#rick knobe

A look at Constitutional Amendment V, nonpartisan elections

Constitutional Amendment V is the last of the constitutional ballot questions in the 2016 South Dakota election to look at. Amendment V aims to get all voters to participate in the primary election process by removing party labels and having one large primary followed by a top two general election. This post will look at some of the basics of Amendment V. There may be more posts about Amendment…

KELO's story last night on Pam Homan's contract began thusly:

“Making public employee contracts public was a priority for some South Dakota lawmakers this session …”

I laughed when I heard it, because it tells us that public employee contracts previously were not public -- at least in the eyes of the Sioux Falls and Yankton school districts and an administrative law judge, who decided the state's ballyhooed open-records law actually turned once-public records private.

Imagine that. Her salary was public, but the fact that the school board was giving Homan an extra $22,000 cash each year, among other benefits, was not public.

Homan told Rick Knobe last September that her benefits were pretty much the same as when she signed her first contract as superintendent in 2004. I had no reason to believe that wasn't the case.