AI generated.
Williams said some states impose civil fines, ranging from the nation’s lowest at $500 on the first violation in Michigan to the highest at $10,000 on the second violation in Minnesota. Several states, such as New Mexico and Utah, fine offenders $1,000 for each violation, and Colorado imposes a penalty of 10% of the dollar amount used to promote a deepfake.
Other states impose criminal penalties, such as up to one year in prison in Texas or Mississippi, or up to five years in prison in Mississippi if the intention of the message is to cause violence.
Texas lawmakers were the first to pass an AI law in 2019, Williams said, defining a “deepfake” as a video alone, not images or audio, and banning such content within 30 days before an election.
Minnesota has a “two strike” rule before there is possible prison time. It prohibits deepfakes within 90 days prior to an election, as does Arizona, unless there is a clear disclosure it was AI-generated.
Kuckuk said some states require disclosure in a digital metadata file instead of a physical message, such as in Colorado. That must stipulate who created the content, when it was created and edited, and that it is AI based.
Congress has yet to pass legislation but has considered bills to require a federal agency to monitor AI use, and the Federal Elections Commission is considering new regulations, according to national representatives.
A ‘reflexive’ approach?
Conrad said she sees definitional or enforcement problems in many of the laws and said political satire, impersonation and cherry-picking of someone’s words has existed “since the dawn of politics.”
“I’m just concerned about a reflexive approach,” Conrad said, pointing to potential new penalties.
Cavanaugh, in response, said he doesn’t want to be reflexive but instead wants to be thoughtful and deliberate and decide definitively if anything should be done.
“I think getting out front and having the conversation as we go, before it actually comes up, is probably the smarter thing to do,” Cavanaugh said.
As he testified in February, Jim Timm, president and executive director of the Nebraska Broadcasters Association, asked that any legislation clearly exempt broadcasters from liability. He noted that under federal law, organizations must run political advertising regardless of content.
Timm used an analogy of a fever or a tweaked knee that can be checked with a “trusty thermometer” or doctor visit and be defined quickly. For AI, he said, there is no such detector.
“We have no magical powers to make those determinations,” Timm said.
The Nebraska Accountability and Disclosure Commission, which handles certain complaints against elected officials or candidates and monitors campaign finance, opposed Cavanaugh’s bill in February, stating it was outside the commission’s duties.
“The NADC is not tasked with trying to judge the truth or falsity of claims made in the heat of a campaign,” David Hunter, NADC executive director, testified at the time. “We are not equipped to be fact checkers.”
Brewer, who attended a forum on AI that Civic Nebraska hosted in February, said again Thursday that some uses of AI “could be pretty scary if they come true.” At the February event, professors, researchers and a county election commissioner explained how AI could be used to sow misinformation or disinformation about elections generally, and described how terrorists had used AI.
Other effects could include falsely advertising that voting deadlines or polling places have changed or, as happened in New Hampshire’s 2024 primary, a generated voice of the president telling voters to “save” their vote and stay home until the general election.
“Now, a lot of the information was pretty conceptual, but today’s concept can be tomorrow’s problems,” Brewer said at Thursday’s hearing.
‘Not necessarily insidious’
Cavanaugh pointed to an independent project, published in the Nebraska Examiner, that used AI last December to replicate the voices of seven state senators, including Conrad’s. Cavanaugh said the results of that experiment were “unsettling.”
He’s worried about AI getting so good that people will struggle to differentiate reality, especially in contentious elections when candidates take issue even with “half truths.”
Spike Eickholt, an attorney and lobbyist for the ACLU of Nebraska, urged lawmakers not to create any new crimes. He also asked lawmakers to be cautious because most AI-related legislation has been signed into law without being tested in the courts.
“They may not be constitutional, may be suspect, who knows,” Eickholt said.
Eickholt questioned where the line might be drawn with other software that edits images, audio or video, such as photo editing systems or filters that don’t need to be disclosed. Candidates might also use AI to boost up a potentially shoestring campaign or office to respond to constituents or read up on issues, which Eickholt said isn’t deceptive.
Courts don’t protect false or defamatory statements, Eickholt noted, pointing to various state laws that prohibit impersonating a public servant, theft by deception or fraud, election falsification, voter registration fraud or interference, and electioneering.
“The technology is not necessarily insidious. It’s not necessarily horrible,” Eickholt said. “We shouldn’t always just fear everything because it’s new.”
