From the campaign
Where I Stand on Government Accountability
Government behaves differently when nobody is watching. I learned that in rooms where the state was making enormous decisions about my own family, and it is why this plank exists.
Government behaves differently when nobody is watching.
I did not read that somewhere. I learned it sitting in rooms where the state was making enormous decisions about my own family, for more hours than I can account for, after a family court case brought my son to Rapid City eight years ago and I followed him here. It is the reason my signature family court fight includes holding family court judges accountable, and it is the reason my platform carries a plank most candidates skip.
Nobody cuts a ribbon on government structure. There is no check to hand anybody. It is the plumbing, the part of the house you never think about until it backs up into your kitchen.
Here is where it already reaches your kitchen. When your school district opts out of the property tax limits, that decision lands on your tax bill. So does capital outlay spending. Both sets of numbers are technically public, which in practice means scattered across agendas, minutes, and budget documents. You can find them if you know where to dig and you happen to have a free Saturday. Most working families downtown and in North Rapid do not have that Saturday. I hold a Juris Doctor and it still costs me real effort.
That is not carelessness. A system this hard to read is a system that was built to be hard to read, and I intend to fix it.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant, and the cheapest. Transparency does not require a new agency or a bigger budget. It requires teeth.
Five commitments
Strengthen open-meetings and public-records enforcement. South Dakota already has transparency laws. A law without enforcement is a suggestion, and when a meeting that should be open happens behind a closed door, or a records request gets slow-walked into next year, something has to actually happen to somebody.
Real lobbying disclosure across the legislature and the executive. If a person is paid to shape the laws you live under, you get to know who paid and what for. Both branches, because a great deal of influence gets worked on the executive side and never shows up in a legislative log.
Public reporting on school opt-outs and capital outlay, in plain numbers, published where a taxpayer can find them without a research project. This bans nothing. Local boards answer to local voters, which is how it should work. Voters simply cannot hold anyone accountable for numbers they have never seen.
Remove the Lieutenant Governor from presiding over the Senate. The Lieutenant Governor is an executive branch officer. The Senate is the chamber built to check the governor. The body that writes our laws should pick who holds its own gavel.
Reform the initiated-measure process against out-of-state donor capture. The initiative belongs to South Dakotans. It should not run as a test market for whoever cuts the biggest check from three states away.
The one that sounds boring
The Lieutenant Governor item is the one people's eyes glaze over at, so let me make the case for it directly.
Nobody thinks about a foundation until the house cracks, and separation of powers is the foundation. When an executive branch officer holds the gavel in the legislature, the branch designed to check the governor is being presided over by the governor's own ticket. On an ordinary day you would never notice. You would notice on the day you needed the legislature to stand up to the executive and it did not.
I have lived through what it feels like when the structure of government fails a family. I am not able to shrug at it.
The receipts
I am a dad, a businessman, and a community advocate. For two legislative sessions I drove to Pierre and fought for legislation as a private citizen, from the outside, which is exactly where you learn how much of that building runs on relationships you are not allowed to see.
I want District 32 to be able to look at its own government plainly. That should not be a radical position. The five objections I hear most often are answered below.
On November 3 you pick two names for the House from District 32. If you want one of them to belong to somebody who thinks you are owed the receipts, the full platform is at zac4sd.com.
Strong Families. Strong South Dakota.
Anticipated pushbacks · prepared responses
Common questions on this issue
These are the questions and concerns that come up most often. The responses below are my honest answers, not talking points.
- Q. We already have these laws.
- A. We do, and if every public body followed them then stronger enforcement would cost nothing and change nothing. So it is worth asking why the idea draws pushback at all. Better yet, ask a neighbor who has filed a records request and then waited, and waited, whether the law as written is the same thing as the law as lived. Enforcement is the whole difference between a right and a brochure.
- Q. More reporting just means more bureaucracy for schools and small towns.
- A. Reporting a decision is the cheap part. The district already voted the opt-out. The capital outlay numbers already sit in the budget. Putting them in front of the public is a printer, not a program. What is genuinely expensive is what grows in the dark: rumor, distrust, litigation, and the occasional real scandal. Sunlight costs less than any of those.
- Q. Nobody in District 32 cares who presides over the Senate.
- A. That is fair, and nobody thinks about a foundation until the house cracks. Separation of powers is the foundation. When an executive branch officer holds the gavel in the legislature, the branch built to check the governor is presided over by the governor's own ticket. You would never notice on an ordinary day. You would notice on the day you needed the legislature to stand up to the executive and it did not. I have lived through what it feels like when the structure of government fails a family, so I am not able to shrug at it.
- Q. You just want to make it harder for voters to pass ballot measures.
- A. The reverse. A ballot measure is only worth something if it belongs to the people of South Dakota. When out-of-state donors can capture the process, your signature and your vote become props in somebody else's campaign. Protecting the initiative from capture is not distrust of voters, it is loyalty to them.
- Q. Lobbying disclosure will be used to harass ordinary citizens.
- A. An ordinary citizen who drives to Pierre on her own dime to testify about her property taxes is not a lobbyist, and nothing I support treats her like one. Disclosure covers paid influence. The citizen speaking for free is precisely who disclosure protects, because she is the one who gets drowned out when paid influence operates unseen.