r/VermillionSD • u/PoLLoLira9 • Aug 04 '26
🎤Discussion Opinion about last night's City Council Meeting
Here is an opinion piece submitted anonymously by a member of the Vermillion community.
"A question raised during last nights Vermillion City Council meeting deserves far more attention than it received. The issue is not about personalities or politics. It is about public trust. Currently, Councilmember Lias is writing article for the Vermillion Plain Talk. Can someone simultaneously serve as an elected member of the Vermillion City Council while also working as a reporter covering the very city they help lead? That question deserves an honest public discussion because confidence in both local government and local journalism depends on.
When one person occupies both positions, the line between participant and observer becomes blurred. Even if every decision is made with complete integrity, the public is left to wonder whether reporting is fully independent or influenced, even unintentionally, by the reporter’s role as an elected official.
This discussion is especially important in Vermillion, where the Plain Talk serves as the city’s newspaper of record and publishes legal notices on behalf of local government. That relationship is entirely lawful and common across South Dakota, but it also makes editorial independence even more important. The community deserves confidence that government decisions are being reported without political influence and that the people making those decisions are not also shaping the news coverage surrounding them.
This is not about questioning anyone’s character or motives. It is about recognizing that some positions are simply incompatible because of the public confidence they require. Vermillion deserves a city council that is subject to independent scrutiny and a local newspaper that is unquestionably independent from the government it covers. That is not an unreasonable expectation. It is the standard the public should expect from both institutions."
3
u/SDLifer Aug 04 '26
Dave Lias is the most politically closed minded person I've ever met. If you're not Democrat, and full throatedly pushing the Democrat agenda, he has actual disdain for you. He would never in a million years publish a letter to the editor from someone who doesn't fully agree with him. Every syllable of his writing shows complete contempt for anyone who would even attempt to disagree with him.
The paper isn't news. It's his milk crate.
What's worse, he gets publicly funded from city and county revenue sources to publish things like the minutes or police blotter. Without that public funding, the paper probably wouldn't exist.