As daughter sought state license, Noem summoned agency head

— Just days after a South Dakota agency moved to deny her daughter’s application to become a certified real estate appraiser, Gov. Bren, who had directed the Appraiser Certification Program for three decades, told the AP that she received a text on July 26 from her supervisor telling her to be at the governor’s office the next morning, ready to discuss “appraiser certification procedures.” Besides Noem and Peters, Bren said the meeting included Labor Secretary Marcia Hultman; Bren’s supervisor; the governor’s general counsel; and, participating by telephone, Noem’s chief of staff and a lawyer from the state’s Department of Labor and Regulation. However, Bren did confirm that at the meeting she was presented with a letter from Peters’ supervisor, Kristine Juelfs, who wrote that she disagreed with the denial and charged that Peters had run up against an “inefficient process.” “In the past week I was notified that my trainee, State Registered Appraiser Kassidy Peters, was denied upgrade of her license to State Certified Residential Appraiser,” Juelfs wrote. One day earlier, Hultman had called Bren to discuss “concerns about the Appraiser Certification Program,” according to Bren’s age discrimination complaint. When asked about Bren, Hultman declined to discuss “the specifics of personnel decisions.” Mark Miller, the governor’s current general counsel, said in a statement, “Neither party admitted fault, and no agency affirmed her claim.