Kristi Noem

The 82^nd legislative session is drawing to a close.  We are in the last days and to be quite frank…it’s crunch time.  There is a sense of urgency that has taken hold of us, as we closely watch those bills near and dear to us and hope the ones we don’t like go down for the last time.  Committees are pushing the final handful of bills through and debate on the floor is lengthening. 

House Bill 1082 went over to the Senate last week with a close vote of 37-33.  This bill held most of the task force recommendations for education including setting a minimum district size of 130 students, consolidation incentives, enrollment calculations, small school factor, fund balances, sparcity and other revenue.  I did not support the bill on the floor and expect it to undergo many changes in the Senate.  District 6 schools would not fare well under this bill and I look forward to seeing the contents revised.  Education funding is addressed in HB 1171.  It includes 14 million new dollars for education and does include dollars for the ESA’s, which was a concern for many of you who contacted me regarding the importance of the work that they do for our teachers and students. 

The legislature has also agreed on some new programs to deal with the meth problem in our state.  I was not aware of all the ramifications of this drug until I met several people who have had family members who became addicts.  They have told me stories of children and siblings who were overachieving active members of society who tried the drug on a whim when it was so readily available in even the smallest of towns in South Dakota.  They went from thriving human beings to instantly addicted people who could do or think of nothing else except getting their next hit.  I was told that one could buy enough meth to stay high for a whole week for $25….We have never had a drug in our history that was so readily available, so cheap, and gave such a high that people became addicted immediately.  Three bills were passed on the House floor that would assist our state with dealing with these addicts.  The first is a pilot drug court for those who want to help themselves in the Unified Judicial System.  These people would get intensive rehab and be held accountable by the courts and must be nonviolent offenders.  Another program was addressed through two bills that would provide funding for meth rehabilitation at the women’s prison in Pierre.  The majority of meth addicts are females in our state. 

The Governor’s bill that would provide HPV vaccines for young girls in the state free of charge moved ahead.  It passed the House floor without my support.  Participation is voluntary for girls 11-19 and the approximate cost would be around $300 per girl for a series of three shots.  This is a new vaccine and we are not fully aware of all the side affects at this time.  Also, the vaccine only covers 4 strains of the virus that causes cervical cancer, while there are many more that the vaccine does not address.  The state has 7.5 million dollars of federal money that will be used to help cover the cost of the program.  The state will invest approximately 1.3 million.  It is my belief that this vaccine may offer a false sense of security and that our dollars could be spent elsewhere to greater effect for the health of a greater number of South Dakotans.  Normally, vaccines that are mandated by the state are in response to epidemic situations.  This is a new type of vaccine that does not fit the same criteria as the ones currently required.

The Governor’s minimum wage bill passed the Senate last week and will be in the House State Affairs this week.  Regardless of what legislation we pass, I believe we will see a federal law change in this area. 

We are still hearing property tax bills in tax committee.  By the time you read this article, we should have finished the committee process and may or may not have any bills to act on, on the House floor.  I will keep you updated. 

We had a great cracker-barrel in DeSmet on Saturday.  Quite a few people came despite the weather to visit with Rep. Paul Nelson and me.  We had extensive conversation regarding education, property taxes, and many more topics of importance.  Thank you for coming.  I enjoyed the day.

I would like to encourage all of you to follow those bills you are watching closely during this last week and a half.  There will be many amendments and changes made.  A reliable source for you to go to, to get information on how we voted is the South Dakota Legislative Research Councils web site.  The address is http://legis.state.sd.us.  Sometimes legislators positions on issues are not accurately reflected on other sites or media pieces.  Of course, the best bet is just to call me and ask how I voted and why.  I would love to share that information with you.

I am blessed to serve you in Pierre.  I consider it an honor and take my duty very seriously.  Thank you for the opportunity and have a great week.

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Our week was cut short a little last week with the threat of some impending weather.  Committee meetings and session were cancelled on Friday so legislators, lobbyists and visitors could get home before the weather hit.  This complicated things a bit, as Friday was to be crossover day, the day when all bills must leave their house of origin, and Monday was Presidents day.  Crossover day was held this Tuesday and now we’ve added a day to the end of the legislative session. 

Topics of last week had a sense of urgency to them.  Some of the more debated topics hit the floor and the newspapers.  The Senate approved the Governor’s minimum wage bill and will go to the House State Affairs committee.  The bill would raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour in increments by July 1, 2009.  House Bill 1048 passed the House of Representatives with a 47-23 vote.  This is the bill that encompasses the campaign finance reforms proposed by the Secretary of State Chris Nelson.

I have had some phone calls regarding Senate Bill 199.  This bill would make it illegal to drop out of school in South Dakota until a student turns 18.  This bill was brought by the Governor and is a change from the current law which state that a student must remain in school until the age of 16.  From the feedback I have received, many people in the area would like to see the statute remain the way it is.  This bill will first go to committee and then come to the House floor.

House Bill 1171 is a comprehensive education bill that has many areas covered in it.  It combines several issues regarding education, including the task force bill, technical education money for high schools, Educational Service Agencies funding and the Teacher Pay Enhancement Program.  The TPEP was included in the Governor’s budget and it proposed $4 million to be used to increase teacher’s pay that would include matching funds with the school district.  The House is proposing a change to this bill which would raise the match from $2 from the state to $1 from the district to $4 from the state to every $1 from the district.  This bill passed the House State Affairs committee on Wednesday.   

The State Fair funding came through the House with a vote of 64-4.  The amount of funding to go towards the Fair is $750,000 and the bill will now go over to the Senate Appropriations committee.  This money was also included in the Governor’s budget.  Legislators were pleasantly surprised to see how much effort and actual dollars the city of Huron invested in the Fair each year.  The city of Huron spends approximately $200,000 to help support the Fair on an annual basis.

The bills that address property taxes are making their way through the Senate and are starting to show up in the House Tax Committee.  We’ve seen some familiar faces come to give testimony on different bills, and it has been much appreciated.  The more input we have on what the actual local impact will be, will only help give guidance to the committee and legislators.  It is invaluable to have those citizens there and a part of the process.  It takes time and effort for them to come and I really want to thank them for taking the time.

These last few weeks will go by fast as we consider the bills still standing.  As always, please call with any questions and have a great week.�

I don’t know if it’s because I’m a farmer or a mother, but I feel the need to spend some time sharing with you this week a little bit of “practical” advice that you can put to use today if you would like.  I’ve found that most of the people I mention this to; don’t realize that they can track all activities in Pierre via the internet.  Just go to http://legis.state.sd.us and there you can find agendas for committees, calendars for the two chambers, and all the bills in their updated form.  There is also audio testimony archived from committee meetings.  It is so helpful for everyone who is curious about that special bill they are following or someone who is generally intrigued by the entire process.  You will also find biographies on all the legislators and be able to contact them through the site as well.  Hope you take some time to check into it.  It really is a great tool and simple to use. 

I’m writing this a little later than usual this week, which has an added benefit that I can cover a little bit of what we talked about last Saturday in Lake Norden at the crackerbarrel.  The Corner Café was full and we had great discussion, including some on SB 173, which I covered last week in my column.  This is the bill that changes the way we assess property taxes on ag land and throws out the 150% rule.  I had some more information this week, including the effects of repealing the 150% rule and doing nothing else to control the assessment growth.  If such a scenario came to pass, the assessments would rise in Kingsbury County by 58% and Clark County by 29% with less effect occurring in other District 6 counties.  This is a strong indicator that we need to look for avenues to keep this growth at check.  This bill will see some major changes.

Other topics of high interest are the education bills that are being proposed.  None of the major bill have made progress, however I am almost certain at this point that we will see some sort of minimum school district size made mandatory.  I feel this number will be less than 200, but we’ll keep working to make sure it is a number that works for rural areas.  The fund caps look to be changing, as does the small school factor.  I don’t believe those dollars will go away, but there will be changes that will make them more of a small school adjustment than factor.  Regardless of how you look at it, we are in for some good debate in the next couple of weeks on education.

House Bill 1229 was proposed last week that would have reduced the tax on cigarettes and tobacco products.  It would have reversed the will of the people as expressed in November.  This bill was brought by Sen. Gary Moore and died in committee.  There is legislation also filed that will send the original first $5 million to the tobacco prevention fund in South Dakota, and then use $9 million each, for property tax reduction, education enhancement, and healthcare programs.  This is exactly what the people asked for in the last election and hopefully we will see it come to pass.

The abortion ban bill, HB 1293, was heard in House State Affairs committee Monday morning. This bill was amended into a joint resolution format and may be put on the ballot in 2008.  This bill contains exemptions for rape, incest, and the health of the mother. 

It looks like the governance issue as it relates to Technical Institutes in narrowing.  Senate Bill 95, which would establish a 9 member State Board of Technical Institutes to oversee the state’s tech schools, passed the Senate 31-3.  Currently these schools are operated by local school districts.  Another measure that would put these tech schools under the Board of Regents, SB 178, was killed in committee.  Our local tech school in Watertown is in favor of SB 95.

Friday, February 16^th is crossover day.  This is the day that all bills must cross over from their house of origin to the other house.  I hear it tends to be a long day and most legislators dress in all black to honor the occasion.  My daughters will be with me this week in Pierre, so I’m sure they will appreciate the long day.  I’ll have to remind them it’s better than picking rock or cleaning barn!  Hope you all have a great week.  If you have any questions or comments email me at Rep.Noem@state.sd.us or call at 881-2526.

It was an eventful week in Pierre as many bills that have been talked above over the past several weeks and months came to fruition.  Legislators reached the deadline to file bills and we have a pretty good idea now what our bill load will be this session.  About 530 bills are on file and it looks to be an eventful year spent focusing on many of the same issues we’ve discussed before with some new topics thrown in as well.

I attended a meeting last Thursday that discussed some of the proposed changes to our campaign finance laws that are being addressed in House Bill 1048.  A few of the highlights include requiring campaign finance reports to be filed in the Secretary of States office two weeks before Election Day.  With this change, constituents will be able to access the information and use it to help them make decisions regarding whom to vote for. The intent of this change is to make the candidates and their treasurer’s more accountable to the public for ways in which they raise and spend money during the campaign.  Also, if a campaign finance report is filed late, there will be a $50 per day fee assessed to that campaign for every day it is late.  These funds will go into the state’s general fund.  Contribution limits have been raised for legislative and state wide races, along with a limit imposed on how much one person can donate to a political action committee.   Full disclosure of campaign contributions and expenditures is also a main focus of this bill.  It’s a pretty inclusive bill that seems to cover all the areas of concern that the voters expressed in our current campaign system.  Anything that can add some integrity and honesty to our political arena is a step in the right direction. 

In trying to cover a few areas that Paul or Brock may not, I’d like to fill you in on a few bills we saw in committee or on the floor this week.  There was a bill in taxation on Tuesday that I had a lot of interest in.  The District Conservationists brought us a bill that would increase the amount of funding for conservation and value added agriculture using certain unclaimed motor fuel tax refunds and to make it a continuous appropriation thereafter.  The intent of the original legislation developed years ago was that these unclaimed dollars would go back to the conservation fund, but because a percentage of 35% was set rather than using the actual formula, the majority of these funds were going into the Department of Transportations budget each year.  They were the main opponents to the bill as the dollars that would be diverted into conservation amount to approximately 1% of their yearly budget.  However, if we had followed the original statute, those dollars should have gone to conservation for the past 15 years.  These dollars are used in our local areas to give grants and help cost share practices that preserve and maintain our natural resources.  Without this funding, many of our local projects would not happen.  I supported the bill in committee and will on the floor of the House this week.

In commerce committee we discussed a bill that would require retailers to place all tobacco products behind a counter where it would be inaccessible to a customer or in a locked case.  The intention of the bill was to prevent underage persons from stealing the products from the stores.  An amendment to the bill gave an exemption to stores that sell mainly tobacco products and not much else.  I was a little conflicted on the bill.  I did not support the bill in committee as most of the information that I had indicated that almost all underage smokers aren’t stealing the cigarettes.  Either they are buying them from a store that doesn’t card them or an adult.  I also feel that retailers would not put products anywhere they could be easily stolen and expose themselves to losing that profit.  It is tough enough for them to stay in business in these rural areas without us mandating to them how their stores should be laid out and requiring them to purchase more locked cases and shelving.  I also felt that the amendment treated retailers unequally and didn’t clearly define who would be exempt and who would not.  Hopefully, the supporters of the bill will continue to work to determine the need for this legislation and address the concerns of the committee.  It makes more sense to me to enforce stiffer penalties on those who provide our children with these life threatening and illegal products.

I’ve taken up enough space for this week, but still didn’t get to property taxes, economic development issues, excise and sales tax bills, and more.  You may access every bill that is being considered at the Legislative Research Council’s website at http://legis.state.sd.us.  Please do.  There is such a wide range of issues; I just won’t be able to touch on them all each week.  As always I can be reached on my cell phone at 881-2526 or email at Rep.Noem@state.sd.us.   Our next crackerbarrel will be this Saturday at the Lake Norden café at 10 am.  Hope to see you there.