Noem's office told the public she couldn't talk about the new state penitentiary. Then she did.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem broke her silence about the issue of the new state penitentiary’s location in an interview with KWAT radio station on Dec. 13, in Watertown.

This was after weeks of refusing to answer questions from the media and her constituents about decisions behind the site's selection and allegations about a lack of transparency in the matter, with her office citing pending litigation.

The announcement of the prison’s new location in Lincoln County on state-owned property was done Oct. 6. After that, residents responded by actively calling on state and county officials to be a part of community forum discussions and filed a lawsuit looking for answers.

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Residents got together to form a group called the NOPE, Neighbors Opposed to Prison Expansion, whose fundamental ideology is to make sure residents’ voices are heard and that officials are exercising transparency while making decisions that directly affect them.

The group filed the lawsuit in early November against the Department of Corrections and the state, after which they held two public forums, where Noem and DOC Secretary Kellie Wasko were invited to address the residents directly. However, officials with both offices stated Noem and Wasko wouldn't be attending the forums, citing the broadness of the pending lawsuit and stating they couldn't talk about the issue because of that.

However, on Dec. 13, a week prior to the the second forum on Dec. 21, where neither attended, Noem spoke about the prison issue publicly for the first time during that radio interview. Days later, but shrotly before the second forum, her office cited the lawsuit as why she and others staff couldn't speak about the issue.

Noem spoke about a wide range of issues with KWAT News Director Mike Tanner during the interview, from covering the upcoming legislative session, to CO2 pipelines, to abortion and to her presence with Donald Trump on the presidential ticket this year.

Noem took roughly 2 minutes of an approximately 29-minute-segment to acknowledge the conversation around the prison location and that she knew certain people were upset.

“Well, the site has been chosen. This is where the prison will be built,” Noem said in the interview. “It’s been an interesting conversation. I know there’s a few noisy people who maybe don’t want it nearby.”

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Noem talked about how the current location isn’t as conducive as the new one will be and how poor the physical state of the current prison is.

“Frankly, our current penitentiary is falling down. We have caution tape around many parts of this building because the bricks are literally crumbling,” Noem said. “That building was built before South Dakota was even a state.”

She continued to elaborate on the need for a new state penitentiary location.

“It’s not a great place for our correction officers to work in and it’s certainly no place to help those who are incarcerated heal, get better, go out into our communities and become productive individuals providing for their families again,” she said.

Conversations about the new state penitentiary location and its scouting had been publicly ongoing for two years. But when the final location was decided upon, residents were allegedly only made aware at the last stage, NOPE organizers said.

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Noem said “some of the criticism was that development won’t happen around those sites” and how absolutely untrue that was, referring to facilities in Pierre or Rapid City and the continued development around those areas.

Since the Nov. 3 lawsuit was filed, the DOC has since asked a Lincoln County judge to dismiss the case, saying NOPE and the county do not have the power to supersede the DOC or Legislature’s authority. The state is still waiting on a ruling.

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NOPE Vice President Madeline Voegeli said it was surprising to hear the governor addressed their group in “such a negative way,” considering Noem was acknowledging the group for the first time on a public platform.

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“It was unfortunate to hear that she not only recognizes that we do exist but resorted to name calling, when she hasn’t reached out once to us as a group, returned any of our calls or emails, or any of our requests for information regarding the site selection,” Voegeli said.

Voegeli expressed curiosity on the governor’s decision to break her silence with this particular media outlet. NOPE members had been trying to reach out for months. Voegeli said she was confused why the governor was “able to speak about our organization when she has previously stated that she isn’t supposed to be talking about it due to the litigation.”

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But Noem and her office's refusal to comment on the issue because of the litigation seemingly continues.

Asked directly by the Argus Leader on Friday about why she spoke to the radio station, which reaches a public audience, and not to her constiuents at the forum, the questions remained unanswered.

When the Argus Leader first reached out to Ian Fury, the governor's chief of communications, for comments on Noem's and Wasko's absence at the second public forum held Dec. 21, reporters were met with a response referring to the pending lawsuit.

A second attempt at reaching out was made Friday after the Argus Leader learned Noem had publicly acknowledged upset residents and discussed the prison location issue on the radio prior to the second forum. However, the response from Noem's office didn't change.

Fury was asked for comments about how or why the governor was able to discuss the prison issue then with KWAT in a public radio interview while not being able to answer the Argus Leader's follow-up questions about that same interview. The Argus Leader asked Fury to specify what Noem's office thinks is the extent of the lawsuit, whether "noisy people" was specifically in reference to NOPE and how the radio interview didn't violate previous reasons given for not talking publicly about the issue.

“You are asking me to comment directly on the pending litigation, and I can’t do that,” Fury said Friday.

Voegeli said Noem's radio interview shows that conversations are taking place in the State Capital regarding the issue even now.

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“Conversations are taking place in Pierre, (but) we continue to be completely left out of the discussion,” Voegeli said. “Like now we understand that they know who we are. And they’re still dismissing all our questions and all our requests for more information regarding the issue.”

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Gov. Noem breaks silence on issue of new men’s prison in radio interview