Political Smokeout

Would there really be legal issues with partisan staff?

In this morning’s paper, I took a look at a proposal to hire partisan staff members to work with political party caucuses in the Legislature.

You can read that here.

Some Republican leaders think having some partisan staffers alongside the current nonpartisan staff would make the Legislature more effective vis-a-vis the executive branch, and lead to more specific and detailed policy debates in Pierre.

Reporter Bob Mercer highlights one concern I didn’t address:

To take any of the $500,000 for the purpose of hiring a Democratic staffer or two Republican staffers seems to beg for a lawsuit under 12-27-21. And for those legislators seeking re-election or election to another office, the assistance they might receive from a Democratic staffer or a Republican staffer seems to beg for a Supreme Court interpretation of the word “influencing” in 12-27-20.

Partisan research staff would be new ground for the Legislature, and it’s entirely possible current law wouldn’t allow the proposal being pushed by House Speaker Brian Gosch and Senate Majority Leader Russell Olson.

But I’m not so sure. For one thing, a majority of other states have partisan legislative staff and have presumably found a way to make that work with their conflict-of-interest election laws. That’s not to say South Dakota wouldn’t have to change its laws to allow partisan research staff.

Except that the Legislature ALREADY has taxpayer-funded staff members in the secretaries (and possibly interns, depending on the details of their  compensation) for caucus leaders. They’re not doing bill-drafting, but they are working on explicitly partisan activities like arranging news conferences, distributing press releases and statements, and even researching issues. Is there a significant difference between those longstanding, presumably legal partisan activities and what would be done by the three partisan LRC staff Gosch and Olson want to add?

Updated: Daugaard’s first veto

There’s no announcement yet, but a lawmaker says Gov. Dennis Daugaard has vetoed his first bill of 2013.

On Tuesday, I previewed the batch of bills still awaiting action by Daugaard, and looked at the possibility  that we could see no vetoes this year.

“I haven’t got the sense from conversations with the governor’s staff that there will be anything upsetting,” said Sen. Russell Olson, R-Wentworth, the Senate Majority Leader. “The bills the executive branch was tracking and opposed to, that I was aware of, he’s already signed.”

But yesterday, Senate Minority Leader Jason Frerichs highlighted one bill that could draw a veto that I hadn’t focused on: Senate Bill 115, which increases fertilizer fees and uses the revenue to fund fertilizer research.

“I would expect 115 will be vetoed, the fertilizer increase,” said Frerichs, a supporter of the measure.

After tweeting about this, Sen. Shantel Krebs, R-Renner, confirmed Frerichs’ speculation:

@argusmontgomery:yes the Gov did veto SB115.

March 20, 2013

Krebs is the prime sponsor for SB 115. Prime sponsors typically get courtesy calls when their bill is vetoed before Daugaard announces his action to the public:

As the prime sponsor of SB115 I got the call early this morning letting me know the Gov will be vetoing it. I appreciated the phone call.

— Shantel Krebs (@shantelkrebs) March 20, 2013

SB 115 passed both houses over the two-thirds threshold needed to override a veto, but it did have sizable opposition in both chambers. Supporters said the fertilizer industry was asking to tax themselves, which made it okay. Opponents said it was wrong for government to tax private businesses to fund research.

Legislature approves $500K hike to own budget

The Legislature’s Joint Appropriations Committee just approved, after considerable tumult, a $500,000 increase in the Legislature’s budget 2014.

Part of the money will be used to pay for more legislative travel to regional and national conferences. Other amounts will be used to hire more legislative staff — including, intriguingly, possibly partisan legislative staffers to go along with the existing nonpartisan staff. Finally, around $65,000 will pay for the higher legislator per diem authorized in a bill that passed this year.

After the motion was introduced, appropriators paused for a long period of conferencing any lobbying. When they reconvened, Senate Majority Leader Russell Olson and House Speaker Brian Gosch appeared to testify for it.

The Legislature is “by far the least costliest” of the three branches, Gosch said. When its staff are overworked, “they make errors.” Approving extra funding, he said, well make the Legislature “a more effective legislative body.”

Olson praised hiring some partisan legislative staff.

“We have to rely on the nonpartisan nature of the LRC to keep secrets… that puts them in an unfair position at many times,” Olson said.

In the 2011 budget cuts, the Legislature’s budget was cut by around $650,000.

Some lawmakers were highly skeptical of increasing the Legislature’s own budget when K-12 education and Medicaid providers weren’t getting more than 3 percent bumps in ongoing funding.

Appropriations “just decided $500,000 legislative travel money was more important than K-12 and Medicaid funding,” Rep. Susan Wismer wrote on her Twitter account.

But the full committee adopted the proposal on a 12-6 vote.

‘Building South Dakota’ amended, near passage

A committee of legislative leaders unanimously approved a package of economic incentives Thursday, putting it very close to final passage.

The bill was amended to include a “trigger” protecting the general fund in the event education, health care and state employees don’t get their annual increases.

The “Building South Dakota” package includes incentives for large project and money sent into areas such as education, housing and infrastructure.

It now is before the House and Senate, which have to approve the amended version produced by the conference committee.

The House previously approved a different version of the bill, 56-13.

Senate Majority Leader Russell Olson, R-Wentworth, predicted smooth sailing for the bill in the Senate. He said there are some objections for members about the complexity of the bill, but predicted there wouldn’t be any procedural attempts to split it into multiple smaller bills such as that attempted by Rep. Stace Nelson, R-Fulton, in the House.

When will we see the economic development bill?

After the jump is my story from today’s paper, summarizing the new economic development package unveiled by a bipartisan group of legislative leaders yesterday.

It was a tough story to write, because I had only descriptions (often vague) of the bill’s mechanics to go on.

That’s because the specific language of the bill hasn’t yet been released.

UPDATE: Now it has. Read the bill here.

The leaders promised it would be posted online at some point this weekend, though they didn’t say where that would be posted.

Hopefully that actually happens, so people can study the idea before the 7:45 a.m. hearing on Monday when it will be adopted.

From some of the language used Thursday, I gather the reason bill text wasn’t released immediately was they were still tweaking the proposal. 

“We’re on the verge of one of the more complex and bipartisan compromises I’ve seen put together in a long, long time,” Rep. Bernie Hunhoff, D-Yankton said. (Emphasis added.)

Once I see a final version I’ll post about it here.

Here’s my story:

Read More

School sentinels bill passes committee 5-4

A proposal to let schools arm volunteer “sentinels” to protect against threats is on its way to the South Dakota Senate.

The school sentinels bill, House Bill 1087, passed a key Senate committee 5-4 Friday, and needs only approval from the Senate to head to Gov. Dennis Daugaard to be signed into law.

Under the proposal, school boards could vote to arm sentinels provided local law enforcement approved and the sentinels underwent training with the state.

Rural schools, located far from local law enforcement and without police resource officers, want the proposal’s flexibility, advocates said.

“If we think we’re immune in South Dakota from school violence, we should probably think again,” said Sen. Craig Tieszen, R-Rapid City. “Our local school officials and local school boards need to be making a decision about the security of their schools.”

Rep. Scott Craig, R-Rapid City, and other supporters emphasized the local control.

“For the schools that do not want ever to have anybody armed… they should want this bill,” Craig said. “It is this bill that guarantees that they make the decision to never have anyone armed.”

But what Sen. Larry Lucas called “the (key) issue of the 2013 legislative session” has plenty of opponents. Most major school groups testified in opposition, saying the sentinels program was risky and unwanted.

Jeff Marlette, a general in the South Dakota National Guard and the superintendent of the New Underwood School District, lamented that South Dakotans would now ask if “our state has gotten so bad and so dangerous and so unsafe that we must now attend school in an armed fortress.”

Lobbyists for the state’s school boards and school administrators proposed an alternative, to set up a task force studying school security. If that task force recommended school sentinels, they said, they could support it, but saw the current proposal as too rushed.

“This amendment would give you another option to talk about school safety,” said Wade Pogany, executive director of the Associated School Boards of South Dakota. “Let’s put a task force together that’s made up of these stakeholders and bring recommendations so school boards could have options to look at.”

But the committee rejected that amendment, with members questioning whether such a task force would produce new mandates and objecting to the last-minute nature of the proposal.

The Senate committee did make several changes to the proposal, notably removing a section added in the House that kept decisions about the sentinels program secret.

Tieszen, the prime sponsor of the bill, endorsed that change.

“This must be a publicly made decision,” Tieszen said.

Rep. Hal Wick, R-Sioux Falls, supports keeping the decision private. He said it would keep would-be attackers in the dark about which schools were and were not defended, and thus provide more protection to everyone.

Once a district has adopted a sentinels program, decisions about it — such as which people were armed — could be made behind closed doors.

Another change might be coming in the full Senate. Sen. Larry Rhoden, R-Union Center, said he’s interested in specifying that voters can refer a decision to create a sentinels program to a public election.

Senate passage isn’t assured, with many lawmakers skeptical. Sen. Jason Frerichs, D-Wilmot, suggested the sentinels bill wasn’t necessary because volunteers could be deputized by their local sheriff to defend the school.

Sen. Corey Brown, R-Gettysburg, said he likes the concept but has too many unanswered questions.

“If we’re going to do something like this, I need to feel more than reasonably confident that we’ve covered all our bases,” Brown said.

But supporters said the sentinels program is both needed and well-thought-out.

“I don’t think anyone has promoted this as the ultimate solution to the problem we face,” said Rhoden. “But it is a step.”

Sen. Dan Lederman, R-Dakota Dunes, said it was a good proposal that keeps decisions with local government.

“What I like about this bill is its permissive nature,” Lederman said. “This bill will maximize local control.”

Sen. Russell Olson, R-Wentworth, lambasted schools for opposing the local option.

“Do you just want the softballs? Do you just want the easy decisions?” he asked school representatives. “When it gets tough should it come back to the Legislature? Make up your mind.”

The Senate must take action on the sentinels bill by March 5, though it has yet to be scheduled for debate. Because the Senate has amended the version passed by the House earlier this month, the House would then get another vote, to either approve the Senate version or try to negotiate a compromise.

Craig said House members will likely be divided on whether removing the secrecy provision is a good move.

If the Legislature approves the sentinels bill, it will head to Gov. Dennis Daugaard, who likes the concept and is studying the proposal’s specific details.

How will Senate State Affairs vote on ‘sentinels’?

Earlier, I speculated about what the decision to send the school sentinels bill to the State Affairs committee instead of the Education committee meant for its fate.

Yesterday, I did something better: I checked on each of the members to see what they thought about it.

A few of them were on the record with opinions about the bill; those who weren’t, I called.

You can read more about the state of the sentinels bill here.

Here’s where things stand now with the Senate State Affairs Committee:

• Brown: Undecided. Doesn’t have a problem with the “concept” but is “struggling” with a few components of the bill.
• Frerichs: Doesn’t ”support the bill in its current form,” would need “to change it pretty drastically” to vote for it.
• Johnston: Has called the sentinels bill premature, saying other discussions of school security needs to come first.
• Lederman: A sponsor of the bill, has spoken critically of making schools gun-free zones.
• Lucas: Is “not going to support it.”
• Olson: Supportive as long as it maintains its local control.
• Rave: Leaning toward supporting the bill, but is “well aware of the concerns” and could change his mind.
• Rhoden: Supportive; believes the state should “let the local governing body make the decision for themselves.”
• Tieszen: Prime sponsor of the bill, has testified for it.

Taking a bit of a leap (some of these statements have been more decisive and clear than others), I’d categorize the committee like this:

Yes votes (4): Lederman, Olson, Rhoden, Tieszen

No votes (3): Frerichs, Johnston, Lucas

Undecided (2): Brown, Rave

With nine members on the committee, the bill needs five votes to pass, and is already one short. If either Brown or Rave votes yes, or one of the no votes changes their mind (without any yes votes flipping), House Bill 1087 will probably pass out of committee.

Some grassroots opposition building to criminal justice initiative

If you listened to the Senate debate on the criminal justice reform (Senate Bill 70) on Thursday, some of the Republican senators had an oddly defensive tone in their speeches for a measure that has broad bipartisan support and passed 31-2.

“I’ve had good friends tell me they can’t believe I’m carrying this bill, and this is soft on crime. I disagree,” said Sen. Russell Olson, R-Wentworth.

Sen. Ried Holien, R-Watertown, repeatedly emphasized that the measure was “tough on crime.”

SB 70 “might not be a perfect bill,” he said, urging senators to not “kill a really good bill in search of a perfect one.”

Given the overwhelming support for the criminal justice initiative in the Capitol, what’s behind that tone?

Olson said lawmakers were pitching their remarks not so much to their fellow senators, who largely agree, but at the public in general. They’ve been getting a steady stream of emails from the public, upset about various aspects of the bill, he said.

The opposition isn’t overwhelming and doesn’t appear to be the result of an organized group. Instead, it seems to be a general group of grassroots conservatives with some concerns.

It’s unlikely (but not impossible) this group of conservatives will manage to defeat SB 70, given the extremely broad support for the measure from a huge range of stakeholders. So far only a handful of the most conservative lawmakers have actually voted against it, while other outspoken conservatives have stayed on board.

But it’s a dynamic worth keeping in mind as this bill heads over to the House of Representatives.