West River Eagle

Office of Hearing Examiners orders City of Eagle Butte to turn over public records



The City of Eagle Butte has been ordered by the State of South Dakota’s Office of Hearing Examiners to turn over public records requested by the city’s official newspaper, the West River Eagle.

The requested records include minutes from regular and special city meetings from 2016 along with the 2016 and 2017 city budgets. Municipal budgets are required to be published no later than December 31 of each year.

After an official request was made by certified mail on January 6, 2017 for the missing records, City Finance Officer Sheila Ganje responded via email on January 11 acknowledging the request and stated that she would have them done by the end of the week. The West River Eagle did receive the December, 2016 minutes on January 12, 2017, however those were the only ones received. Following a ten day waiting period, the West River Eagle submitted an open records request with the Office of Hearing Examiners (OHE).

The OHE requested the documents from the city on behalf of the West River Eagle on February 13, 2017. Under state statute, the city was allowed 10 days to respond to the OHE.

In a January 6, 2017 email, Ganje stated that she would be gone on medical leave at the end of February. At the February city council meeting, Ganje reported to the council that her leave dates had pushed back into to the first week or so of March. 

On March 3, 2017 Catherine Duenwald with the OHE signed an order, compelling the City of Eagle Butte to provide the requested records to the West River Eagle within 30 days of the order, pursuant to SDCL 1-27-40.1.

In Duenwald’s findings, it states “the documents requested by the West River Eagle of the City are public records. By statute the City must publish minutes of public meetings as well as any expenditures and official acts and proceeding of the council. There is no exception to this requirement of publication.”

At the city’s February regular meeting, the council approved regular minutes from November 2016, December 2016 and January 2017. The January and December minutes were sent and published in the West River Eagle however, the November minutes were never sent, even after several requests by the newspaper. The regular meeting minutes from July, August, September, and October 2016 have also not been submitted for publication.

This is not the first time the City of Eagle Butte has been remiss in providing the meeting minutes to be published in a timely fashion. 

In 2010, an audit of the City of Eagle Butte was conducted and a material weakness was found with the city’s record keeping and lack of maintaining meeting minutes under South Dakota law.

Under SDCL 9-18-1.1, municipalities must deliver to the official newspaper of record, a copy of the record of proceedings within one week of the meeting. SDCL 9-18-1 also states that the minutes must be published within 30 days of the meeting.

 

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