SOUTH DAKOTA: Bureaucrat's Paradise

When Robert Martin, South Dakota's director of economic development for the past nine years, died of a heart attack last month at 52, few of his co-workers could recall much about him. A quiet, polite man with thinning hair who invariably wore conservative slacks and sports jackets, Martin seldom socialized with his staff and never brought his wife to state functions, apparently preferring to spend all his time with his family. But within a few days of his death at his home in Pierre, the state capital, Martin's fellow employees found out to their astonishment from two lawyers inquiring about...

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