South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem got a lesson on why reforming government is so difficult: elected officials are tourists, bureaucrats are residents.

Governor Noem has been a stalwart in the battle to limit “gender-affirming care” to adults, leading a fight to make it illegal to sterilize and mutilate children as a treatment for gender dysphoria. She has been clear and consistent on the matter, and one would think that when an elected leader sets policy her employees would get in line. Most of us understand that when the boss sets a goal, the employees would get in line.

Silly us.

Governor Noem was forced to fire her health secretary after discovering that Joan Adam had contracted with a group that promoted transgender ideology and that the state was funding, through that group, a “gender summit.”

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL: South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem announced the retirement of her state health secretary, Joan Adam, days after the governor discovered that the state Health Department had contracted with a transgender activist group that will host a “gender summit” next month.

Noem announced Adam’s retirement Monday morning, four days after the Republican governor condemned the transgender health summit.

“Gov. Kristi Noem is reviewing all Department of Health contracts and immediately terminated a contract with The Transformation Project,” Ian Fury, Noem’s chief of communications, told The Daily Signal on Friday. “The contract was signed without Gov. Noem’s prior knowledge or approval.”

“Retirement,” in this case, means “don’t let the door hit your ass on the way out.”

It is merely a coincidence that this particular case involves the promotion of gender ideology; what matters is that this is a model for how government actually works most of the time.

Elected officials are temporary, while bureaucrats are permanent and nearly impossible to fire. In fact, Noem could force out her health secretary because she moved from being a bureaucrat to becoming a political appointee–when you reach the top, you need the governor’s support. But most people within a bureaucracy are nearly beyond the control of their “bosses.”

This contract almost certainly was negotiated in the bowels of government and only made its way to the secretary at the end of the process. She should have said no, obviously, but as a former bureaucrat her instincts were to satisfy her friends.

In small states like South Dakota this is probably less of a problem than most–the state is tiny, with a tiny government–but obviously the government is out of control even there. Imagine walking into the governor’s office in a state 5, 10, 20, or 30 times the size. The bureaucracy is enormous, you can’t fire a single person, and there are tens of thousands of contracts that are managed.

State governments are feudal in this regard–the person at the top has power, but far less than you think. Each bureaucrat is a lord over their own realm, and until you get to the bottom the relationships are complex and ever-changing. Once you start reading up on feudalism the power structures become dizzyingly complex.

Civil service rules, government unions, the ability to bury inconvenient facts in reams of paperwork all make reforming government an extremely difficult task. The sheer inertia and complexity can stymie almost any reform. Ask Donald Trump what it was like dealing with the federal bureaucracy. He fought the law and the law won.

So it doesn’t surprise me that in a Deep Red state with an activist conservative government the health secretary can still funnel money to something the governor strongly opposes. In fact, what surprises me is that she was found out.

That only happened due to the good journalistic work done by my friends at Alpha News, a Minnesota-based news outfit. They are doing the work that mainstream journalists used to do.

If you, as I, believe that the MSM has become an ideological hothouse for Left-wing ideas, put Alpha News into your bookmarks.

Noem’s experience is a good reminder that voting in the right people is only the first step. Citizens need to keep the heat on, particularly with state legislators. A governor is only one person, and her appointees are few. The legislature controls the purse strings and can in many cases more easily bully the bureaucrats, or in the obverse empower them to ignore their bosses by refusing to hold them accountable.

Unfortunately government won’t leave us alone anymore, so the best we can do is not leave it alone either.