Members of the South Dakota Open Meetings Commission meet on April 27, 2026, in Pierre, including, from left, Katelynn Hoffman, Michael Smith, Austin Hoffman and Emily Sovell. (Courtesy of South Dakota Attorney General’s Office)
PIERRE, S.D. (South Dakota Searchlight) – The Gary City Council and the Hermosa Town Board of Trustees will be reprimanded after failing to follow requirements for public meetings, South Dakota’s Open Meetings Commission decided Monday in Pierre.
The Gary City Council failed to allow members of the public to participate in an open meeting by asking three attendees, who are also city employees, to leave the meeting. Gary is a city of 240 people in northeastern South Dakota.
“They are still members of the public,” said Austin Hoffman, vice chair of the commission and McPherson County state’s attorney. “They certainly would have had the right to be there.”
Another complaint alleged the Gary City Council entered an executive session with three non-board members, who were also city employees, without a vote to authorize their being in executive session. Public board members can exclude the public from executive sessions with a majority vote to discuss legal matters, performance of public employees and a limited list of other topics.
The commission will hold off deciding on that complaint until its next meeting, where members anticipate hearing from Gary’s city attorney as well as the person who filed the complaint.
The commission found the Hermosa Town Board of Trustees violated open meetings laws by discussing city business an hour before the official start of meetings.
The complaint alleged that board members in the town of 382 in western South Dakota were running “work sessions” and not properly alerting the public.
“It’s truly worrisome to me if we have a council, committee, commission, whatever it may be, out there that is holding a ‘work session’ beforehand without any kind of notice and the public not being able to participate,” Hoffman said. “I am hopeful it will not happen again.”
Other complaints and final reprimands
The commission has fielded a complaint about the City of Egan Board of Trustees, which alleges multiple violations of the state’s open meeting laws, including the board’s failure to publish agendas 24 hours prior to a public meeting and failure to publish meeting minutes in a timely manner.
The commission delayed action, Hoffman said, because there wasn’t enough information in an investigatory file and some of the allegations deal with matters outside of the commission’s jurisdiction.
The commission also reviewed written findings and conclusions for a pair of decisions made in November.
In one of those decisions, the commission determined that the Rapid City Area School Board did not violate transparency laws in its handling of a former superintendent’s contract termination.
In the other decision, the commission reprimanded the Green Valley Sanitary District Board of Trustees for failing to properly cite a legal reason before entering executive session and improperly stopping a citizen from recording a public meeting.
The Open Meetings Commission’s five members are county prosecutors, known as state’s attorneys, and are appointed to the commission by the state attorney general.
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