Addendum to this story about this report (pdf) — EWG crunched the numbers and sent us the top 50 recipients of federal crop insurance premium subsidies in South Dakota:
As the story noted, USDA is prohibited from releasing the names of the individual farm businesses that have subsidized crop insurance.
Come to Prairie Star Gallery tonight from 6-8 p.m. to talk with Ed Raventon, an outdoor writer, summer naturalist and tour guide for the site.
Raventon will join Jerry Fogg, Dakota artist, who will share his collage depiction of Blood Run in 1492, as part of First Fridays.I’ll be there taking pictures and talking to both men. Look for more tonight on The Night Beat.
Prairie Star Gallery is located at 207 south Phillips Ave. For more information, call 338-9300.
Funny thing about that beautiful old-growth oak forest at Blood Run Nature Area: There aren’t any squirrels in it. At least, none that resident naturalist Edward Raventon can find. Which is odd. I think researchers are planning to do a full wildlife survey, which could shed some light on why the no squirrels.
Until then, I have my own theory: They’re all holed up in a hollow tree somewhere, just biding their time.
(Photo by Flickr user yimmy149).
A few days ago, Duane Harms went on Rick Knobe’s radio show to accuse the Argus Leader of inaccuracy (we posted audio from the meeting in question, so you can decide for yourself whether we quoted him accurately) and to defend the sale of mislabeled gasoline, especially in the central part of the state.
I don’t recall his exact words, but Harms mentioned that the state has historically allowed a fudge factor of two octane points — that gasoline labeled 87 could actually be as low as 85 or as high as 89.
I asked DPS and the governor’s office about this, and, surprisingly, it’s true. Or it was, until 2009, when the Legislature passed a law directing DPS to start enforcing federal fuel labeling laws.
Before then, going back to the 1950s, the state had allowed fuel retailers to sell gasoline that differed from the stickered rating by “not more than two octane numbers,” according to a 2009 fact sheet circulated by DPS to explain the change.
“In addition, the current law does not definitively require that octane be posted at all,” the fact sheet said.
Not clear why this is coming out only now, or why the state allowed the industry to flout federal law since at least 1979, when the federal fuel rating law was passed. I’ve got messages in.
In other news, DPS staff attorney Jenna Howell responded this morning to my request for more information on the substance of the secret opinion issued earlier this year — that 85 octane is illegal and DPS has the authority to enforce a ban. Although the ASTM standards have not changed since 1988 and the NIST standards have been on the books since 1999, “the law has not been static since 1988,” she wrote in an email.
“While I acknowledge that there may have been some confusion eight years ago, I am not taking a position on what the law was 24 years ago,” she wrote. “My statements were and are about the current state of South Dakota law.”
She referred further comments to the Attorney General’s office, which is interesting, because last week my calls to the Attorney General’s office were bounced to DPS.
When I spoke last week to Dave Pfahler, director of the inspections and weights and measures program in South Dakota, he mentioned an email exchange about 85 octane gasoline that he’d had in 2004 with an attorney at the office of then-Attorney General Larry Long.
(See our first two stories on 85 octane gasoline here and here for background.)
Pfahler came into this job in 2004 and determined, based on his own research, that it was illegal to sell 85 octane fuel in South Dakota. He didn’t have a staff attorney to provide a formal opinion, however, so he reached out to Long’s office.
Someone in that office then provided him with an informal opinion — either that 85 octane was in fact legal to sell in South Dakota, or that it was illegal but the Department of Public Safety didn’t have the authority to enforce the law. Still waiting to hear back on which it was.
Later I asked Pfahler, DPS staff attorney Jenna Howell and DPS spokesman Terry Woster if I could see a copy of this informal opinion, or to have someone summarize it for me. Woster replied that the contents of the documents could not be disclosed, citing attorney-client privilege.
(South Dakota’s “open records” law already exempts all government correspondence from disclosure, so I’m not sure why this reasoning was used.)
I got the same response from Sara Rabern, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Marty Jackley. Jackley’s office, it should be noted, concurred with Howell’s determination earlier this year that 85 octane is illegal in South Dakota, and that DPS does have the authority to enforce its ban.
Rabern also declined to tell me who in Long’s office provided the opinion.
“That’s been eight years and two administrations ago,” she said.
“And even if he was still working here, he’d just refer you back to me,” she added. “You’re not going to have a conversation with him.”
Formal AG opinions are public. The reasoning here seems to be that informal ones aren’t, even if they affect public policy in substantially the same way.
Anyway. Here’s a list of lawyers in the Attorney General’s office in 2003-2004. One of them is Jason Glodt, who is now Gov. Dennis Daugaard’s point man on the octane issue; he brokered the April 30 meeting between oil companies and state officials in the governor’s office.
Glodt said he left the Attorney General’s office in 2003, and that his sense was that a ban on 85 octane never was the intent.
“I think everyone agrees that the state did not intend a strict ban on 85 octane statewide — it was an unintended consequence of adopting national standards,” he wrote in an email. “If a strict ban was the intent, there would have been extensive debate when the rules were adopted.”
Drop me a line if you see anything worth following up on.
One question that popped up in reporting this story is whether any companies under investigation for fuel mislabeling also are being scrutinized for tax fraud, since ethanol and gasoline are taxed at different rates in South Dakota.
Federal law requires oil companies to blend ethanol into their gasoline, but ethanol is useful also because it boosts the fuel’s total octane level. So if you’re trying to meet a minimum quality standard of 85- or 87-octane, adding a shot of ethanol at the rack can do the trick.
For example, a batch of 85-octane gasoline flowing into the Rapid City pipeline terminal from Wyoming Refining Co. in Newcastle, Wyo., could be blended with ethanol for a final octane rating of 87. Then it could be shipped anywhere.
Leaving aside for now the federal implications of claiming credit for blending ethanol you never blended, there’s the issue of how your state tax bill is structured. A gallon of fuel that’s 90 percent gasoline and 10 percent ethanol will be taxed 8 cents for the ethanol (officially, ethyl alcohol) and 22 cents for the gasoline, plus a 2-cent tank inspection fee.
My theory was that if a station was selling 85 octane under an 87 sticker, maybe it was also claiming a lower tax rate for the (nonexistent) ethanol spike. Turns out that’s not the case, though, because fuel taxes are collected at the rack, where the wholesaler picks up the already-blended fuel, not at the point of sale.
Upshot: The Department of Revenue is not involved in this investigation, said Deb Hillmer, director of the state motor vehicles division.
“For taxation purposes, it doesn’t affect us,” she said.
I knew Jim Abdnor before I knew he was Jim Abdnor, the former senator.
I knew him as a great customer – and “Al.”
During high school in the late 1990s, my first job was a part-time cashier at Family Thrift Center, a grocery store in Rapid City.
I worked there on weekends and after school. As a…
Last week, the U.S. Postal Service announced some proposed changes to postal offices across the country, including reducing the number of hours many rural post offices are open. (Here’s a fact sheet from the U.S. Postal Service (pdf); the advocacy group Save the Post Office has an analysis here; and the League of Postmasters has a presentation here.)
Here’s how this proposal — the hours bit, at least — would affect South Dakota:
Save the Post Office also put together this map, if you’re a more of a visual person (larger version here):
And things related. From Argus Leader Media reporter Cody Winchester.
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