Klaudt Foster Care Conflict of Interest

KELO has a story on a potential conflict of interest with Ted Klaudt's foster parenthood.

The South Dakota Constitution doesn't allow a legislator to earn money from a state program he or she decides how to fund. But former representative Ted Klaudt helped determine funding for the Department of Corrections, which essentially paid Klaudt and his wife for their work as foster parents.

Since they became foster parents, the Klaudts earned nearly $160,000 for parenting those kids.

Here's the breakdown:
FY 2002 $11,108.00
FY 2003 $25,086.11
FY 2004 $33,712.50
FY 2005 $36,552.00
FY 2006 $38,818.46
FY 2007 $12,842.04
TOTAL: $158,119.11

The article points to a 2001 South Dakota Supreme Court Decision, Carol Pitts v. The Auditor of South Dakota, which sets precedent that this arrangement would be a conflict of interest.

The article says some legislators disagree, since the foster care system wasn't created while Klaudt was in the legislature, but on the surface of it, I believe it probably would, especially with Klaudt as chair of the Government Operations and Audit Committee (GOAC).

Another item in the article that doesn't pass the smell test is how the foster care contract is only in Klaudt's wife Connie's name. It seems odd that a husband and wife providing foster care wouldn't have both their names listed on the paperwork. This omission makes it appear intentional, perhaps to provide a dodge in case the conflict-of-interest question came up.

If that omission was intentional, the article opines that the Department of Social Services (DSS) was probably complicit in it because it would be a stretch to believe that no one at DSS knew of Klaudt's position on the GOAC, since GOAC had oversight of the child care system.

This would seem to make the case for an independent oversight agency (independent of the legislature and DSS) even stronger.