Majority Leader Report

The week of February 8 marked the half-way point of the 2009 legislative session. We are now in full swing with both the House and the Senate taking up important legislation.

In the Senate, probably our most contentious issue was the passage of Senate Joint Resolution No. 1 which was a proposed Constitutional amendment which would allow the Legislature to authorize any form of gambling in South Dakota with no limits whatever. In evaluating this bill, which was brought by Senator Heidepriem, one needs to remember that whatever is authorized for any non-Indian casino (even only one such non-Indian casino) is automatically applicable to all tribal casinos, of which there is presently eight and could be nine in South Dakota. It surprised me that authorizing unlimited gambling in South Dakota turned into a fairly partisan issue. In each of two votes on this joint resolution, 13 of the 14 Democrats in the South Dakota Senate voted to support unlimited gambling while no less than two-thirds of the Republican members voted against unlimited gambling. The debate was principally between Senator Heidepriem, as a proponent of unlimited gambling, and me, as a proponent of no increases in legalized gambling in South Dakota. The joint resolution ultimately passed on a 19 to 16 vote and now is under consideration in the House of Representatives, where I am hopeful that it will not pass.

Veterans issues were the focus of a long hearing in the Senate State Affairs Committee. The Committee defeated Senate Bill 138 which would have required all employees of the South Dakota Division of Veterans to have no discharge which was less than honorable. This issue has been a topic of considerable discussion and dissension between the leadership of the veterans service organizations (such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion and the Disabled Veterans) and the Rounds administration. I was a co-sponsor of Senate Bill 138 which died in the State Affairs Committee. The same committee supported, as did the entire Senate, a concurrent resolution asking the Legislative Research Council to conduct a study of separating the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs into two separate departments, one focusing on the South Dakota National Guard (the Military Affairs portion) and a separate Veterans Department. That joint resolution was opposed by the Rounds administration and, again, supported by the heads of the veterans service organizations.

During the week of February 16th, the Senate passed two important education bills. The first, and most important in my mind, was Senate Bill 106 which would change the state index factor by which the per pupil amount of state support for K-12 education is increased from its current 3% or inflation, whichever is less, to 4% or inflation, whichever is greater, but in no event to exceed the growth in the State’s general fund revenues. The bill was opposed by the Rounds administration but passed the Senate with only 7 dissenting votes. I served as the prime sponsor of this bill, and it seems to me to be one which fits our current circumstances most appropriately. Rather than cut some of the ancillary programs supporting K-12 education, such as the T-CAP program and the special assistance we provide for sparse schools, schools with growing enrollments and declining enrollments, it seems to me that we are better off limiting the per pupil growth this year to essentially zero, assuming that the State’s general fund revenues do not grow and perhaps actually decline. Rather than making some schools suffer a disproportionate portion of this statewide economic slow down, we should keep all the pieces of our education funding program in place but have each school bear a proportionate share of the burden by not increasing the per pupil amount this year.

Oddly enough, this is exactly the proposal of the Round administration with regard to special education. The Senate approved Senate Bill 190, the Governor’s bill on special education. In this bill, the Governor proposes to freeze for one year the current levels of state support for special education. I agreed with this proposal since it spreads the burden of our difficult economic times proportionately across all school districts.

The Senate also passed Senate Bill 21 which is a solution to the ethanol blender pump controversy which arose last summer. Basically, South Dakota has two conflicting laws which led the Governor and the ethanol industry to disagree sharply on how various blends of ethanol, other than E85 and the standard 90% gasoline/10% ethanol blends, should be taxed. Senate Bill 21, in its current form, represents a compromise between the ethanol industry and the administration. I served as the prime sponsor on Senate Bill 116 which represented the industry’s solution. Senate Bill 116 was co-sponsored by more than two-thirds of the Legislature. As part of the compromise solution, we agreed to use the administration’s bill (Senate Bill 21). The ultimate compromise will promote the use of blender pumps and will also generate approximately $1,000,000 of additional revenue for the State Highway Fund.

The other major development of the last two weeks was the final passage and approval by Congress and President Obama of the federal stimulus package. I agree with the criticism of Congressman Thune that the package is over expensive and, as Senator Thune said, should have been “half as expensive and twice as effective.” Nevertheless, there are portions of the federal stimulus package which should be helpful to South Dakota as we try to work through our current budget crisis. The Legislature, along with the Governor, will be carefully reviewing the details of the federal stimulus package in the final three weeks of the 2009 legislative session to determine what federal strings will be attached to various grants to states like South Dakota and how best we should respond to and utilize the federal stimulus dollars available to our state.

The 2009 legislative session continues to be one marked with great challenges but also opportunities to improve our state.