The 9th and final week of the main run of the 2022 Legislative Session ended on Thursday, March 10th. The final week is very different than most of the other weeks during the session in that policy legislators, like myself, are done with having committee responsibility as most policy bills have already passed or died. In a few cases, we do have conference committees to reconcile the differences in some bills if they were amended in one chamber or the other.
Sometimes bills die in these conference committees and sometimes the two chambers do work towards a solution. The majority of the work done during this final week is done by the legislators on the Joint Committee on Appropriations. This committee makes the final decisions on how your hard earned tax dollars will be spent, how much will be put towards education, Medicaid reimbursement, state employees, Board of Regents, etc.
Essentially they decide how all the appropriated money will be spend on all the ordinary expenses of the legislative, judicial and executive departments of the state, the current expenses of state institutions, interest on the public debt and for common schools. For those interested, we did provide a 6% increase to education, state employees and long term care providers. As just a point of reference, my first year in the Legislature, the General Budget for the State of South Dakota was around $4.5B and now, 6 years later, that number has grown to $5.7B.
The high school drama in the Capitol continued this week with Governor Noem reverting back to her teenage years as she referred to the House Appropriators as “corrupt” and further explained that it was “unpreceded” that a Constitutional Officer would have a closed door meeting with members of the Legislature.
However, the next day, she proceeded to have a closed door meeting with members of Leadership from the House and the Senate to work out details on her authority to spend new Federal dollars in the State when the Legislature is not is session.
The Governor’s narcissistic behavior this year has really grown old and the House and Senate finally came together this past week to work on some guidelines to reign in her unfettered spending behaviors. She obviously didn’t want these laws in place, so she reverted to name-calling.
At the present time, there have been many pieces of legislation passed this year by both the House and the Senate that the Governor has not yet signed. We will find out how many good Conservative bills the Governor vetoes due to her vindictive behavior. I will provide an update to you all after Veto Day which is set for March 28th.
Update on the Palisades State Park Road: Last week’s update stated that Senator Lee Schoenbeck of Watertown was going to do his best to kill the funding bill for the Palisades State Park road. However, instead of him just killing it immediately in the Senate chambers, he decided to play games with it. After the bill passed through the Senate Appropriations committee it was amended to the exact about of dollars needed; $665,440 of General Fund dollars, $200,000 from the GF&P and $100,000 from the Palisades Township.
Everyone was in agreement that these amounts from these three sources would fund the project. When the bill was presented to the full Senate, Senator Schoenbeck decided to amended the $665,440 back down to $1. This is a strategy used to send the legislation to a conference committee. This conference committee met on Wednesday, March 9th and the Senators that Schoenbeck sent were not interested in actually negotiating the funding of our road in good faith. They wanted to put two funding projects (the Palisades Road project and a Gun Range in Meade County) into the same bill (HB 1166) and ensure both projects were passed by the House of Representative.
Basically, they were playing politics with my bill and holding it hostage to get what they wanted. In doing so, they were forcing Rep. Jon Hansen, Sen. Marsha Symens and myself to vote for an Unconstitutional bill because we Article XII, Section 2 states that all appropriations shall be separate bills and shall each embrace only one object. Since these minion Senators sent by Schoenbeck were unable to comprehend the SD Constitution, we had to ultimately kill HB 1166.
However, on Thursday, March 10th, I had some close friends and allies in the House Appropriations committee who fought hard to get our funding back into SB 60 which is the FY 21 Supplemental Bill. They were able to find the one-time funding dollars and put them into this bill with the understanding that they would go towards the Palisades Road project. So, it appears that we have the dollars!!!
However, there is still a chance the Governor Kristi Noem could perform a line item veto of this project and take away this funding. So for now, we will need to hope and pray that doesn’t happen, and watch diligently to see what she does. Sometime in the next month or so, I will attend a City Council meeting or Township meeting in Garretson and provide additional detail because it was really quite the ride this past week!
If your interested in any of our committees, chambers or any proposed legislation from this year, you can always visitwww.sdlegislature.gov as this is the Legislature’s home page where you can find information about anything during session. On the front page, you will find a large icon that says “2022 Bills”. Click that to find all the legislation that was proposed this year. Additionally, you can go back and listen to all of the committees and/or floor sessions by clicking on the South Dakota Public Broadcasting icon inside of the details for each bill. You can also view the meeting minutes and any other pertinent information provided to the committees.
Finally, if you have any questions about how to find information about a bill or committee, or any questions at all about session please contact me. I can be reached most anytime by phone at 605-999-2948 and by email at . If you do call and I’m unable to answer, try sending me a text and I will contact you back later. Additionally, I am running for re-election in District 25, so if you like to get involved in helping my campaign or would like to donate, please contact me and I’ll provide you with those details. I may skip a couple weeks for an update until veto day is over, but please contact me directly if you have questions.
Have a great week and God Bless!
-Rep. Tom Pischke
