KOTA RADIO
Marnie Cook
Rapid City, South Dakota
October 15, 2008
He’s named one of the most 25 influential Republicans in the nation and he was in South Dakota this week to speak in favor of Measure 10, the open government bill. Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform, said South Dakota is falling behind other states in each of the areas addressed in the bill….
Norquist: “14 states post all of their government spending on on-line, searchable websites. A number of states ban pay to play, making contributions to people that give you a government contract. And so, each of the parts of Measure 10 have been enacted in various parts of the country; they’ve been very successful.”
Opponents of the measure continue to say it's a "gag" law, but Norquist said that’s not true….
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Norquist: “Every citizen in this state, rather they are a government employee or not, has the right to talk to their legislators, talk to their school board. What you can’t do is use tax-payer money to hire lobbyists to lobby for political activity or to participate in political activity.”
Norquist said this bill is about government transparency, which is sweeping the country and it would require that the state post all contracts online and with an adequate search engine, so citizens, bloggers, and competitors, for instance, can examine them….
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Norquist: “You have to ask why are people spending a million dollars, the labor union leaders and others that are opposed to the Open and Clean Government Measure 10. What are they hiding in those contacts? What are they hiding in pay to play, paying money to politicians in return for getting contracts, that’s worth a million dollars to protect? Something is not correct. They are hiding something very ugly. You don’t spend a million dollars to hide nothing.”
It also forbids people who get government contracts from kicking money back to politicians. Norquist says in 5 years, every state in the nation will be completely transparent. …
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Norquist: “A state like Missouri has been up for over a year and had 12 million hits on their website. The people of Missouri are very interested in how their money is being spent.”
A year ago, Governor Rounds vetoed government transparency.
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