Kristi Noem

I would say this is a common phrase I have been hearing lately from those in political life and the real world. It seems to be fairly common this time of year when candidates are declaring which offices they are running or not running for. I could have heard it more this year as I contemplated which race I was going to enter. I debated a House and a Senate run, however decided to stay in the House race once again. I have a list of reasons why, too, if anyone is interested in the facts. In an interesting turn of events however, all the papers printed I was throwing my hat into the Senate ring….hmmmm….maybe they should have asked me…..

Anyways, it won’t be long until all the speculation, rumors, and gossip will be in the past and truth will stand alone. Keep the Secretary of State’s website handy. It could get interesting….

As you’ve probably heard in the news media already, the legislature has wrapped up its work for the 2008 session with the completion of veto day on March 17. The Governor vetoed 7 bills that needed to be dealt with by the bodies. I will cover them here for you and try to address some of my concerns.

The first bill is HB 1016, which created a new formula for distributing state funding to the four tech schools. The Governor vetoed the bill because of a flaw that occurred in the drafting of an amendment that was added in the legislative process. I agreed with the Governor’s concerns, as did the bill’s sponsors, and voted to sustain the veto. This will continue to be a hot topic in the legislature until we firm up reliable funding for the tech schools in the state.

HB 1233 is a bill that would have required state government to post a variety of financial information on a website for ready access by taxpayers. I believe the legislation was cleaned up during the session and resulted in better accountability and opportunity for taxpayers to see how their tax dollars are spent. The Governor vetoed the bill based on the opinion that he felt there would be a large cost to the state and it was not feasible to gather the information adequately. These were all concerns that could have been addressed and analyzed before the dollars were spent and a framework could have been started and put in place to get the information out to South Dakotans. The House voted to override the veto; however the Senate sustained the veto and the bill died. I voted to keep the bill.

HB 1242 was a bill that would have required the Board of Regents to participate in development of a program and policy for school districts to use for children who are deaf and hard of hearing. The bill died on the House floor for a couple of reasons. There were some language errors that would have eliminated many students from qualifying. Also, it placed the state in jeopardy of losing federal funding that goes to our local school districts. At this critical time of tight school budgets across the state, I could not justify placing more funding at risk. I believe the issue at hand is a personnel issue at the School for the Deaf in Sioux Falls and there are other avenues we can pursue. I have specifically asked to participate in those discussions to resolve those issues. I voted to sustain the veto and maintained my no vote that I placed during the session.

HB 1258 was legislation that dealt with gift certificates and placing expiration notices on the cards. I voted against the bill originally and voted to sustain the Governor’s veto as well. This bill places burden on the retailers, not the original distributors of the cards. It also inadvertently allows the distributors more opportunity for abuse than is currently in place. Also, I believe there is an element of personal responsibility here. We all can call the businesses to find out if the gift cards expire and I feel this treads closely to government solving problems for the individuals, when there is an opportunity for those individuals to do so for themselves.

HB 1269 created a new combination license for beer and South Dakota produced wine sales. I originally voted for the bill, but switched my vote to sustain the Governor’s veto when I became aware of a possible violation of Commerce laws. I do not make it a practice to establish legislation that I know violates other laws in place. However, not enough legislators agreed with me and the bill became law by overriding the Governor’s veto.

SB 129 died on the Senate floor by sustaining the Governor’s veto. This bill attempted to correct some problems with health insurance, but could have possibly left some South Dakotan’s without coverage.

The final veto was a line item veto in SB 203 that was sustained as well on the Senate floor. The items vetoed attempted to prevent monies from being diverted to other areas from public schools and special education in public schools. A typographical error prompted the veto and the Senate’s decision to sustain.

One would look at the day as a successful one for the Governor, however, I believe the questions he had were valid and a few of them were in concert with my earlier concerns. Also, I believe it was an example of our great process at work and I believe the bills that were vetoed did have some flaws and the legislature agreed to was irresponsible to pass flawed legislation.

Thank you for reading these weekly updates throughout the session. I enjoyed your comments and feedback. Campaign season will kick off again soon and I look forward to seeing you at all the area events. I will continue to serve on the Executive Board, with our first meeting starting in April. I have asked to be placed on the property tax implementation task force as well as the education one. It will be a busy summer, but one where we can get a lot accomplished. I’d love to talk with you all soon.

Rep. Noem announced today that she will seek reelection this fall for her current House seat. She is ending her first term and currently serves on the Executive Board of the Legislature and on the Commerce and Tax committees. Noem is a retired farmer and hunting lodge owner. She is currently ranching and working in public relations and children’s ministry.

The last week of session flew by and yet drug on and on and on…. We finished up committee hearings on some of the last issues to be discussed and started work on the items that had been talked about, worked on, and visited during session, yet were in disagreement on. Overshadowing the week’s conversations were the dismal revenue numbers we had to work with. The state is dealing with lesser revenue’s than anticipated due to a couple of factors. First we have a general slowdown in the economy nationwide. We are feeling the effects of that here at home in South Dakota and people are spending less, which generates less sales tax revenue for the state. A positive is the fact that we are an agriculturally strong state and the farm industry had a good year. But when you couple that with the fact that most farmers are paying down debt or trying to purchase machinery, and most of the purchases have been delayed because of delivery dates far off into the future, it results in less sales tax and therefore explains why we don’t see a bump in our numbers immediately from the strong ag prices. I do expect South Dakota to rebound much quicker than the rest of the nation and our revenue numbers should hold up if we face our state budget conservatively and responsibly. Therein lies the problem.

After receiving revenue projections and looking at the shortfall we were facing on the state budget, the House Republican caucus took a position to try to leave Pierre with a balanced budget. That meant taking no revenue out of reserves to backfill the budget because of overspending. Unfortunately, this meant many good programs and issues would not get funding or increases that weren’t statutorily required. And of course, all of the legislators had ideas as to which ones should be cut and which ones shouldn’t. This is where we ran into many delays as conference committees met and tried to work out the differences. We all ended up compromising and negotiating figures and we did finally come to agreements within both bodies.

I was assigned to the conference committee that addressed House Bill 1087, which ended up holding the legislation that cut the funding from the lap top programs in the schools. The Senate had passed this bill and cut the 3 million dollar program in order to free up money to be spent in new areas or additional funding for other programs. I took the position that we should never as a state cut a successful program that has already proven its value to fund something that has not been implemented yet. There were 54 schools hoping to use this program in 2009 to cost share the purchase of laptops for teachers and students and all of the schools using the program in the past needed the money to provide training for their teachers and help with support costs. Basically, by cutting this program, we’ve given some but not all of our schools the tools necessary to start the program, and then cut the funding for it. Once again, I believe it was a poor solution but the Senators and Democratic Representative killed every amendment we offered to provide any funding whatsoever in conference committee.

We also passed the tech school funding bills. I expect the Governor to veto them due to the lack of funds. The two final bills included 3 million dollars in additional funding. I voted for one that included money for repairs and maintenance, but did not feel I could support the other and further spend ourselves into a hole. We ended the session at a very fluid estimate of 12 million dollars coming out of our reserves with the knowledge that we very well could have a backfill amount to deal with next session of anywhere from 20 to 35 million. Those are dollars that are impossible to predict due to the nature of what they are spent on. They include disaster aid, fire suppression dollars, and other items that could possibly come to pass, but are unpredictable. We are anticipating that regardless of conservative approach to spending, our reserve fund will take a significant hit.

I will let Paul cover what was in the final education package; however I did want to address one amendment that was put on. If you will recall, I offered a bill this session to allow school districts to utilize TCAP dollars to fund teacher’s salaries. The bill received a lot of discussion and was ultimately killed; however it is still going forward. The amendment that was put on Senate Bill 187 set up a task force to study how TCAP dollars could be utilized by schools for funding of teachers salaries. The amendment also requires that teachers and administrators be appointed to the task force by the Governor. There were a few things in the amendment I did not like, however I was glad to see that teachers were going to have to opportunity to give input and that we were going to look at opening that program up for use for teacher’s salaries. There is currently 4 million dollars per year available for use within the TCAP program.

We finished session up with a vote on the general bill, Senate Bill 203, around 11:15 on Friday night. The appropriators spent a long day looking at over 75 amendments to the general bill that day and earned their stripes. I’m sure they were seeing numbers floating around in their heads as they slept that night. They did a great job and I appreciate their efforts to get up done in a timely matter and on our way home.

My daughter Kassidy and niece Isabel were with me on Monday thru Wednesday. They enjoyed their time and I enjoyed having the company. Some of my family that also made it out the last week were my father and mother in law, Al and Sharon Noem, my mother Corinne Arnold, and my brother Rock Arnold and his family. The younger boys were a little bored, so I understand Rock gave them a financial incentive to search for blue tiles in the capital flooring. It turned out to be a money making endeavor for them and I’m not sure Rock can afford to come back next year.

I will miss Representative Paul Nelson and Senator Brock Greenfield next year. I depended heavily on them and their sage counsel and historical wisdom cannot be replaced. Please thank them for their service to District 6 next time you see them.