Office of the Governor
For Immediate Release: Friday, June 28, 2002
For More Information: Bob Mercer or Mike Mueller, 773-3212

Janklow: Group’s Ranking of State Economies Is “Political Con Job”

(Pierre) – Gov. Bill Janklow said Friday that the news media and the general public need to know that a partisan political organization, the Democratic Leadership Council, is the real force behind a policy group’s new report that ranks state economies.

The group, Progressive Policy Institute (PPI), is described on the Democratic Leadership Council web site as the DLC’s “companion think tank.” The Progressive Policy Institute has contacted news media to publish and broadcast news stories about PPI’s new report that ranks state economies, “The 2002 State New Economy Index.” The PPI web site describes its staff as “experts in a wide range of public policy issues and are available to speak to the press.”

“This kind of political con job is what people don’t like about politics and government,” Janklow said. “Once again, somebody is conning our media. The media are allowing themselves to be used by a group fulfilling its own agenda. People need to know who’s really behind all of these different surveys, whether it’s this one or any of the others, and what the real agenda is. If the news media still want to run a story, that’s okay, but people need to know the whole story.”

The founder and chief executive of the Democratic Leadership Council is Al From, who is also the chairman of the Third Way Foundation. The DLC and PPI web sites are directly linked. According to the PPI web site, “The Progressive Policy Institute is a research and education institute that is a project of the Third Way Foundation Inc., a nonprofit corporation organized under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.” According to the DLC web site, the Progressive Policy Institute is the DLC’s “affiliated think tank.”

The PPI site contains various reports critical of President George W. Bush’s administration and Republicans in Congress and showcases various Democratic Leadership Council members’ proposals. The DLC site prominently discusses its role in former President Bill Clinton’s election and administration. Among the public officials listed as members of the Democratic Leadership Council on its site is U.S. Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota.

South Dakota is ranked 43rd among the states in the PPI report. Of the top 10 states, eight were above the national average in state taxes per person in 2000, while South Dakota had the lowest state taxes per person in the nation.

“There are many ways to look at things and that’s just one example,” Janklow said. “I can give you seven pages of different studies and reports where South Dakota ranks No. 1 or near the top in various ways of measuring our business climate and conditions, from students per networked computer to the cost of a vacation to the cost of business to number of new and expanded facilities.

“This group with its hidden agenda faults South Dakota for such things as percentage of workers employed by foreign companies, exports, foreign investment, the number of patents issued to people in our state and the number of commercial Internet domain or dot-com names. Despite being at the bottom for those things, in that same report South Dakota does very well for such things as the number of fast-growing companies, technology in education and adults with Internet access.

“That’s why people need to know the whole story on this report or for that matter any of these studies that come out, from who’s really behind it to what it really says,” Janklow said.

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