Public records

The Brown County Courthouse is located in Aberdeen and is connected to other county offices, such as the Auditor's Office and the Brown County Jail. (Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight)

State offers portal for local governments to post public information, but few use it

BY: - April 30, 2023

Jackson County government officials don’t post public information on the internet. The rural western South Dakota county, which serves roughly 2,800 residents spread over 1,871 square miles, doesn’t have a website. And it doesn’t intend to, County Auditor Vicki Wilson said. “It takes more time than we have staff,” she said. State government offers a […]

COMMENTARY
(Illustration by Joshua Haiar/South Dakota Searchlight)

When emails aren’t ‘writing,’ and other adventures in pursuit of pardon records

BY: - April 7, 2023

EDITOR’S NOTE: This commentary about public records is part of a special report on executive clemency. Additional stories explore pardons and commutations. — As a journalist with more than two decades of experience, I thought I’d experienced every way a bureaucrat could make a public records request difficult. That was until I asked for pardon […]