It should be apparent that there is fairly widespread agreement among the state’s newspaper editors that more needs to be learned and more needs to be disclosed to the public about what went on with EB-5. We don’t disagree with anything that has been said, so we won’t recycle the same arguments. A former state official apparently took his own life, if we’re to believe what we’ve been told, as he was being investigated for his role in double-billing for expenses and diverting some economic development funds for his own use. We now know that he was likely to be facing felony charges. What we don’t know is how closely Richard Benda, the former secretary of tourism and state development for South Dakota, worked with figures such as former governor Mike Rounds, under whom he served for several years. And we don’t know if he was working alone when he decided to divert economic development money or if others knew and approved of his actions. These are obvious things we need to know because the credibility of state government is at stake. So why is it so hard to get more information from our state’s elected officials about the EB-5 scandal? And why are our GOP legislators so content to stop asking questions? It appeared to some after a July 29 meeting of the Government Operations and Audit Committee here in Pierre that Republican lawmakers are simply going through the motions of inquiring into a scandal they simply want to go away. Democratic Rep. Susan Wismer urged members of the committee to seek additional information from outside the parameters of the Daugaard administration, saying the resolution passed last session empowered the committee to do that. But Rep. Justin Cronin, of Gettysburg, and Sen. Larry Tidemann, of Brookings, both Republicans, suggested Wismer’s comments were outside the scope of the committee’s discussion and that the committee had done “due diligence.” Really? Says who? The other Republicans on the committee? Lawmakers should talk to ordinary South Dakotans, Democrat and Republican, before they assert they’ve done due diligence. Diligently as we try, we can’t quite believe that. Sadly, these timid lawmakers are better poised than the rest of us to get answers, since South Dakota has restrictions on open government that would not be tolerated in many states. For example, it is absurd that the press and the public in general in South Dakota cannot get access to the appointment books and calendars of former governor Rounds or former state employee Richard Benda. Did they meet every Tuesday, or did they never meet at all? We may never know. But very possibly the information exists to answer that question; it is simply being kept from the people. Similarly, the press and the larger general public cannot get records of phone calls, text messages or emails or meeting notes from state officials, all activities paid for by the taxpayers, any of which might shed light on EB-5. It should be easy to sift state email records for any reference to EB-5. Which state officials discussed the program, and what did they have to say? We may never know. Yet very likely the information exists to answer that question, too; it is simply being kept from the people. It seems to us that partisan politics and a South Dakota aversion to openness are among the things keeping us from getting to the bottom of EB-5. Of course we, as Americans, can take pride that in some states, the public has free access to this sort of information about state government. That’s the way things are, elsewhere in this great country of ours. — Pierre Capitol Journal
Posted on: Fri, 29 Aug 2014 06:03:30 +0000
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