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• South Dakota Democratic Party Chairman Ben Nesselhuf said Weiland's decision to run is a reflection of Democrats' determination.
• "I think it's indicative as to how excited Democrats are that we're going to keep this seat," Nesselhuf said.
• Weiland ran for South Dakota's lone seat in the U.S. House in 1996, when then-Rep. Tim Johnson ran and won a Senate race. Republican John Thune, who now is in the Senate, defeated Weiland in that House race by a wide margin.
• Weiland then was appointed regional director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Denver. He ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for U.S. House in 2002. He joined the International Code Council, a nonprofit organization that develops construction codes for commercial and residential buildings, in 2003, serving as chief operating officer and then chief executive officer before leaving in September.
• He said he recently has helped run the family restaurant in Sioux Falls.
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State panel working to upgrade SD 911 service
CHET BROKAW,Associated Press
• PIERRE, S.D. (AP) -- South Dakota's antiquated 911 system will be rebuilt in the next few years to improve responses to emergencies, cut costs and take advantage of new cellphone technologies, the head of a state panel that oversees the 911 system said Wednesday.
• The current 33 answering centers now use technology from the 1970s and 1980s, are connected by old copper-wire phone lines and have trouble communicating with each other, said Ted Rufledt Jr., of Rapid City, chair of the South Dakota 911 Coordination Board. South Dakota is joining with other states to develop a Next Generation 911 system that will be based on the same fiber-optic lines used for the Internet and a single operating system that allows dispatch centers to communicate better.
• The new system, whose basic infrastructure is expected to be in place within three years, will eventually allow people to send text messages, photos and videos to 911 centers.
• "We've got to get all these different entities -- 911 centers, fire, police and medical -- off these separate systems that make it very hard for them to communicate in an emergency and get them on a common system where information, data and voice traffic can be shared to deliver better public safety in the end," Rufledt said.
• The 911 Coordination Board met Wednesday with the staff of a consulting (Continued on page 19)
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