Johnson Janklow Abdallah Attorneys Appointed as Special Deputy State’s Attorneys to Recover $1.2 Million in Bridge Grant Funds from South Dakota DOT
Mar 28, 17
The attorneys at Johnson Janklow Abdallah appointed to represent Minnehaha County in a dispute with the South Dakota Department of Transportation over Bridge Improvement Grant have been working diligently to vindicate their client’s rights in an administrative appeal recently argued in Second Circuit Court.
In August 2016, Attorneys Pamela Reiter and Ron Parsons were hired by the Minnehaha County Commission and honored to be sworn in as Special Deputy State’s Attorneys to handle the case for the County. The dispute involves more than $1.2 million in funds that the County believes it should have been awarded under the objective scoring criteria established by the administrative rules governing the Bridge Improvement Grants (BIG), a program enacted by the Legislature in 2015.
Under South Dakota law, administrative rules have the force of law and bind the agency that issues them. The County contends that the Transportation Commission’s decision to deny Minnehaha County’s BIG application and instead to reallocate the grant to a lower-scoring applicant contravened the objective criteria mandated by the governing statutes and rules. As argued by Parsons at the hearing on the appeal, “it’s not fair to change the rules in the middle of the game.”
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