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Since 1972, advocating for the rights and value of South Dakota state employees.

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Category: Media

SDSEO District 24 Legislator Foum: Packed With State Employees?

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

The SDSEO held its first ever forum for an entire district's current legislators last night. It was for District 24, which is plum packed with state government employees. Senator Jeff Monroe and Reps. Mary Duvall and Tim Rounds were in attendance and eager to hear from state employees. Did they have people to interact with? There were a few state government employees who showed up to interact with the folks who make the laws that govern the employment of state employees, but not many. Considering it was a rainy night with lots of events canceled, and considering we blitzed the radio airwaves and the daily newspaper with advertising, and considering the event was specifically for state employees and SDSEO members, the turnout was disappointing. However, those who attended had great ideas, and those are the ideas we'll move forward with. We'll have another forum in Pierre, and we hope for better attendance. Here's the Pierre Capital Journal story on the event: Legislators Discuss Issues With State Employees.
Categories: Legislative, Media, Meetings, Member, SDSEO Chapter, SDSEO Office

Represent and support all

Friday, August 31, 2012

SDSEO members occupy all sorts of roles in state employment. From support staff to supervisors to top administrators, we represent and support all. We ask all SDSEO members, regardless of role, to step up and be positive, productive employees that do the right things. But, really, when talking about who can really affect state employees and state employment for the better, I think it's the supervisors that matter most. If you treat your employees great, they'll be great. If you selectively treat them based on if you like them personally, you'll get greatness of nobody: those you don't like know they don't have a chance with you, and those you do like will take advantage of you, as that's the system you have put into place. Think about it.

The Argus Leader ran a story about South Dakota's rating for managing money. I have a quote in the story. The story link is here.

The South Dakota Retirement board meets next Wednesday and Thursday. A little writeup from reporter Bob Mercer's blog is here.

I've been talking forever about a new website design. Well, it's almost here. Stay tuned...
Categories: Blogs, Media, Member, South Dakota Retirement System

SDSEO Twitter and Facebook roundup

Friday, August 10, 2012

Have done a bit of traveling around the state the last couple weeks. I love traveling and meeting people, because I learn something new about what the SDSEO can do for state employees from everybody I meet. Sure hope to meet you someday.

Here's a roundup of some of what I've posted to Facebook and Twitter over the last couple weeks:

Twitter re-tweets

A blogpost from Bob Mercer about an upcoming hearing on worker's compensation and proposed changes to South Dakota worker's compensation law. The post is here. The agenda for the meeting is here. Many of the proposals were part of failed efforts to change the law this past legislative session. I was at the legislative committee meeting where the proposed bill failed, and I recall the State Bar Association representative saying at the time that the proposals were all or none, in that either the Bar wanted all of the changes or none. The proposals failed. That wasn't the first time they had failed, though, as they were brought before the worker's compensation advisory board in both August and September of 2011. The advisory board voted against the changes at the September meeting. The minutes for Aug. 2011 are here, and the minutes for Sept. 2011 are here. I wonder what value "out-of-state" practitioners would add to the mix?
An Argus Leader story by David Montgomery about Gov. Daugaard's 2011 budget cuts. That story is here. Something that gets left out of stories about the "surplus" is how many South Dakota public employee jobs were lost due to the cuts. (I lost my job at South Dakota State University when the unit I worked for was shuttered in June 2011, though the budget cuts may not have been fully to blame for the job losses in the unit for which I worked.)
A blogpost by Montgomery about early polling data. It is here. Note that the poll is not of "likely" voters only.
A Mercer blogpost about upcoming 2013 South Dakota Board of Regents meetings. It is here.

Facebook posts

A blogpost by Montgomery about early dropouts in South Dakota legislative races. It is here.
Another Montgomery blogpost, this one about an entity taking on South Dakota Republican leadership. It's here.
A Mercer blogpost about Nielsen polling in South Dakota. And it is here.
A Mercer news story about this week's Board of Regents meeting. It's here.

Categories: Facebook, Member, SDSEO Office, Social Media, Twitter

Two blogs about South Dakota politics

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

I suppose one might consider this blog to be a political blog, inasmuch as pretty much everything that involves state employees involves politics, but I don't think Notes is at its core a blog about politics. To me, Notes is more a blog about the SDSEO and state employee issues. However, there are a couple political blogs I go to regularly. One thing to know about blogs is they are not "news"; there's more of the writer in a blogpost than there is in a news article (news articles generally go through an editor or two or three). Here's two blogs by South Dakota political reporters that I go to:

Pure Pierre Politics - Written by Bob Mercer, a longtime political reporter in South Dakota and the former press chief for Gov. Janklow. Mercer also does reporting for the Aberdeen American News; you can read his news pieces by clicking on the story titles at the right side of his blog.

Political Smokeout - Written by David Montgomery, formerly a reporter for the Rapid City Journal and now at the Argus Leader. He has some pretty good stuff there, and he seeks opinions and knowledge from his readers, so it's a good place to visit.

The South Dakota Retirement System board of trustees meets tomorrow at View 34 in Pierre. The meeting starts at 9:30 a.m. I'll be there, working for you.
Categories: Blogs, Media, South Dakota Retirement System

Argus Leader story about Gov. Daugaard and key advisors

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

The Argus Leader ran a feature story by journalist David Montgomery this weekend on Gov. Dennis Daugaard and some of his key staffers and advisers. It's a pretty good article that shows the inside process of politics in South Dakota. The story link is here.
Categories: Media

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