South Dakota Searchlight
South Dakota’s beleaguered secretary of corrections has resigned.
Gov. Larry Rhoden told South Dakota Searchlight that Kellie Wasko delivered the letter announcing her Oct. 20 departure on Tuesday, though the letter is dated Sept. 1.
News of the secretary’s resignation after 3½ years on the job came less than a day after a group of 20 lawmakers in the House of Representatives signed a letter calling on Rhoden to “clean up his Department of Corrections” before a Sept. 23 special session. That’s when lawmakers will be asked to endorse construction of a $650 million, 1,500-bed men’s prison in Sioux Falls.
The timing of the lawmaker letter was coincidental and “unfortunate,” Rhoden said.
“She had made up her mind, and she knew what she wanted to do,” the governor said. “She knew that this wasn’t getting better.”
Rhoden added that only one of the letter’s 20 signatories, Howard Republican Rep. Tim Reisch, had called him to express his concerns about Wasko in the past six months.
“I guarantee you, they all have my cell number,” said Rhoden.
The governor added that he had faith in Wasko in spite of criticisms of her management style and a wave of security incidents and controversies since 2023.
Despite that confidence, Rhoden said he recognizes that Wasko’s resignation will make it easier to convince the Legislature to back the $650 million project.
“You’re always looking for the hurdles that are going to give people a path to ‘no,’ and to remove those hurdles and give them more reasons to say ‘yes,’” Rhoden said.
Letter authors laud resignation
Reisch, the first lawmaker to call for Wasko’s resignation and a former corrections secretary himself, lauded the news as a step forward as the Legislature ponders a replacement for the oldest parts of the state penitentiary in Sioux Falls.
“I just hope it’s a transition to a better way of doing things,” Reisch said.
None of the 20 lawmakers listed on the letter hold leadership positions in the House.
But House Speaker Jon Hansen, the Dell Rapids Republican now running for governor, said Wasko “needs to be fired” on his campaign’s Facebook page Tuesday morning.
House Speaker Pro Tempore Karla Lems, R-Canton, is Hansen’s gubernatorial running mate. She said she wasn’t asked to sign the letter. Even so, she said Wasko’s leadership is “what I think rises to the top” of her list of concerns about an expensive new prison.
Resignation letter lists accomplishments
Wasko, a nurse by training who spent years working in Colorado’s correctional system before coming to South Dakota in 2022 as an appointee of then-Gov. Kristi Noem, wrote that she’d spent the past few months discussing her decision with her family.
She’s leaving “to pursue other opportunities,” the letter says.
The two-page document has four paragraphs in total, reserving the bulk of its space for 22 bullet points listing “just a handful” of her accomplishments.
Among them are a 43% increase in correctional officer pay and a decrease in staff vacancies, creating a “comprehensive reentry program” for inmates leaving state prisons, curing 300 inmates of Hepatitis C, creating an Office of Inspector General to investigate crime behind the walls and a reduction in escapes.
“I have worked diligently for the last 3½ years to improve the Department of Corrections and I know I am leaving it far better than I found it,” the letter says.
It also points to a change in the DOC’s “insolence” and discipline policy, which was “highly controversial” with previous secretaries and ended the practice of placing inmates in disciplinary segregation for talking back to officers.
“It was necessary, and we have successfully corrected the process,” she wrote, noting that a 2022 operations review recommended housing inmates in “the least restrictive environment necessary to maintain safe and secure facilities.”
Critics: New policies made for unsafe facilities
The letter from lawmakers stopped short of demanding Wasko’s resignation – it doesn’t mention her by name – but Reisch said changes like that are why he’s called for her ouster.
“If inmates know what the rules are and that they’re enforced, the vast majority will comply with them,” Reisch said. “If word gets around that they’re not enforced, that word gets around pretty fast, and security goes by the wayside.”
Reisch said staff assaults are up, based on conversations he’s had with current correctional officers. The DOC’s annual statistical report for 2024 showed assaults on staff at a five-year low, but Reisch said that could be a matter of shifting definitions of assault since Wasko came to lead the agency in 2022.
“A lot of the definitions can change,” said Reisch, who also suggested that some assaults aren’t logged.
Attorney General Marty Jackley told the Dakota Town Hall podcast in mid-February that his office had more than 100 open assault investigations involving inmates.