I also started back to school this week to finish my political science degree. For those of you who don’t know, when my father passed away in a farm accident 15 years ago, I came home to take over the farm with a year left of schooling. It’s always been a goal of mine to go back and finish but family, businesses, and legislative responsibilities just didn’t leave me with enough time to do so. In the past six months though, we’ve managed to sell our restaurant and hunting lodge. My brother’s have also purchased my shares of our farming partnership recently, freeing up my time considerably. I still raise some pure bred cattle and quarter horses, and work for a media relations co., and within children’s ministry, but I decided now was the time to strap on the book bag and get to work.

This summer I will be taking a couple internet courses, but the one I am most looking forward to is “Democracy and Political Participation”. Should be great discussions and data….

That said, I better get to work.

Not having a primary in my own race this election cycle, I’ve been a little lax about keeping you updated on my calendar and schedule of events. I will strive to keep you updated on events and election news now and then. This will be a busy weekend for us around here. As ranchers, we will be spending the day putting in posts on 3 miles of new fence we need to get up. I rented a post pounder for the day, so we will be working hard to at least get the posts set so we can return it and then start on completing the rest of the work. Meetings tonight and a full day of church and family events tomorrow.

Monday I will be speaking at Badger, SD for their Memorial Day service. My daughters, Kassidy and Kennedy will also be singing. It will be a good family event in a small little South Dakota town….One that will give the opportunity for our family to remember and observe the importance of the day. I am a firm believer in not only telling your children what you believe, but also why you believe that way and then following it up with actions. It is simply not good enough to tell our children that Memorial Day is important and then go shopping all day or head out to the lake. Our biggest proof of what we care about is exemplified by what we spend our time doing.

I believe on a day like Memorial Day, honor is due to those who have served and fallen. That is important and therefore, our children should be taught that it is important and pay their respects. Try to find some time this weekend to honor veterans, visit soldiers graves, or simply listen to a few stories that need to be passed on to our children. It will make an impact on your family and pass along our American heritage to the next generation.

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….

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.

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.

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.

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.