Public Employee Salaries Public Knowledge

The major Sioux Falls newspaper still peddles smut, but it also engages in some enjoyable finger-poking in the eyes of our crotchety, secrecy-inclined state government. As KJAM notes, the Sioux Falls newspaper is requesting the salary information of state employees. On a couple of reports, I've heard some vague reference to how the state needs to keep those salaries secret to protect the safety of come employees. Excuse me? How does published salary information endanger any employee?

In my nine years as a contracted public school teacher, everyone in town could find out my salary from the newspaper, board minutes, or school business manager. Last year at Montrose, I made about $29,900 for teaching an coaching, plus $1400 for opting out of the health insurance plan. This coming fall I will become a state employee of sorts, working as a doctoral assistant at DSU. The Board of Regents will issue me a stipend worth $30,900 of taxpayer money, plus they'll charge me a third of the normal tuition rate.

There -- now everyone knows how much I make on the public dole, and I don't feel any less safe. The only threat I can imagine is that people will see what obscene riches I've been gaining at the expense of taxpayers, and I'll face an angry mob of pitchfork- and torch-wielding taxpayers at midnight demanding their money back.

The bottom line is the bottom line: the boss should know how much every one of his employees is making. When it comes to public employees like myself, the public is the boss, and what the pay me (and every other teacher, cop, secretary, economic development official, and State Capitol janitor) should be public knowledge.

The New Lake Park Hotel -- A Proposal for Downtown Renovation

As noted below, the Madville Times is always thinking about downtown development. We love our downtown, but even we will acknowledge that Madison's Egan Avenue could be jazzed up a little bit. A literal step in that direction would be the creation of some main-street greenspace where musicians could play, like "Nick's Park," a little picnic nook next to famed Nick's Hamburgers in downtown Brookings that hosts live "Music on Main" every Thursday evening through this summer. (While you're at it, check out DowntownBrookings.com's entire site for a good look at grassroots downtown development!)

Lake Park Hotel, Madison, SD, long ago.
Postcard image from USGenWeb Archives.

But for a bigger leap toward downtown development, how about resurrecting the Lake Park Hotel? No, no, no, not the motel on West Highway 34, but this grand stone edifice that once graced downtown Madison. If memory serves me right, the original Lake Park (which was also called the General Beadle -- an impressive and historic moniker! -- and the Park), stood on the corner of Egan and SW 2nd Street. Currently, a laundromat and Lakebrook Appliance stand in its place. Also on that block are the old Job Service building, the Jensen building that Rosebud is using for storage, and the vacant Happy Hour bar, object of Rosebud's thwarted desires for expansion.

If the city doesn't want Rosebud or other manufacturing taking up valuable main street storefronts, it needs to find something better to put in those empty spaces. We thus propose buying up as much of the block as we can get and rebuilding the Lake Park/General Beadle Hotel as a glorious downtown convention center. The location is ideal, within four blocks of restaurants, bars, City Hall, the county courthouse, all of Madison's best retail, real estate and law offices, the post office, the library and Library Park, and even the grocery store. The site is right across the street from the historic depot, which houses the Chamber of Commerce and Lake Area Improvement Corporation -- perfect location for meetings with all those jetset businessmen who will come to talk business and want swanky downtown accommodations to which to retire after a hard day of negotiations. There'd even be lots of room for parking (which everyone tells me is essential for any successful business) and expansion on that block and maybe even across Egan beside the Leader Publishing building and the old dairy loading docks.

A great downtown hotel and convention center could become an anchor of daytime business and evening entertainment in our fair city, helping energize and identify our downtown the way the Calumet Inn does in Pipestone, or the historic Franklin Hotel in Deadwood. The Madville Times capital investment fund is currently tied up in gallery and environmental projects, but the moment our sixth or seventh million comes in, we'll invest in bringing the Lake Park back into business downtown.

Support the Arts? Madville Times Is the Arts!

Off with the press hat, on with the painter's beret -- one of the Madville Times' alter egos, Lake Herman Dreamworks, kicks off a solo exhibit of paintings at the Brookings Community Cultural Center. The exhibit runs from June 28 through July 27, with a closing reception and gallery talk by the artist at 5 p.m. on July 27. The Madville Times may not be able to single-handedly generate support for the arts, but Lake Herman Dreamworks can at least generate art itself.

Now you may be wondering why this artist doesn't organize an exhibit right here in Madville. Alas, our fair city lacks a dedicated art gallery. Both libraries, the public library and the Mundt Library on the DSU campus, do what they can to showcase local artists, but those spaces don't hold much art (especially not the Lake Herman style of art, which includes some 4'x8' sheets of paneling transformed into sprawling, specklescapes). Likewise at John Green's downtown studio, one finds room for a handful of pieces from other area artists, but nothing like the Brookings Community Cultural Center, which can host full-scale exhibits as well as arts classes and competitions.

When Lake Herman Dreamworks makes its first million, I can guarantee one of its projects will be to buy the Masons' building and turn it into the Madison Institute of Modern Art. What a fine anchor that institution will make for Madison's Main Street!

City Says No to Main Street Growth... Or Does It?

MDL reports (online! Thanks for posting the lead story, Jon!) that the Madison City Commission decided not to let furniture and cabinet maker Rosebud Manufacturing expand its manufacturing, assembly, and sales operations to the Happy Hour building on Egan Avenue, Madison's Main Street.

Did I read that right? Rosebud wants to expand its business. Rosebud says in its business expansion plan (see page 48 of the June 18 commission meeting agenda packet) that the expansion will add eight jobs to the $2.2 million dollar payroll Rosebud already pumps into the community each year. Rosebud president Don Grayson was able to round up 70 supporters to sit in on last week's planning commission meeting and 50 for last night's city commission meeting to make clear to the commissioners that there are a lot of working people who support the expansion. Grayson says this expansion has to happen now, since Rosebud apparently has orders on the books waiting to be filled. Grayson even went so far as to suggest that if the city didn't approve his request, he could expand his business in Salem instead.

The city in essence looked at immediate increased economic activity and said, "No thanks." What gives?

The Madville Times offers the bold speculation that the city commission (by a 3-1 vote: Mayor Hexom and Commissioners Bohl and Jerry Johnson voted to deny the request; Commission Karen Lembcke voted in favor; Commissioner Mechelle Nordberg was absent) occasionally recognizes some deeper community values than mere revenue-generation. In this case, the commission appears to be acting to protect the overall aesthetics of Madison's Main Street.

Consider an analogy to your house: you don't set up a wood shop in your living room or a toilet in your kitchen. Such combinations might save a little time and maybe even help you be more productive, but they wouldn't feel right. They'd make your house a lot less comfortable and less inviting to guests.

Just as everything has its proper place in a house, everything has its proper place in a town. While there's room for mixed-use areas -- a combination of housing and small shops can make for a lively and comfortable neighborhood -- we should still seek to create an appealing overall town aesthetic, a good vibe that residents and visitors alike will appreciate. Perhaps the city commission feels that manufacturing on main street would detract from that aesthetic. The LAIC appears to hold the same opinion: it submitted the only reported, written opposition to the Rosebud expansion prior to the city commission's vote in a letter to city engineer Chad Comes. That letter (see page 51 of the commission agenda packet) states that the LAIC board of directors voted at its May meeting to "oppose further expansion of any industrial nature on Egan Avenue." The LAIC supports "the continued growth and expansion of Rosebud Manufacturing," but wants to "direct industrial businesses to a proper location, rather than continuing to expand within the downtown core of Madison."

Surprisingly, neither the commission, the LAIC, or MDL elucidate exactly what is meant by a "proper location" for industrial businesses. Fortunately, Prairie Roots offers an excellent discussion of main street aesthetics and our dreams for Madison's downtown. [Reminder/full disclosure: The Madville Times and Prairie Roots sleep together every night!] Along with her usual bewitchingly intelligent prose, Prairie Roots also includes several instructive quotes from the Main Street Program, a nationwide organization that helps towns preserve and rejuvenate their downtowns.

In a nutshell, Main Street should serve as the community's living room, a place where business, government, and recreation all take place in a balanced and inviting atmosphere. On that one vital, symbolic street, major manufacturing operations may not comfortably fit. Through its Monday vote, Madison's city commission may be recognizing the importance of that principle to healthy community development. Let's hope the commission is ready to take more action toward that noble goal of main street preservation.

Zaniya Project: Give 'Em a Call!

As the Zaniya Project Task Force meets this summer to figre out a way to help South Dakota's uninsured, I worry that we'll end up with a recommendation that the state mandate the purchase of health insurance by all citizens. After all, what other sort of solution would we expect from a governor who is also an insurance agent?

I say nuts to mandatory private insurance. If we're going to monkey with the free market, why not just abandon it and make health care a public utility?

I'm sending Kevin Forsch, senior advisor to Gov. Rounds and primary contact listed for the Zaniya Project, the following e-mail. I would urge everyone interested in affordable and efficient health care to make their voices heard to the task force as well.

Dear Mr. Forsch:

Please forward this message to the members of the Zaniya Project for discussion at their next meeting on July 12.

As a firm believer that the health insurance industry encourages over-utilization of health resources and diverts excessive funds to administrative costs and profiteering at the expense of working South Dakotans, I urge the Zaniya Project Task Force to research and recommend the creation of a unified state health risk pool for all South Dakotans. Whether South Dakota can afford a single-payer system of its own, or whether we would do better to create a cooperative risk pool with surrounding states, a single-payer system would bring down costs and fulfill our moral obligation to take care of the sick and the poor.

The document linked here offers a brief analysis of how a government single-payer health care system can actually save South Dakotans money. I urge the task force to consider such a system as it prepares its final report. Thank you for your service to the state on this important issue.

You can recommend to the task force members a wealth of articles on universal health care, including this article from today's UK Independent: Andrew Gumbel, "Sicko? The Truth About the US Healthcare System," 2007.06.04. And don't forget: Michael Moore's Sicko premieres June 29.

Missing the Mark -- Our Schools or Our Culture?

The USA Today editorial board opines online that "When it comes to your sons, schools miss the mark" [posted 2007.06.15]. The article cites data published in Education Week [2007.06.12] that shows boys graduating from high school at lower rates than girls in all major racial/ethnic classifications. The overall HS graduation rates are 73.6% for girls, 66.0% for boys. USA Today argues that our schools, specifically the K-8 levels, are failing to adequately prepare boys for the challenging reading of high school. "The key to closing the gap," says the article, "appears to involve starting early — turning boys into competent and enthusiastic readers by third grade, perhaps by hiring more male teachers and using books more appealing to boys."

This male teacher wonders just what sort of books the USA Today writers have in mind. I included The Outsiders (gang fights, teenage boys being loyal), A Separate Peace (teenage boys dealing with academic and athletic rivalries), Frankenstein (a monster!), All Quiet on the Western Front (guns, horse guts, and a funny scene about bodily excretions), Romeo and Juliet (swordfights!), and Hamlet (more swordfights!) in my literature curriculum. Are those books sufficiently manly?

Or could it be that it's not the schools but our culture that's failing to get boys as ready as girls to read and succeed academically? In my English classroom, I made lots of efforts to get books in the hands of my boys and girls (and not just boring anthologies, but real books). But what reinforcement are they getting at home? How often are boys specifically shown images that reinforce the manliness of sitting down for an hour or two to read quietly every day? How many little boys' pajamas do you see decorated with books, and how many more do you see decorated with sports equipment? How many kids choose to dress and talk like their favorite scholars rather than their favorite sports stars... and how much do parents and media encourage them to make such a choice? How often do parents take their kids to the library to spend an hour just reading, and how much more often do they send their kids to sports practices and games that last for two or three hours?

The schools I've worked in are busting their chops to get kids to read and calculate and think. But they need some support from the culture around them. If ads and movies, MTV and ESPN, newspapers and even parents don't promote reading and intellectualism as a whole -- if they send the message that books aren't manly, then teachers of either sex will struggle to get kids to enjoy reading or any other academic subject.

Steel: Cheap and Green?

Steel: Cheap and Green

Construction of the new building for the Madison Christian School is proceeding at a good clip. I bicycled by yesterday evening and saw a couple roofers in the hot sun on that shiny steel roof. Just today Keppen Construction popped some windows into the steel framing. As expected, it's not a big fancy building. However, as KJAM reports, the recycled steel framing costs less than traditional wood framing. The steel supplier for the project, Haus Steel Framing of Pierre, says that steel framing can cut materials costs as much as 40%, since they involve less waste and are cheaper to ship. HSF also says experienced contractors can erect steel framing 30%-40% faster than they can put up wood.

Now I don't know if this is connected to the use of the steel framing itself, but KJAM also note that the building will be very energy efficient, with monthly heating and cooling bills of maybe $40 a month. Wow! Using recycled materials, saving 32 trees, keeping energy usage low -- these Christians seem to be taking creation care seriously. (Now if they can just organize a car pool -- or a bike pool! -- for all the kids to get to their site outside of town.)

"Energy Independence": It'll Cost You at the Grocery Store

Energy will cost us more and more, and not just at the gas station or on our utility bills. Even our homegrown, arguably better for the environment ethanol will ultimately not save us money. The June 13 Christian Science Monitor reports that grocery costs have risen as much in the first half of this year as they did in all of 2006 [Patrik Jonsson and Bina Venkataraman, "From Milk to Meat, US Food Prices Spike Upward"]. The US Labor Department sees food prices rising 7.5% this year, almost triple the expected 2.6% core inflation rate. (The core inflation rate excludes food and energy, which strikes me as a statistic only an ivory-tower economist could love: "Sure, we'll calculate how much prices are rising, but we'll ignore two seectors of the economy that are essential to our existence.")

That cost increase is not coming simply from higher energy costs in food processing and transport.

The chief culprit is corn, namely No. 2 feed corn, the staple of the breadbasket. In answer to President Bush's call for greater oil independence, the amount of feed corn distilled into ethanol is expected to double in the next five to six years. Distillation is already sucking up 18 percent of the total crop. The ethanol gambit, in turn, is sending corn prices to historic levels – topping $4 per bushel earlier this year, and remaining high. All of this trickles down to the boards at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, affecting the price of everything from sirloin to eggs (which are up, by the way, 18.6 percent across the nation).

Now I can't begrudge farmers their good corn prices -- they've got make a living, and ethanol is helping them do that. And as the South Dakota Corn Growers point out, ethanol production adds over a billion dollars to South Dakota's economy (and that was back in 2004).

However, this CSM article puts the lie to propaganda from big-industry interests like the National Corn Growers Association that tries to tell us that ethanol production doesn't really impact food prices. Ethanol is not manna from heaven. It's not free energy. We are taking viable food material -- whether for humans or for livestock -- and turning into fuel for our machines. The trade-off brings unavoidable costs. We can make that trade-off -- increased energy independence might be worh it -- but we should do so with all of the costs in full view.

Next on the Agenda: Band-Aids

Here's the KJAM headline of the week:

Farmers Begin Thinking About Scabs

I don't write this stuff. I just read it and smile.

Lange on Christianity, Capitalism, and South Dakota's Wacky Taxes

SDPB surprises me today with a lengthy interview with fellow Lake Herman philosopher Gerry Lange. I expected SDPB's Dakota Midday "Uniquely South Dakota" series to focus on feel-good stories, nice boostery interviews with colorful local figures who tell what a wonderful place their hometown is and how everyone should come spend tourist dollars there. On today's show, Madison Mayor Gene Hexom and Prairie Village's new office manager Donna Reinecke covered that ground well. Then -- surprise! some serious and wide-ranging political commentary from our man Gerry. Some choice comments:

In response to a question on public reaction to his comments against the Iraq War in 2003:"I said things... assuming that we were a Christian nation, that you are supposed to love your enemies and you are supposed to do good to those who hate you, the Sermon on the Mount thing. I belong to Kiwanis, and we always talk about the Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. And yet, when it comes down to practical politics, so called, it's pretty hard-nosed. And this is one of the conclusions I reached in thinking this over is that democracy itself is in contradiction to Christianity. Christianity is turn the other cheek, it's love your enemies, and even in deomcracies, the phrase is don't get mad when you get beat, get even, and so a spirit of revenge is built into our system. And so we have these two ethos, two economic-political systems, in war with each other, Christianity and economic development. Free enterprise is out to get what you can for yourself and everybody else look out for themselves."

"Politically it isn't pragmatic to go against the majority."

"...our tax system is totally wrong in this state compared with every state around us. We're the only one that taxes groceries for heaven's sakes. We're the only state that taxes luxury items at 3%, groceries at 6%. I think that's outrageous. I don't see why the people put up with it."

"Incidentally that Social Hall here at Prairie Village was called Socialist Hall. Back in the early part of the century both North Dakota (my state) and this state were very socialistic, meaning that they agreed with Peter Norbeck that we needed a state cement plant, we needed state railroads if necessary, state bank up in North Dakota, and state mill and elevator because we were being ripped off by Eastern interests. And so there's this rebellious streak in these two states, and I'm dedicated to carrying on that rebellious streak of standing up to oppression."

On his new book Under the Dome: Trying to Do Good in the People's Cathedral: "It's a five-dollar, looseleaf-bound hundred pages of rant and other bits of wisdom."

SDPB's interviewer tried to get Gerry to commit to running again in 2008. Gerry said that's a ways off, though, and he has a lot of gardening to do. (I've seen Gerry's garden, and we're not talking a few petunias and a pumpkin or two. He gardens with a skid-loader.) Even if gerry isn't ready to carry that rebellious streak into another campaign for the legislature, it was fun to hear one of our unique political voices on the radio.

Oil Refinery for Elk Point -- Market Finally Kicks In

Better late than never: Hyperion Resources is finally gearing up to build a new oil refinery. Elk Point is one of the communities competing to draw this big-money, big-employment project (hence the hush-hush "Gorilla Project" we've been hearing about). Hyperion's project would be the first new oil refinery built in the US since the 1976.

With gas prices increasing over the past seven years, it's surprising market forces haven't driven some big investor to put up a new refinery sooner. Refineries are certainly profitable, and even if the big oil companies are enjoying higher profits by decreasing their production to drive up prices, one would think at least a handful of entrepreneurs would have leapt sooner at the chance to get in on the money by building some much needed new refining capacity.

Now let's see if Elk Point wins this refinery, and how much Elk Point benefits from hitching its economic hopes to the fossil-fuel industry.

Guest Commentary: Strike Up the Band!

Jody Adams offers the following exhortation to students to join the Madison High School "Spirit of Madison" marching band in a letter to the editor in last night's MDL:

The Spirit of Madison Band members belong to a special team that no sporting activity could ever measure up to. The band does not discriminate -- if you want to be a memer, you are welcome. We never cut a team member. No one sits on the bench. When we perform, everyone participates. It does not matter whether you are male or female. We work together as a team... always!

Right on the money, Jody. Hmmm... band sounds a lot like high school interp, debate, and drama!