Is Pat Powers really for open government?

Pat Powers campaigns in favor of open government. If so, then he should be promoting and applauding this effort:

South Dakota Conservative Action Council's Executive Director, Lee Breard filed 10 Open Records requests for copies of all no-bid contracts with various departments of state and local government. After reviewing summary contract data from the State Auditor we are now requesting detailed copies of all no-bid contracts from the agencies that awarded them.

"South Dakota state law dictates that all personal service contracts are no-bid. According to the State Auditor's office, there are over 3,000 personal service, no-bid contracts with the state of South Dakota currently on file," said Lee Breard.

"These contracts may be "open" to the public, but the process to review them is onerous and prohibitively expensive. For all practical purposes they are not readily available to the citizens of South Dakota," said Breard. "South Dakota needs an easily accessible website that posts all state contracts."

The SD CAC filed Open Record requests for all no-bid contracts with 6 departments of state government: Transportation, Corrections, Agricultural, Environmental and Natural Resources, Tourism and State Development, and Education. The same requests were also filed with Pennington and Minnehaha Counties and the Cities of Sioux Falls and Rapid City.

"This is a time consuming process that must be done to investigate the wasteful no-bid contracting practices that breed corruption," said Breard. "We have already spent months researching state contracts and taxpayer funded lobbying. At one point we paid a dollar a page for 192 copies of taxpayer-funded lobbying expense reports. After scrubbing through $192 worth of information we found only 6 pages of pertinent data."

"What private citizen would go through this hassle and pay these fees to investigate how their hard earned tax dollars are spent," said Breard. "The fact that we have spent so much time, money, and effort just trying to get a straight answer is ridiculous. Government has become off-limits for the average citizen who wants to know basic answers to reasonable questions about their tax dollars."

This is the first in a series of reports concerning the state's contracting and lobbying practices. The SD CAC is working daily for the taxpaying citizens of South Dakota to uncover governmental waste and to open state government so that everyone can easily review how their tax dollars are being spent.

Pat Powers has posted SDCAC press releases in the past, but I do not know if he has received this one. But I have noticed that he did not honestly state his position on preschool in answering the survey put out by the South Dakota Family Policy Council. The Pat Powers campaign is a typical RINO effort to convince conservatives to vote for him, not a new voice. He is just another phony politician. Like Bob Mercer, Pat Powers, the Judas of South Dakota conservatism, was part of the South Dakota executive branch system. I question what side of the fence he is on. Based on his education policy positions, he is pro-government and against freedom for parents.