I read a lot of press releases from the governor of South Dakota, and she writes a lot about freedom.

Well, actually, she writes a lot about “Freedom,” and “Liberty,” and “the Woke Mob,” but Gov. Kristi Noem’s fetish for capitalizing buzz words is a matter for another column.

Unfortunately, when it comes to the freedom of the press — and of the taxpayers to know where their money is being spent — Noem is a Failure with a capital F.

At the end of May, the governor sent a letter to the South Dakota Board of Regents. And if I am grading here again, it wasn’t much better of an effort than the press releases and columns she sends this way. In a rambling four pages ostensibly about South Dakota colleges, she manages to touch on most of her favorite catchphrases, including “drag shows,” “preferred pronouns,” and even, against all odds, “The Chinese Communist Party.”

But buried at the end of this missive was something that caught my eye:

“To help keep our institutions accountable — and ensure that we are all aware of what is occurring at our taxpayer-funded colleges and universities — I will be setting up a whistleblower hotline. Students, parents, taxpayers, and anyone who wants to continuable [sic] to transparency and accountability within our institutions will be able to access this hotline at 605-773-5916. We will use the information we learn to guide policy decisions going forward.”

Now, the Regents, in their temperance and wisdom, seem to have largely taken this letter as a joke. In the time-honored tradition of parents everywhere, the board seems content to respond to the governor when she appears serious and simply ignore her when she’s being ludicrous.

And I will bet the ranch the “hotline” was mostly given over to prank calls. Some Brookings residents may have even called to report nefarious fraternity boys in Vermillion suspiciously sipping Bud Light. Who can say?

But as big a joke as this already was, it was about to get dumber.

 On June 16, the governor sent another letter to the Regents, purportedly to detail the reports her Narc on Liberals hotline was receiving. These included: Students being encouraged to take anti-depressants, students being encouraged to wear masks to class and, horror of horrors, students being required to read non-white authors during a literature class. Oh, and apparently, students were asked to give their pronouns at USD. I knew Vermillion was suspicious.

Now, initially, I was inclined to take the Regents position on the matter; the best course is sometimes to ignore the temper tantrum. But after the June 16 letter, it was clear the governor’s office wasn’t letting this go. Maybe they just wanted a second bite at the publicity stunt apple, but that letter clearly showed the governor’s office had both actually set up the hotline and kept records of what people said.

So I did what any self-respecting ink-stained wretch would do. I filed a public records request.

Citing the South Dakota Sunshine Law in a letter sent June 20 via physical and electronic mail, I asked the governor’s office for the chance to inspect or obtain “all public records that pertain to the Governor’s whistleblower hotline for higher education… This includes any voice recordings, transcriptions or other records generated by the hotline.”

I went on to write that “… the disclosure of the requested information is in the public interest and will contribute significantly to the public’s understanding of higher education in South Dakota. As the managing editor of the daily paper in Brookings, home of SDSU, this information is vital to our readers.”

That seems like a slam dunk, right? After all, in the governor’s own words, she established this hotline to “ensure that we are all aware of what is occurring at our taxpayer-funded colleges and universities,” and I was all set up to sort through all the garbage to see if there were any stories The Brookings Register should write about South Dakota State.

Nope. Blanket denial. In a letter from the governor’s general counsel dated July 6, the state refused to release even a single document — even the letters to the Regents I already had — about the hotline. Katie Hruska wrote “Your Request is denied. Voice recordings, call transcriptions, and other records generated by the hotline are exempt from disclosure as they constitute correspondence, logs of appointments, and records of telephone calls of public employees.”

 Now, I am not an attorney. But the ones I showed this denial to had the same reaction I did. It beggared belief that such a hotline would not generate records that are not correspondence. There’s a decent argument that this is not correspondence at all, at least in the way the Sunshine Law means it. And what’s more, simple redaction would take care of any privacy concerns the governor’s office might legitimately have.

Turns out, I was not the only one committing an act of journalism, either. Jacob Newton with KELOLAND News sent a similar request on June 22, only to get the same strange blanket denial. But, clearly, separate journalists working independently and coming to the same conclusion would lead a dispassionate observer to conclude this information both has news value and should be available to the public.

And you don’t need to be an attorney or a journalist to know the Governor can’t have it both ways. She’s keen on taxpayers knowing what happens to their money at those liberal institutions of higher learning — anonymous and silly as even her cherry-picked examples are — so long as she can harvest her capital letter buzzwords that I assume make sense if you spend your evenings plugged directly into Fox News or OAN.

But she sure doesn’t want you to know what kind of farce her office is spending your tax dollars on.

Now, I am well aware that the readership of this paper includes die-hard Kristi Noem fans who are not at all apt to think she can do much wrong. Here’s all I can say: Regardless of politics, if we are to govern ourselves, we all have to operate in a single shared reality.

If you think South Dakota’s colleges and universities are dens of liberal indoctrination, like the governor says, why would you not want that information put on the record? Even if you want to vote for Noem for anything she runs for, don’t you want the public’s business done in public?

We’re going to appeal the decision from the governor’s office. But I am writing this because I actually believe in your right to know what your government is doing. Because that’s real freedom — in Brookings, Pierre or even Vermillion.

Linehan is the Register’s managing editor and welcomes comments at jlinehan@brookingsregister.com