Kristi Noem

Highlights of the 7th week of the 2008 session include renewable energy, liquor license legislation, and K-12 and tech school funding. Putting a damper on the legislature’s ability to accomplish much is the absence of available funding. It looks to be a tight budget and I expect much of the bills that included additional funds to be killed in the final week of session. We are experiencing a drop in revenue into the state, mostly due to lower sales tax income. We received some numbers on Wednesday that confirmed the reports. This will result in a tightening of the state’s belt. If we are able to offer more to K-12 education and state employee’s salaries than the index factor, we should consider that a positive accomplishment, considering the projections we are getting. I expect the funding to remain at the 2.5% the Governor recommended in his budget in December. Fiscal responsibility is our priority and I believe it is better to conserve now, rather than cut programs in the future. I expect this to impact the changes that have been recommended to revamp the funding of the technical schools in the state. There is wide spread support for the changes; however it will be something we cannot accomplish with out extra funds to spend. House Bill 1016 is the vehicle that would establish the new system for that funding.

In Commerce committee we’ve heard some more liquor license legislation. Senate Bill 126 made it on the agenda on Friday and was passed out to the House floor. I spoke and voted against the bill in committee. It is a wide sweeping change to how we distribute liquor licenses in the state. The bill removes all the caps on liquor licenses, which are capped by population numbers now, and allows the municipalities to sell as many as they deem necessary. The proponents of the bill say it is a necessary tool to achieve economic development in this state. If we are starting to place our economic hopes on the proliferation of alcohol in this state, then we truly we have no hope left. The details of the bill allow cities to sell additional licenses at the same price as the last one that was sold. It makes them available to any business that has no more than 50% of its gross profits from alcohol, and requires that any business that holds a license must provide financial information to the city stating what they bought their license for, regardless if that information is going to be used or not. It has no restricted hours for sale as well. Basically what this bill does is allow additional licenses to be available in every town and city in South Dakota, does not set a cap on how many can be sold, requires business owners to turn over financial information even though it will not be used for any purpose, and make the licenses available to all kinds of businesses, not just restaurants. If we truly need additional liquor licenses in the state to get Ruby Tuesday’s and Applebee’s franchises to move in for economic development, why are we making such broad sweeping changes? We’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater if this bill passes and we won’t be able to get it back. Once those licenses are issued, we know from past history, the state won’t be recalling them. We need to remember that alcohol is at best a controlled substance…a drug. At its worst, it can ruin people’s lives. Do we truly want hard liquor, and the ability to sell it, spread abundantly throughout the state? With more establishments selling hard alcohol, we will see our laws regarding alcohol harder to enforce. We will have more alcohol sold to kids under age and it will be a bigger job for our law enforcement to oversee. I believe it is a copout to say we need this bill to promote economic development in our state. It will come to the House floor on Tuesday and I will be speaking against it.

I want to take a moment to promote TAR days. It is an event for Teen Age Republicans that will take place in Pierre on March 28 and 29th. It is a mock legislative session and weekend retreat held each spring for teenagers 13 and up. The cost is only $25 per person and I have registration forms available. Kids will meet teens from across the state and debate legislation on the floor of the state House of Representatives and Senate. If you are interested in politics, government, or making a difference, TAR days is for you. It is open to all students regardless of political affiliation.

Well, this last week will be interesting. I can’t tell you all how much I appreciate the phone calls and emails. The input is extremely valuable to me. We may not come to the same conclusion on an issue, but I assure you we’ll have scintillating conversation. I will have my daughter Kassidy (age 13) and niece Isabel (age 11) with me the first 3 days of the week, so I’ll keep you updated as to the experiences they have.

Alvin Kangas, HD Electric board member and Hamlin Co. weed board member, gave bobsled rides this weekend on the land his family homesteaded in Hamlin Co. over 100 years ago. The land is currently owned and operated by Al and Sharon Noem of Lake Norden, who are also Rep. Noem’s in-laws. Thank you Alvin, for sharing the family heritage and memories.

As you start to read this article, we are beginning our second to the last week of session. We did complete crossover day last week, but had to suspend the rules to do so. On crossover day, all the bills have to leave their House of origin and “crossover” to the other. The House of Representatives did not get their calendar completed, and suspended the rules to allow one more day to get the job done. The House has an unusally large number of bills this year and a shorter session to get the original hearings for the bills over. An little fact you may find interesting is that members try to wear black on crossover day in memory of all the legislation that has met its demise over the previous weeks. And believe me, some of it deserved to die.

We had Valentine’s Day last week as well and my Valentine made the trip out to visit me. Bryon hadn’t been to Pierre since I was sworn in, so it was special to have him there. He came out after work, surprised me with supper and headed back. It was a quick trip, but with kids at home and calves hitting the ground, he just couldn’t stay longer. I will say that if it was up to him, we wouldn’t be calving right now. It’s not very smart for me to buy cattle that are calving in February and then proceed to be gone the entire month….or is it?

I wanted to write a little bit about our crackerbarrels we had over the weekend. We had one in Lake Norden at the Bull Pen Saturday morning at 10. I want to thank Alvin Kangas for lining it all up and Wendy for allowing us to meet in her place of business. We had great attendance and good conversation. Topics included allowing guns on campus, property taxes, illegals in the state, funding for conservation, education, liquor licenses, smoking bans and eminenent domain. I will try to pick a topic or two this week that I haven’t covered before.

I wanted to visit with you regarding the proposed smoking ban that was working its way through the legislature this year. You may have heard that there was an “impromptu” meeting of the state affairs committee on the House side for the sole purpose of putting forward legislation, HB 1237 sponsored by Rep. Joni Cutler, which would ban smoking in public areas statewide. The members of that committee were told that it was something they could do according to House rules. They passed the bill out of committee, where it was to continue on to the House floor. Later it was deemed that this was not correct procedure and the bill was thrown out. It never did make it to the floor. However, it did stir up public interest and I received many postcards and emails supporting the ban. I would not have supported the legislation. I am not a smoker and never have been. We have had very little of it in our family as I was growing up. However, I do believe that business owners already have the option of making their place of business smoke free. We have the option to visit their place of business or not. If I choose to go to a restaurant where there is smoking, that is my choice. If enough people object to the smoking and it starts to hurt business, I’m sure many business owners would ban the practice as well. That business owner has the right to determine if they want to allow smoking and I have to right to determine if I want to go there or not. I don’t believe the government has any place in that discussion. What many of us have deemed as a “bad habit” is not looked at the same by others. We are a country of freedoms and yet we continually see the drive by others to legislate all of our freedoms away. Government has a place in our lives, but it should be small, unobtrusive, and not dictate every portion of it. Now, we already have many regulations set in law that protect areas where we have no choice but to go and many times with small children, including clinics, office buildings etc. But when we take it to a statewide level, we remove many property owners’ rights along with it. My question for those who would support the statewide ban would be, “What’s next?” What if they decide eating French fries is a bad habit? Diet Coke? It’s possible. Diet Coke has products within it that are known carcinogens so the same argument could be made. I have found people are usually in support of bans, as long as it isn’t something they participate in. If you study the bills proposed each year, you will find many that provide for overregulation of our society. Something to keep in mind as we go forward is that we shouldn’t ask government to do something for us that we have the ability to do on our own.

We also had a crackerbarrel in De Smet at 2 pm on Saturday at the Wards store. The cookies were out of this world! I wish I would have filled my pockets. We had great debate, heated at times, on gun control, education, and the Opportunity scholarships. We had great attendance there as well.

I wanted to cover two more bills that passed the House floor this week that you may be interested in. HB 1263 allowed 10 year olds to hunt in South Dakota. Current law sets the minimum hunting age at 12, with an exception for landowner’s children who are allowed to hunt at age 10. This bill requires a parent or guardian to accompany the child as a mentor. The adult is not allowed to carry a gun, must stay within arms reach of the child and hunt in a group no larger than 6 people. The mentor must not have more than one child with them at a time. Gun safety courses have to be completed by the mentor before they can take the 10 year old hunting. I voted against this bill last year but did change my vote this session. I liked the extra controls put in place, the supervision requirement, and the limited group size. I will say I struggled with the discrepancy between landowner’s children and other children with in the state and how they were being treated as far as eligibility for hunting rights. It is always up to parents to decide if their children are ready for hunting. All kids are different and their development should be taken into account before the decision is made to get them started in hunting.

SB 174 is aimed at speeding up state hearings on the Dakota, Minnesota, and Eastern Railroad’s application to acquire land by condemnation for its planned expansion project. The DM&E wants to spend $6 billion to rebuild 600 miles of existing track across South Dakota and Minnesota and add 260 miles of new track around the southern end of the Black Hills to reach coal mines in Wyoming. It would then haul coal eastward to power plants. The railroad applied more than a year ago for state permission to use eminent domain to acquire right of way from ranchers unwilling to sell. The bill will speed up a state hearing on the request. The Senate approved the bill on a 20-13 vote. It will be coming to the House.

We also have a resolution coming forward that would make each legislative session 40 days long. We now have a 40 day session and a 35 day session on alternating years. The state Constitution requires this format and to make the change there would need to be a vote of the people of South Dakota.

I want to thank Alvin Kangas for the bobsled rides on Sunday. We got to talking at the crackerbarrel in Lake Norden on Saturday about the fact that his family had homesteaded Al and Sharon Noem’s farm. He said he had always wanted to take his team of horses and ride along the property. Since Al and Sharon are my in-laws and I happen to love horses, I invited myself along. We had a great family gathering, enjoyed the warm weather, and sampled hand churned homemade ice cream. Well, that’s if you can call 3 bowls full “sampling.” I brought my mother along and as we were leaving she said to Alvin, “This is the best day I’ve had in a long time. Thank you.” I agree Alvin. Thanks for sharing the heritage with us and making memories for us all.

Have a great week everybody.

Sara Holstrom, Rep. Noem, and Amanda Wegner take time out for a photo on the marble staircase in the State Capital. The two girls are from the Willow Lake area and served the two first weeks of the session.

This week was one of variety on the House floor. We saw bills ranging from education to liquor licenses. I had my son Booker, age 5, with me on Monday and Tuesday and I don’t think Pierre will ever be the same. He was a trooper on Monday; sitting through a 3 hour commerce committee meeting and then getting only a 15 minute break before heading off to caucus and session. His praises were heard on the House floor as members declared their admiration for his ability to sit and be quiet. We could all learn something from his example that day. However, I believe all the kind words went to his head as he was sure wound up the next day. He had made a couple of friends by that time and I rarely saw him. I passed him occasionally in the halls on his way to another exciting adventure in the State Capital. He asked if he could stay for 10 days to which I replied, “Booker, even I don’t want to stay 10 days!” He made many great memories and I am grateful he had the opportunity.

Kennedy, age 10, came out and spent Wednesday and Thursday with me. What an experience to have her sit beside me while we debated bills on the House floor. She was inquisitive and often lobbied mom to vote how she thought I should. She was quite persuasive at times and I see a bright future for her in debate. She must take after her father. As House Bill 1289 came to the House floor, she asked what it was about. I informed her that it was the bill that would deny schools to receive payment for declining enrollment unless they had a decline of 10 students or 5% of enrollment. I summed it up by saying, “It takes money away from some of the schools.” Aghast, she looked at me and said, “Why? The school lunch is bad enough already!”

(Disclaimer: Kennedy’s very concerned about the feelings of her school cooks and she wishes you to know that she very much enjoys their cooking, just not some of the choices.)

The above bill was killed on the House floor.  Moving on to legislation that was addressed this week, we also saw a bill that would have required all our property tax notifications to display all the breakdowns of what the taxes represent. Therefore, each levy would be displayed such as how much is due for the county, township, school, opt out etc. I saw this as a taxpayer friendly bill, as it would give you information that explains exactly what your dollars are helping to pay for. However, our counties all operate with different types of software and actually implementing the law would have been costly and difficult to manage for counties. An amendment was added that delayed implementation, but as strapped as our counties are right now, I just couldn’t justify the action at this time.

In Tax committee on Thursday we saw one bill. House Bill 1307 would have created new classes of property for taxation purposes. The classes included cropland, noncropland, recreational, and speculation. During committee the sponsor of the bill, Rep. Hal Wick, proposed an amendment that changed the bill from becoming law to a summer study. The bill was passed out of committee and will hit the House floor next week. This is a topic that comes up often in Pierre, but I was glad to see the bill change. The motivation behind the legislation is to tax people more for land that they were using for hunting purposes or holding for investment. I believe landowners or farmers who were truly making a living farming the land could have gotten caught up in higher tax rates because of this bill if they had an occasional paying hunter or had land located in an area affected by urban sprawl. It could have possibly taxed them off their land, when their intention was to continue farming it. After visiting with the sponsor, he indicated that he was thinking of adding an owner/occupied clause that could have addressed my concern. I don’t expect the bill to pass the House floor as the usual way for summer studies to be determined is for the request to be submitted to the Executive Committee. The Committee will then consider all the requests and priorities of the legislators before making a selection. On Wednesday, a similar bill by Rep. Shantel Krebs, would have studied the state’s transportation needs, died for this very reason. As a member of the Executive Committee, I can assure you that we survey all legislators at the end of the session and see what their top priorities are for summer studies. We then compile the information, make the selection and appoint members. I expect transportation needs and classes of property to be among the top requests.

I pitched my minimum teacher’s salary bill, House Bill1268, to the House Education Committee on Thursday. The bill would establish a statewide minimum teacher’s salary at $30,000, with salary schedules to continue to be determined by the local school districts. It allows the districts 5 years to accomplish this task and use TCAP dollars to do so. There is strong support to add more money into the TCAP program, which provides $4 of state aid to every $1 of local dollars the district spends. It provides for the state and local school districts to partner in impacting teacher’s salaries. There was a much more comprehensive plan also proposed by Rep. Buckingham, House Bill 1262, that would set the entire salary schedule for the districts, repeal tenure, and set out qualifiers for the teachers to advance in pay. It is something I don’t expect the districts to look favorably upon, as it is a big change from what they are currently doing, takes away all local control, and provides no funding. Both bills were deferred until the next meeting date.

Well, I’ve run on too long and better let you go. Have a great week!

I want to start off this week’s column by apologizing for the lateness of this article. Not a positive note to kick off the update, but I wanted to hold off on turning it in so I could include the information that was discussed at our two crackerbarrels that were held this weekend. It’s possible that we spend most of our time discussing what seems to stick out to us after a week in Pierre or what we’ve been working on, when perhaps you’re truly looking for information on a topic we may not even touch on. Our first crackerbarrel was in Huron at 10:00 am at the Municipal Building. Education and the liquor license changes that are proposed in this year’s session appeared to be priorities. Senate Bill 126 is a controversial bill that will allow cities and counties to issue more liquor licenses. In the proposal, the city would have reimbursed license holders for the market value of their licenses. The new version would require holders to declare the value of their license. Interested buyers would be required to try to purchase a current license from a holder before a new one would be issued. The issue is headed back to committee on Wednesday hoping the two sides of the issue can find a compromise they agree on.

 Senate Bill 172 would appropriate money to the Department of Public Safety to fund the South Dakota Highway Patrol. This bill was heard in Senate Judiciary and was amended to read $2,000,000 rather than $1. It will now be heard in Senate Appropriations.
 We have a bill before us that would regulate the right to carry a fire arm on the campuses of public institutions of higher education. This passed unanimously out of State Affairs Committee on Wednesday. We’ve had a lot of feedback on this issue from people within and outside of the state.  Overwhelmingly, residents of South Dakota wish to have the right to carry firearms on these campuses. The opinions of those from out of state appear to be those from activist groups that would like gun control in almost every area of our lives. I’m proud of the people of South Dakota who recognize the importance of hunting as a pastime to pass on to the future generation and the right to bear arms.  Also, I believe we are smart enough to realize that criminals don’t follow the rules anyways.
House Bills 1005 and 1006 passed the House floor on Thursday. House Bill 1005 revises certain provisions concerning the assessment of real property, to assess agricultural land based on its agricultural income value, to create an implementation and oversight advisory task force, to repeal certain provisions regarding the assessment of property, and to repeal the nonagricultural acreage classification. This bill was amended in House State Affairs and was passed out of the committee on an 8-4 vote.  The vote on the House floor was 45-22 in favor of the bill. This bill was discussed at length at the Clark crackerbarrel. There were a few area residents who had some concerns about the impact of the legislation and I feel we had good discussion.  This is a major change in state policy and it’s not hard to believe we have some dissention in the ranks. However, as one who has spent the past 2 years studying this issue in session and on the Property Tax Summer Study, I believe it is the right change to make to a broken system. House Bill 1006 is the companion bill that holds the school districts harmless in counties where assessments would drop and does the same for taxpayers in counties where assessments would rise. The bills will now move to the Senate side and I will follow its progress. Please feel free to contact me regarding any questions you may have.
I have the privilege to have my son Booker with me this week on Monday and Tuesday and my daughter Kennedy will join me on Wednesday and Thursday. I am anticipating that they will have an educational experience. Booker was shocked to see desks and chairs in the House chambers when he arrived on Monday morning as he was told all weekend he would sit by mom on the House “floor”. It was a little tough explaining the thought process to a 5 year old. Have a great week.