Corn Palace board regularly meets in private, while other city boards more transparent
May 17—MITCHELL — There is no city business like the Corn Palace business.
Mitchell's Corn Palace Entertainment Board holds an executive session during its regular monthly meetings at Mitchell City Hall as a matter of routine, with very little to no public discussion. While executive sessions are acceptable under specific conditions via South Dakota codified law, they otherwise lack transparency and typically allow the officials utilizing them to avoid public accountability.
The Corn Palace Entertainment Board has held an executive session four times this year alone, but comparatively since the beginning of 2023 the city's Park Board has had four executive sessions and the Golf and Cemetery Board has had three, mainly citing legal or contractual topics.
The Corn Palace Entertainment Board's January meeting featured an
open discussion about the Corn Palace Festival returning to Main Street.
At the start of the meeting, board members approved agenda items, which included an executive session, but no executive session was held. This open discussion was the exception rather than the norm because February through May the board has gone behind closed doors at some point during its monthly meeting.
According to state law, executive or closed meetings may be held, under certain stipulations, for the sole purposes of consulting with legal counsel, contract negotiations, conducting public safety planning, and discussing personnel matters and competitive business strategies.
In 2024,
multiple South Dakota cities came under fire for violating open meeting
laws. Violations are a class 2 misdemeanor, but
no one has ever been prosecuted on the matter.
The meeting agenda of the Corn Palace Entertainment Board quotes South Dakota statute on closed meetings, stating "Discussing marketing or pricing strategies by a board or commission of a business owned by the state or any of its political subdivisions," yet leaves off the end of the statute, "when public discussion may be harmful to the competitive position of the business."
When asked about the clause that determines if public discussion would be harmful to the competitive position of the business, Corn Palace Director Dave Sietsema deferred to City Administrator Stephanie Ellwein, who then deferred to City Attorney Justin Johnson.
Johnson put the decision back in the hands of the Corn Palace Entertainment Board, which makes the decision to go into executive session through voting action.
"I guess that begs the question of who decides when it may be harmful to the competitive position of the business and in my view, that's the board's decision," Johnson said.
Board members include chair Steve Morgan, Giovanni Lanier, Jory Hanson, Jason Bates, Nancy Conzemius, John Foster and Christie Gunkel, though Gunkel joined the board in April. Municipal statute-mandated positions include City Council Member Tim Goldammer and Chamber of Commerce Vice President Johanna Allen. Mayor Jordan Hanson also regularly attends the meetings.
Typically, only a few minutes of each Corn Palace Entertainment Board meeting is conducted in open setting, with most of the discussion wrapped up in executive session. When asked, Johnson could not guarantee that board members are not discussing topics that should be part of an open meeting during the executive session.
"I guess as much guarantee as there would be for any other executive session that other people or other boards are conducting," Johnson said.
The statute also states, "discussion during the closed meeting is restricted to the purpose specified in the closure motion."
In disregard of this, recent meetings have cited the marketing or pricing strategies statute while discussing contracts, which has its own statute.
"There's nothing that would stop them from separately listing them or even putting them on there together," Johnson said. "I don't see an issue with the way that they're doing it now."
Johnson noted that the intention of the statute and the intention of the meeting is to keep the discussion limited to a specific topic, which is stated on the agenda.
In December 2024, the Corn Palace Entertainment board spent about
90 minutes in executive session and then came out of the closed-door session approve a rental rate hike for the city-owned facility.
There was no public discussion that followed to justify the rental increase. In 2025, each board meeting has included a lengthy discussion while in executive session except for January.
Other city boards, such as the Park Board, Golf and Cemetery Board, openly discuss pricing rate motivations,
park shelter rates
, and
cemetery
and
campground fees.
Of city boards, the Sports and Events Authority (SEA) routinely goes into executive session for 20 to 25 minutes to discuss awarding grants to local sports and events organizations. In February 2024, the SEA began utilizing executive sessions. Previous to this, grant award discussions were open.
At the May 6 Corn Palace Entertainment Board meeting, during an executive session, the board discussed a sponsorship contract for the six TVs in the Corn Palace lobby.
The result? The city is now offering six-month contracts at $1,500 or 12 months at $2,500 for 10-second spots to run 60 times during an eight-hour period each day. Still, the state statute emphasizes executive session can be held when there is a need for discussion that protects the "competitive position of the business." The business in this case would be the Corn Palace. However, the Corn Palace is unique to the city in being the only large tourist attraction that has rolling TV sponsorships with company logos.
"The board has to be able to discuss what their pricing strategy is on those sponsorships before they come out and act on it publicly," Ellwein said.
After the executive session, the board followed protocol and motioned to approve TV sponsorship rates, as stated on the meeting's agenda.
According to Ellwein, the Corn Palace is different so the executive sessions are necessary.
"It's the only entity we have that needs to do it," Ellwein said.
Recently, while negotiating the entertainment booking fee contracts for the Corn Palace Festival, offers or bids were made in executive sessions.
"You can't release some of that information until you have a contract in place," Ellwein said.
Ellwein expressed concern that the city could lose out on bids for entertainers if the discussion was open to the public.
South Dakota statute states, "any official action concerning the matters pursuant to this section shall be made at an open official meeting." That means while the board has the ability to use executive session, any official action must be voted on publicly.
Upon exiting the executive session, the board can maintain a certain level of anonymity by supplying a line on the agenda to approve an entertainer's contract with Pepper Entertainment, the independent concert promotion company that helps secure festival talent, without expressly stating the name of the entertainer.
Yet, city staff have taken steps to finalize two acts for the 2025 Corn Palace Festival without a follow-up motion to approve steps to enter into a contract. No motion to enter a contract was on the agenda for the February, March and April meetings, which could be considered a violation of state statute. In recent years, no agendas have had a line item to approve contracts for the Corn Palace Festival after an executive session.
On April 4 and April 11, city staff announced festival acts
country music artist Justin Moore
for Thursday, Aug. 21 and
rocker and TV-personality Brett Michaels
for Saturday, Aug. 23.
"We do not have any Friday entertainment announced. The board will continue to have executive sessions at a minimum until that's determined," Ellwein said.
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