Yes, I read it too, so you don’t have to spam the other posts. There’s a big to do in the media over an age discrimination lawsuit that was settled, with allegations from the media that the Governor was too-involved.
I probably look at it with different eyes. I worked in the same office as Sherry Bren long, long ago when I worked at the Division of Insurance at the Department of Commerce in the mid-90’s, and she was ‘the person’ in the Real Estate Appraiser office. Very nice lady.
Having worked in Real Estate myself over the last decade plus (maybe going back at some point), I also have a few observations about real estate appraisers. If you need a loan, your real estate appraisal can be one of the biggest time bottlenecks for closing. Sometimes you can get them in 2 weeks. Sometimes 30 days. They probably need more people in the industry.
Becoming a real estate appraiser is a very long process, basically an apprenticeship, where you have to go work for someone for quite some time before you can hang your own shingle.
Related to what was allegedly expressed by the Sec. of Labor in the story, it well may be a profession that’s a little behind the times. I don’t know enough about the number of people in line to be an appraiser or the process to say it is, or it isn’t.
If the Governor was made aware of what she saw as unnecessary bottlenecks and hoops, I can see her acting in a manner exactly as Bill Janklow would have and summoning the state employee to a meeting.
Frankly, I don’t know what was said in meetings, so from my perspective, I don’t have any opinion to express beyond that it’s tough to become an appraiser, and we always seemed to need more of them.
Months later, DOL and Sherry Bren parted ways, she thought it was unfair and age-based discrimination, they fought it out and settled. And that brings us to today.
I doubt I’m going to change any minds, and you probably won’t change my experiences. But that’s my 2 cents worth.
All of that is good and well… but ignores the part where Noem only stepped in to change this when it affected her daughter. If what you say about the industry is true, waiting until a family member was affected seems like the absolute worst time to address the issue, for the exact reasons we are seeing now.
Ethically dubious at best. The veil of plausible deniability is stretched to its max here.
I read the article last night. The thing that bothered me the most is according to the article Noem’s daughter was in the meeting. If that is true, it is probably a conflict of interest. It makes it look like she was demanding to know why HER daughter was not awarded the license. I agree there is a bottlneck, but if the facts as stated in the article are correct, it appears the meeting was about her daughter and not the bottleneck.
This is exactly the correct way to approach this issue at the present time with the information we have seen.
Good job, Pat.
..but ignores the part where Noem only stepped in to change this when it affected her daughter.
I think their October surprise was a year and a week early.
Interesting, Pat, that your comments ignore the real story which is that the governor only did something because it impacted her daughter. Why would you ignore that?
Why is her daughter in the meeting? How is any of that ethical? Is any other citizen in SD going to get that kind of favoritism from the state? This is a clear abuse of power for the benefit of her family. This is the definition of corruption. Noem used her position to help her daughter like she has done many times before with family members. Noem is a joke.
Hmmm… The legislature IS meeting in a special session soon.
I think Noem is the one that should be looked at for impeachment. What she did was an abuse of power.
The appropriate focus should be on the consumer, not the Governor’s daughter and not the State employee. No one has offered facts that suggest the work product of the Governor’s daughter is subpar. I suspect there is a reason. Instead, the focus of the article is on politics.
Pat is 100% spot on. We have is a system that restricts, to the detriment of the consumer, who can do appraisals. The longer appraisal time delays or eliminates home buying opportunities for those who need financing. I know of people who are homeless because of the problem.
To become an appraiser, you have to work under an appraiser. How many in business are going to train a competitor?
Appraisals take longer in South Dakota than other states. Why? We need more pathways to become a certified residential appraiser?
💥
There are two issues here. One is whether Noem’s daughter was subpar. I do not know whether she was or was not. However to force the head of that department to defend the choice in the presence of the daughter is not professional. I am not saying things happened as stated in the article or not, but if the article is correct, then I believe there is a problem.
k… but you ignore the part where Noem only stepped in to change this when it affected her daughter.
it looks bad but my experience and observations over the years of nursing assistant certifications and nursing specialty certifications like Advanced Cardiac Life Support (back in the 80s we were all told “Don’t expect to pass your first time”) have made me aware that many of the people who go into providing these forms of certification live to fail as many applicants as possible, for whatever reasons they can dream up. Since the certifications are required, the staff who failed had to retake the testing, or worse, they gave up, quit their jobs, and new ones had to be recruited, hired and trained to replace them.
They have ended up costing so many facilities so much money (paid time for the staff involved, fees for the certifications, etc) that larger facilities ended up getting their own staff certified as instructors, probably at considerable expense as well. One nursing home administrator vented that the last three nursing assistants she sent had all failed, and quit as a result.
It would be interesting to know what kinds of failure rates all these agencies have for all kinds of certifications, especially in fields where there are labor shortages.
No matter your perspective, the optics of this situation isn’t good.
At best, it shows the Governor as a “snowplow parent”, clearing away perceived obstacles at the cost of the betterment of their children.
At worst, it shows favoritism and nepotism.
In any case, the optics don’t look good. Of course, I’m an independent and neither Republican nor Democrat. So take it at face value, I guess.
They wouldn’t pay 200k in taxpayer money to settle up if there was nothing they were ashamed of. This is the pure expression of a governor wielding her power improperly to benefit her kids at the expense of long serving state employees. Shame, apparently standards for ethical conduct are out the window.
Not necessarily. Settlements are often just cheaper than litigation.
I’ve been an advocate for streamlined licensure for years.
1) In the old days, the only way to know a provider is legitimate/competent was licensure. Now with most people more interested in reviews (i.e. on Yelp), consumers have more and better information whereby licensure is just they meet a minimum standard and have taken the continuing education.
2) Licensure has become a means to restrict competition, make the supply more restricted, and thus increasing the cost of the service. Thus, over-time, those in the industry and control have an incentive to make licensure excessively complex, take too long, and too expensive.
3) When the world changes, the private sector adapts or goes extinct. But, too often the government just becomes more moribund.
Thus, I can see a person who has been doing the same thing forever resisting change to the point it is seen as insubordination and the people pushing change saying things about getting more modern which can be interpreted as being age discrimination.
For this reason, I don’t think we can draw any conclusions on the facts we currently know, either in criticism or support of what has been done.
A couple of items in separate Dakota News Now stories jumped out at me which seem to allude to not getting the entire tale.
https://www.dakotanewsnow.com/2021/09/27/daughter-sought-state-license-noem-summoned-agency-head-2/
and..
https://www.dakotanewsnow.com/2021/09/27/noems-meeting-highlights-real-estate-appraisal-regulations-south-dakota/
So, allegedly, the examiner was acting in an unprofessional manner towards Kassidy, probably because of who her mother was, and the solution was to treat her differently? No good answers here, but possibly the media should be looking for more information about the examiner’s alleged “unprofessional” conduct.
How is it punitive to attempt to avoid a conflict of interest? I agree that we’re not getting the whole tale and the Governor’s office’s silence is making things worse. After all where there’s smoke…
So should the daughter be in the meeting when the mom, I mean governor is dressing down, I mean talking to the head of the department? I doubt you would normally believe that to be a good idea. As far as unprofessional, if the story is true as I read at Yahoo, then the governor was less than professional.
I like how Kristi goes right to the “it is the Dems fault” again, when this state has like 5% of the elected officials as democrats. Yet, people still fall for the line and will point fingers at Biden or the “media” for this.
To address the industry policing themselves and setting requirements, why would just this one profession be targeted? There are countless professions, that we citizens have allowed to police themselves (e.g. the police, engineering, medical, etc.), they set their own requirements to becoming licensed within their profession. Now we want the government to get involved, and invalidate the requirements so it is easier to become licensed, in areas where the government has no experience? Sure, the market will cause supply and demand bottlenecks, that is capitalism, but manipulating the market and flooding it with new supply will drop the quality and invalidate a lot of those that have put their time in under what some perceive as “roadblocks”. Either we live in a society ruled by the government (they can set the standards) or we live in a society that the industry sets the standards, we can’t have it both ways just because you have a special interest in the matter.
“To address the industry policing themselves and setting requirements, why would just this one profession be targeted?”
Actually, it isn’t just one profession. Lots of people have been talking about occupational licensing reform, including Governor Kristi Noem, and Americans for Prosperity – SD.
That doesn’t make it right, every state in the nation regulates these business licenses, and most follow the typical standard. Trying to “deregulate” will just drop income and business incentives to practice here. Not to mention the complete disregard to public health, safety, and welfare.
South Dakota is one of the Greatest States in this Nation right now because we only have 5% elected democrats.
Are you saying the licensed appraiser was lying they they said the daughter’s work was excellent?
Define greatest? If you mean zero checks and balances to allow things like this, EB-5, Gearup, etc. to continue, then we sure have a lot of that greatness!
So an out of state lefty democrat was scoring Noem’s daughter’s work and rejected it.
Does that sum it up?
Don’t States have different laws regarding licensing of profession’s?
We don’t know cuz Noem is so non-transparent.
I think the issue that bothers me most is the wrongful termination aspect of this whole thing. Isn’t this similar to the issue she criticized Marty for during the primary? To demand a resignation in a situation involving your daughter just doesn’t seem right.
Noem didn’t demand the resignation. The story notes it was Marcia Hultman that did.
Who is Hultman’s boss?
This is a right to work state so she shouldn’t have been paid anything.
Like Laura Zylstra? 1.5M later…..juries don’t take kindly to these situations and 200k is probably cheap versus a trial.
The thing that bothers me most is how many people can’t seem to grasp that this is just wrong. Yes the Governor can have meeting with Government Depts, but to have your daughter present when it affects her is just bad optics. A woman her daughter’s age should be able to speak and take care of herself. Any other person would have gone through regular channels and tried to fix this on her own, The Governor believes the media is picking on her children; she is the one who put her daughter in this position. What is she teaching her children.
Why are the Noem apologists avoiding the topic of her daughter being at the meeting and in the middle of this? The reason they paid 200k is because any lawyer who took up the wrongful termination case had an easy slam dunk just because Noem’s daughter was there. Noem’s screw up cost us 200k.
I don’t know. I keep coming back to the fact there are two issues here. One is the process and the other is the meeting. I notice Patrick seems to gloss over this.
Noem seems to feel she is above the law and can do whatever she wants. This is not the first time she has abused her power as a govnor. It scares me to think what else she has done and is hiding.
You would have thought between the Governor’s chief of staff, general counsel and a lawyer from the Department of Labor and Commerce, one of them would have spoke up and said this meeting is a bad idea and should not happen. Or someone did not take sound legal advice and it cost the taxpayers $200K.
Let’s just imagine this is a Dem. administration and what the Noam crowd would be saying….
This is outrageous conduct
Conflict of interest, nepotism, $200,000 pay off for age discrimination case
Why is Marcia Hultman still Labor Secretary?
Behold!
The talking points are out and Operation Save Kristi is in overdrive tonight.
$200,000 tax payer dollars
Let that sink in
For something clearly preventable
The money could have been used in such better ways
So many better ways!!