North Dakota lawmakers are exploring using telemedicine technology to ease staffing strains on rural emergency medical services, a potential solution to a growing shortage of paramedics and volunteer responders across the state.

Though some solutions were floated and passed during the 2025 legislative session, lawmakers are working to understand the scope of the problem before proposing additional legislative changes in 2027.

The state has been facing a societal decline in volunteerism, which strains traditional volunteer firefighter and emergency medical services that support rural communities, said Sen. Josh Boschee, D- Fargo. Adding to pressure, when a rural ambulance service shuts down, the responsibility falls to neighboring ambulance services to answer calls in the defunct ambulance service’s coverage area.

How could telemedicine ease strains on rural EMS staffing?

One idea presented to the Emergency Response Services Committee on Wednesday to potentially alleviate some of the stress on rural ambulances is expanding access to technology in the field for emergency medical personnel.

Emergency medicine technology company Avel eCare presented to the committee its system, which allows ambulance personnel to be connected by video with emergency medicine physicians, experienced medics or emergency nurses in the field wherever there is cell reception. The company already operates its mobile service in South Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska and Kansas, according to the company’s presentation.

Avel eCare said this allows medics and paramedics to have any questions they have answered and provides a second person to help document actions taken when there is only one person in the back of an ambulance with a patient, which they say is increasingly common in rural areas. This allows one medic or paramedic to put more focus on the patient.

The company said it is innovating the ability to also bring medical personnel into the call from whatever care center the ambulance is heading to, allowing the care center to better prepare for the ambulance’s arrival.

Lawmakers said they were interested in the system and could see how it would provide a benefit to thinly stretched EMS personnel.

Boschee said the state should consider funding the system, citing its potential to support local EMS providers and help retain volunteers.

Avel eCare did not provide a cost estimate for North Dakota, but offered South Dakota as an example. That state used general fund dollars to provide the Avel eCare service free of charge to agencies. The state paid $1.7 million in up-front costs for equipment — enough to outfit 120 ambulances — and an annual subscription cost of $937,000 to provide their services to 109 ambulances serving 105 communities in the state.

“I think specifically … how affordable that type of solution is for us to not only support our local EMS providers, but also to keep volunteers longer,” he said. “Folks know that they have that support network when they’re in the back of the rig taking care of a patient. That helps add to people’s willingness to serve longer. And so I think that’s a great, affordable option we have to look at, especially as we start going in the next couple months and continue to talk about rural health care transformation.”

Rural EMS shortages go beyond pay, state officials say

There are 28 open paramedic positions in the state, according to Workforce Services Director Phil Davis’ presentation. The difficulty in filling these positions is not just about money, though that certainly plays a factor in recruiting people, his report said.

“I’ll just speak from my experience with my own agency,” Davis said. “After 18 years, it’s very hard for us to even recruit individuals into Job Service North Dakota because of the lower wages.”

Davis showed that 2024 salaries for emergency medical technicians were fairly even across the eight regions Workforce Services breaks the state into, with a roughly $6,500 gap between the highest and lowest averages. Law enforcement officer pay varied by about $8,320, while firefighter salaries were the biggest outlier, with a $20,000 difference between regions. While state wages may lag nationally, other factors are making rural recruiting particularly difficult.

Davis said it was largely a lifestyle change; people are not seeking to live rurally as often.

“We’re starting to see the smaller communities, for the most part — not all — starting to lose that population. And it is tougher to get individuals to move there or to be employed there,” Davis said.

Job Service North Dakota is holding job fairs to try to recruit more emergency services personnel, with some success, he said, and has nine workforce centers across the state working directly with small communities to help with their staffing shortages.

Davis advocated for more education in schools about career paths in emergency services and the openings that are available in the state.

© 2025 The Bismarck Tribune (Bismarck, N.D.). Visit www.bismarcktribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

A mom searching for answers about her son’s death in a car wreck won a victory on Dec. 19 when the Ohio Supreme Court ordered the Richland County Sheriff to release records to her.

The court ruled in a unanimous decision that Andrea Mauk is entitled to three sets of records withheld by the sheriff, with only Social Security numbers being redacted. Mauk will be awarded $2,000 in damages but will not receive attorney fees.

On June 23, 2023, 18-year-old Damon Mauk lost control of his 1998 Ford Mustang and slammed it into a tree. His mother wanted to piece together what happened, collect his belongings and grieve the loss of her child. She didn’t think she’d have to fight for public records and take her case to the Ohio Supreme Court.

Following the crash, Richland County Sheriff’s deputies, a township fire department and the Ohio State Highway Patrol responded.

Part 3 of a 3-part series.

In 2020, a bill was filed in South Dakota that would have spelled out extensive rules for how police body camera footage can be obtained, maintained, used and shared.

Then-Sen. Reynold Nesiba, a Sioux Falls Democrat and primary sponsor of the bill, said that without a state law, police agencies across the state are on their own to decide how and when to use cameras, what happens to the footage and who should have access to the videos.

Without such a law, South Dakota would remain behind many other states that already regulate police videos, he said.

“In South Dakota, we have a patchwork and it depends on the individual police department … (and) I think it puts our law enforcement in a really difficult position,” said Nesiba. “I think it would be helpful to have guiding statute under what conditions it becomes a public record, who can ask for that record and under what conditions it can be released or held back.”

Opposition to the measure came from state, county and local law enforcement officials, who testified that the measure was unnecessary because police agencies across the state use a set of “best practices” to guide use of body cameras.

The six-page bill, Senate Bill 100, never made it to a vote. Instead, the measure’s original language was gutted immediately in committee and an amendment to recommend a legislative summer study session on body cameras videos was voted down.

New records laws unlikely in South Dakota

Since then, no other police video bill has been filed in the Legislature, according to a review of measures filed.

Given the current makeup of the South Dakota Legislature, support for enacting legislation related to release of police videos appears unlikely, said David Bordewyk, executive director of the South Dakota NewsMedia Association.

“We are on an island because our law is so weak in this area. And a consequence is loss of public trust and having full confidence in the accountability of law enforcement,” he said. “That’s not to say that distrust is the default because it’s not. But by not having good public access to these types of records, it can feed distrust and misinformation in the community.”

Bordewyk pointed out that it took him and other First Amendment advocates several years to make it legal for police agencies in South Dakota to release criminal booking photos and police logs that show when and where officers respond.

“Those are commonplace public records in every other state in the nation forever, and it took moving heaven and earth to make those a public record in South Dakota,” he said. “There’s this embedded DNA that because we’re a small state, we know each other and trust each other, and we can trust law enforcement is going to do the right thing.”

“By not having good public access to these types of records, it can feed distrust and misinformation in the community.”
— David Bordewyk, executive director of the South Dakota NewsMedia Association

State Sen. Helene Duhamel, a Rapid City Republican, told News Watch in an email that she supports the current open records law, which gives law enforcement agencies full discretion on if or when to release police videos to the public.

“I am not pursuing changes to current public records laws involving law enforcement video,” wrote Duhamel, a former television newscaster who now works as the spokeswoman for the Pennington County Sheriff’s Office. “Body worn cameras are used every day by our largest agencies in South Dakota. It is one of the most successful policing reforms of the 21^st century.”

Duhamel said police videos can be seen by the public if they attend court proceedings where the videos are shown. “The video is evidence and not entertainment,” she wrote.

South Dakota ranks low in openness

South Dakota ranks at or near the bottom in more than a dozen analyses of public access to records, especially when it comes to law enforcement agencies, said David Cullier, director of the Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida. 

“They allow police to keep everything secret, and that’s against the basics of public records laws that have been around for hundreds of years,” he said. “If I lived in South Dakota, I would be up in arms because it turns out South Dakota is one of the most secretive states in the nation.”

Cullier said expanding public and press access to law enforcement records tends to make police agencies more transparent but also more accountable for their actions. And it ultimately leads to better performance by officers in the field, he said.

“It’s a way of making sure our police officers are doing their jobs that we entrust them to do because the body cams tell the story,” Cullier said. “When they deny records requests, they’re not saying ‘no’ to journalists and the media. They’re saying ‘no’ to the million people who live in South Dakota.”

Cullier said the American public has demanded more access to police videos after several high-profile incidents in which illegal and misreported shootings by police officers were captured on camera.

Among them: the 2014 killing of Laquan McDonald by a Chicago police officer; the 2015 South Carolina shooting death of Walter L. Scott, who was unarmed and running away from the officer who shot him; and the 2020 murder of George Floyd by an officer in Minneapolis.

In the McDonald killing, officer Jason Van Dyke initially reported that the 17-year-old had charged at him with a knife, and the shooting was ruled justified. A year later, when the video was released publicly, it showed the boy walking away from officers and not brandishing a knife prior to being shot 16 times. Van Dyke was convicted of second-degree murder.

Despite calls for more openness, and some state laws passed to expand open-records laws, most state legislatures have not taken steps to improve public access to police videos, Cullier said.

“I think we’ve seen a public push, especially since Floyd and other police brutality and killings,” he said. “Unfortunately, I don’t think a lot of legislatures have been moved by it. And I don’t think we’re going to see improvement unless the public continues to demand it.”

Challenging even for lawyers to obtain videos

The ability of prosecutors or judges to block access to videos can protect officers who might have acted illegally or improperly, said Jeffrey Montpetit, a Minneapolis attorney who has worked several civil cases involving law enforcement activities in South Dakota.

“I know of two cases I had in South Dakota where the courts basically said this video isn’t getting out because we don’t like what it shows,” he said.

The lack of access to police videos can inhibit the ability of the public to file civil claims against law enforcement officers who are alleged to have used excessive force or violated someone’s rights, Montpetit said.

“Without video, you’re out of luck,” he said.

“When they deny records requests, they’re not saying ‘no’ to journalists and the media. They’re saying ‘no’ to the million people who live in South Dakota.”
— David Cullier, director of the Brechner Freedom of Information Project at the University of Florida

Defense attorneys who take cases on a contingency basis are unlikely to accept cases where a judgment might come down to the word of a police officer versus the claims of a member of the public, he said.

“The trooper, sheriff or police officer can write some B.S. report that the defendant resisted or took a swing at him,” Montpetit said. “Then all you’re getting is a credibility comparison between someone who may be a felon and a law enforcement officer, and you’re going to lose those cases.”

Also, members of the public who cannot afford to hire an attorney are unlikely to obtain videos that could help make a case against an officer or the government, he said.

“Without video, there’s not a lot of options for lawyers to undertake those efforts,” Montpetit said.

Rural sheriff supports a possible state law

Alan Dale, sheriff of Corson County, said videos of interactions with the public or perpetrators have mainly been used to help prosecutors prove crimes or have helped his deputies respond to unwarranted complaints.

“In one incident, we had someone complain the officer searched a vehicle without cause. And when we watched the video, it showed the man actually giving the deputy his consent to search,” Dale said.

News Watch submitted a request to view videos of a June 30, 2023, incident in which a Corson County deputy and tribal officers engaged in a vehicle chase with 25-year-old Samir Albadhani, who brandished a gun before being shot and wounded by officers. Dale forwarded the request to the local state’s attorney, who declined the News Watch request.

Dale said he isn’t sure if police videos should become an open record for press or public viewing in South Dakota, but he would support some form of legislation to create a uniform approach for cameras and videos for all agencies across the state.

“When I first started in law enforcement, we didn’t have cameras,” Dale said. “But now I wouldn’t want to be in law enforcement without them because the cameras don’t lie.”

“I don’t feel that we’re done yet, and I feel there’s more work to be done on that.”
— South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley

South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley said that while serving two separate stints in the office, he has formed three task forces to examine public meetings and records laws, which have led to more openness.

Jackley, who is running for South Dakota’s lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, said he is willing to ask his ongoing open meetings task force or a new task force to consider whether police videos should be more publicly accessible.

“I don’t feel that we’re done yet, and I feel there’s more work to be done on that,” he said.

Read parts 1 and 2 of the 3-part series:

Police videos in SD: Public pays costs but cannot see footage

As more states begin to provide public access to videos captured by law enforcement agencies, South Dakota continues to keep a tight lid on them.

With discretion left to agencies, police video releases rare

When videos and still images have been released, they tend to justify officer use of force or highlight humorous on-the-job interactions.

This story was produced by South Dakota News Watch, an independent, nonprofit organization. Read more stories and donate at sdnewswatch.org and sign up for an email to get stories when they’re published. Contact content director Bart Pfankuch at bart.pfankuch@sdnewswatch.org.