Gant Wants To Make Government More Transparent

Gant Wants To Make Government More Transparent

Yankton Press & Dakotan

By Travis Gulbrandson

Published: Saturday, October 2, 2010 1:16 AM CDT

When Jason Gant was serving his first term in the state senate in 2005, he tried to pass a bill that would bring presumption of openness into state law.

Gant — a Sioux Falls Republican who is currently running for South Dakota’s secretary of state — said he met with a lot of resistance.

“That was quite the challenge,” he said during a visit to Yankton Friday. “I remember when I first started talking about open government, it was challenging because it wasn’t on a lot of legislators’ radar screens.”

The bill was eventually passed one year later and became effective as a law in 2009.

“I wanted to go all the way to the presumption of openness, but there was no way to do that back then,” he said. “There was no interest, and the governor was absolutely (not interested). It’s kind of like everything with legislation — you have to start, and keep going.”

Gant, who is opposed by Democrat Ben Nesselhuf and Constitution Party candidate Lori Stacey, said he hopes to continue to “keep going” with the issue of transparency during the secretary of state race. It’s at the core of three platforms of his campaign. Part of his proposal to continue the expansion of openness in government is to shine a light on campaign finance.

Current Secretary of State Ben Nelson’s website contains only scanned finance reports, a reality Gant said has earned the state an “F” grade from a number of nonprofits in terms of campaign finance.

“What I’d like to do is set it up to where you can type in ‘Jason Gant,’ and you could see all the people who have contributed to my campaign. Or, you could type in ‘Jason Gant’ and see who I contributed money to,” Gant said. “This way, the voters are going to be able to see exactly where that money is coming from.

“Right now, if a campaign receives $10,000-$20,000 from a political action committee, you have to go search around and find where that comes from,” he said.

In terms of financing campaigns, Gant said corporations need to be made as accountable as political committees, Gant said.

“They all need to be on the same level,” he said.

For this reason, Gant helped to pass legislation that required political ads to make clear who paid for them.

“It seems simple and a no-brainer, but it wasn’t, and it wasn’t in the official law. I changed that to make sure we had that,” he said.

Not only must the financial backer be listed, but the members of its board of directors and how the money they donate is going to be spent must be made available, as well.

Gant said corporate involvement is only going to increase in the future.

“That’s why we have to make sure that our laws are ready for those situations,” he said. “If we’re holding them accountable ... then the public is going to be able to know where this money is coming from. There’s so much money in political campaigns that we’re never going to stop all of it from coming in, but what we can do is make it open and transparent.”

The election process itself also needs reform, Gant said, and that will come from making sure each district in the state uses the same system.

“You can’t have two counties doing things differently, because then my vote is going to be different than your vote, and that’s not fair,” he said.

The state must also prepare for what it would do should the need for a statewide recount arise, he said.

“We haven’t had a recount in more than 30 years, so it’s time that we practice. We may need to have a mock recount to make sure that all of our policies are good to go,” Gant said. “Let’s assume that the Thune and Johnson race back in 2002 was a recount. Was everything ready? When you go that many years when you’re not doing it on a statewide basis, you need to make sure that your policies and procedures are up to date.”

Bipartisanship is a large part of making sure everything runs smoothly, he said.

“With the open government issue, when we started talking about it more and more, it was (talked about) like it was a Democrat issue,” Gant said. “To me, that just seems silly how this could be a political issue when it’s taxpayers’ information. It shouldn’t matter if it’s a Republican piece of paper or a Democrat piece of paper. ...

“You’ve just got to follow the law,” he said. “You’ve got to do what’s necessary.”

By Travis Gulbrandson, Yankton Press & Dakotan