Davison County GOP attacking county commissioners for trying to combine offices

@SoDakCampaigns

The Davison County Republican Party has apparently drank a heaping helping of the election conspiracy kool-aid, as this past week they went on the attack against the Davison County Commission for looking to combine the vacant office of County Auditor and County Treasurer.

According to recent media reports about the merger, which would place Davison County on the same footing as Hughes and Brookings Counties in reducing administrative overhead and seeking efficiencies:

Reider believes combining the office would create a cohesive office and one that would save the county money. He said the priorities from taxpayers and citizens tell him as a commissioner to be efficient and effective in leading the county. He said he’s confident the county would maintain checks and balances between its requirements with the state and how the offices are managed, and if the county didn’t believe in it, it wouldn’t advance further.

“We’re monitoring our offices all the time, we want the right people doing the right job. … When I visit with business leaders, they say when you lose positions, you should consider restructuring and that’s especially true with leadership,” Reider said. “It’s what businesses must do to stay effective and efficient and quite frankly, we are county business.”

Read the entire story here in the Mitchell Republic.

Efficiencies in government? Reducing administrative overhead?  Sounds like everything the Republican Party has always advocated for, doesn’t it?   Well, when you’re dealing with roving bands of election conspiracists with a terminal case of paranoia, by gosh they want to keep as many administrators as they can, according to the e-mail that went out from the Davison County GOP Leadership in response:

From: Davison County Republicans <davison[email protected]>
Sent: Saturday, September 7, 2024 11:14:34 AM
To: Davison County Republicans <davison[email protected]>
Subject: Your Presence and Input is Requested!!!

Davison County Commissioners Kill the Auditor position!

  • Commissioners claim combining the Treasurer and Auditor will be more efficient and save money.
    • Truth:  They have NOT provided any objective quantitative or financial data/cost benefit analysis (PROOF) to back up this claim.  
  • Combining TWO FULL-TIME jobs into ONE adversely affects the ability and effectiveness to cover the duties of BOTH FULL-TIME occupations.
  • Doubling the workload into one position means the auditor duties would be delegated downward to an appointed employee.  
  • Commissioners claim the Treasurer/Auditor will be an elected position, but taxpayers/voters will have no say in who performs the auditor duties.  
    • Your vote for an INDEPENDENT Auditor will be ABOLISHED.
    • Commissioners are jeopardizing Davison County financial and election integrity.  CRITICAL IN THIS ELECTION YEAR!
  • This consolidation sets the stage for at least 3 other things to happen:
    1. Increasing pay for the consolidated Treasurer/Auditor.
    2. Hiring 1 or 2 additional full-time employees (in addition to replacing the Deputy Auditor who resigned effective 9/2/2024).  
    3. A tax increase to pay for the salary increase and salary and benefits for the additional position(s).
  • Segregation of duties is a fundamental accounting principle critical to prevent embezzlement and fraud.  It is widely acknowledged within the accounting arena and specified by the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) and the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA). 
  • Combining the Treasurer and Auditor clearly presents a conflict of interest and increases the risk of fraud or other illegal actions.  It’s like the fox guarding the henhouse!  
  • The Auditor MUST remain INDEPENDENT, NOT subservient to the Treasurer!!  

YOUR help is needed!!

Come to the County Commission meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024, before 11:00 a.m. at the Davison County Fairgrounds, to voice your opposition against this unethical, if not illegal, action)

*FYI-Sonja presented a powerpoint laying out a comparison of the costs of the machines versus hand counting. This information was obtained through a FOIA request that she made and paid for. In addition, this information was also obtained from the SD SOS office. 2019-2020- 
 
They spent $35,024.65 on election equipment and resources(this did not include the cost to hire poll workers) alone but hand counting would cost $5100!!!!!  Where is the transparency and facts for why they want to do this???? 
 
See Sonja’s pdf powerpoint attached!!****
 
CONTACT COUNTY COMMISSIONERS
County Commissioners Contact information can be found at this link (https://www.davisoncounty.org/commission/) and the agenda here (https://www.davisoncounty.org/agendas-minutes/commission-agenda-and-minutes/).
 
We love living in Davison County but that comes with a responsibility to hold our elected officials accountable as they work for us, the citizens.
 
God bless all of you and God bless America!
Sincerely,
Larry, and Sonja

Well, God Bless America, and throw in some manufactured hand-counting claims that don’t exist in the real world.   If this was a school district, I suspect they’d be all over that claiming they can combine every job and that the Superintendent can do everything including school nurse and janitor. But, suggest eliminating a job the election goofs want to control, and it’s suddenly eeeeleeeegaaallll!!!

Two counties I’ve lived in for most of my life – Hughes and Brookings – have managed to consolidate these jobs long ago without the earth ending. Not sure why the Davison County Republicans are suddenly clutching their pearls and demanding that taxpayers pay for two positions when one will do.

But this is the new version of Republican conservatism. It’s ok to spend the money if election conspiracists say so.

25 thoughts on “Davison County GOP attacking county commissioners for trying to combine offices”

  1. I don’t think this is an appropriate cause for a county party to be engaged in

    what’s next, a rally to drum up support for extended hours at the landfill?

  2. An Auditor directly accountable to the people (voters) is one of the most important positions in government at county levels and state levels.

    It is the people’s position for transparency in government from finances, spending and elections.

    Bad idea by the county commission.

    Do you want the voters to decide their county prosecutors or the commission? Same type of thing. Voters need someone directly accountable to them when it comes to issues of transparency and finances.

    1. There are these things called laws that whoever is in that position still would need to follow. I know the canvass crew folks have a very difficult time understanding these laws and generally just make up their own incorrect interpretations of them, but they are there. And if the person doesn’t follow them, then they’ll be charged criminally and the citizens of the county can petition to remove them. Petitions, also another thing this canvass crew really enjoys. Although they really don’t understand those either. And if the commissioners hire someone for that job that the people are unhappy with, then elect new commissioners. There is still plenty of accountability. The canvass group wants to harass auditors to the point that they quit but then wanna scream like babies when things like this are a direct result of their actions. If one thing has been abundantly clear with this group, accountability for anything is completely out of the question.

    2. This was clearly a case of something that looked good on paper (save $$$) but terrible in practice. The best the county can hope for is combining redundant positions in the respective offices and leaving the elected officials in place.

    3. But whether the county should keep these positions separate is not an issue for a county political party.
      A county political party’s mission is to raise money and get its candidates elected.
      Their energies should be directed at getting their candidates elected this year.

  3. Who are your trying to kid here? The state does a very good job of auditing every county to make sure that the spending is being done correctly. If they are efficient at all, the current staff will do it just fine without the added bureaucracy of an un-needed leader. Having one finance officer that is even more capable the correct checks and balances will be in place. This effort is really to create confusion with elections and go back to a centuries old hand count of elections due to a bogus claim of election fraud in SD. if you want to find election fraud go to IL or GA – don’t try to create that conspiracy in SD!

    1. I wouldn’t vote for any commissioner who voted to de-fang the people’s watch dog.

      I’d be much more concerned about finances than election issues. State and County auditors play incredibly important roles.

    2. Point of Order. Based on the last couple of weeks news reports of the embezzlement and fake title generation issues at the state level. I believe the state auditing the county offices can do a good job when in fact they can’t take care of their own backyard. Just saying.

  4. I guess I have not read any bad audit reports and/or heard of any election issues in Hughes or Brookings County? If I have missed these documents, please share. Consolidation of county offices, frankly consolidation of counties in general, is long overdue in this state. Let’s start with counties lowering their administrative costs and then we can start to focus on the plethora of school districts that all have an administrative team that could be shared/combined.

    1. Absolutely. How about making Superintendent of Schools a county job. One Superintendent of schools per county, and only one School Principal per school.

      1. Consolidating school super intendents is a fine idea and I’d be in favor of consolidating counties before I’d be in favor of eliminating someone directly accountable to the people.

        1. We used to have County School Superintendents with an office in the County Courthouse. The job? Supervise and administer all the rural schools scattered across the County. “County Supes” disappeared as country schools disappeared and things were consolidated into unified school districts.

          1. and now there is a superintendent, usually with a Doctorate in Education, ensconced in every single school with a principal and multiple vice principals (Masters in Education) working beneath him.
            If the classroom teachers need that much supervision, there’s a problem!

  5. The authors must have just learned how to use bold and italics and are very excited about their new skills

  7. If they wanted an auditor so bad maybe they shouldn’t have drove Kiepke to quit. They were still rambling on Telegram about how terrible and dumb she was well after she left. Now they’re crying about the situation THEY created.

    A better system does not come from burning the current one to the ground.

  8. The state with legislative audit doesn’t even do a great job auditing themselves.

    This article in the dakota scout should be jarring:

    “It was then that the Board of Internal Controls — tasked with implementing and monitoring intra-department checks — heard from a Department of Revenue official about the “five control failures” within the Motor Vehicles Division…

    None of the committee’s seven members asked any questions about the failures during the meeting. BFM did not respond to questions from The Scout about whether members were briefed ahead of time on the Motor Vehicles Division’s failures…

    “The state obviously needs a better checks and balance,” a relative of O’Day told The Scout. “If they read documents they signed and notarized, this wouldn’t be happening.”

    DSS, two revenue employees this month were arrested, EB5, Gear Up, Castleberry, BOA contract disputes…

    DLA reports to GOAC. GOAC makes noise then does something toothless like create the board of Internal Controls. Then the board sits there and let’s Revenue go on about control failures and doesn’t ask one single question about why. Why have a public board if nothing is going to be discussed in a public forum?

    Daugaard created that board in 2016. It’s 2024 and all of state government still hasn’t been on boarded. We are almost a decade into this program.

  9. I think it would have been better for the party to call for a more open discussion of the merits of the two positions and allow feedback/discussion/input, vs. taking a position.

    Much of our current problems and distrust of our institutions is we don’t discuss the merits of the proposal vs. the status quo in rational open manners. Instead, both sides first weapon in the argument is to demonize the other side. Once, you demonize there is no room left for a rational discussion.

  10. Their proposal to keep the status quo is rouge nonsense by a rouge group calling itself the Davison County Republican Party. I hope the County Board just presses the ignore button.

  11. It was voted 4-1 to combine the jobs. Lone dissent was from Commissioner Chris Nebelsick, who coincidentally was selected to run by the very rogue party leaders throwing a tantrum and now pledging to refer it to the voters.

    The nonsense has to stop.

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