Bob Mercer calls the 2013 Legislature a "session of accomplishment" of which South Dakotans can be proud.
The folks at the Yankton Press and Dakotan, writing from a little more distance from Pierre, disagree, calling the 2013 session a "lost winter." Here's what the Yankton paper finds lacking in our Legislature's proud performance this year:
- The Legislature still strings K-12 education along with unreliable one-time money instead of restoring the cuts Governor Daugaard imposed two years ago.
- The Legislature refused to expand Medicaid, thus rejecting the social good and infusion of federal dollars that would have come with it.
- The Legislature declined to expand prenatal care.
- The Legislature ignored the public and the experts in the field by passing the school gunslinger bill while rejecting a measure to take guns away from the mentally ill.
- The Legislature allocated itself an increase in funding that is more money per legislator than it allocates in state aid for each K-12 student.
Even the two signature bills of the session, the omnibus criminal justice system reform (Senate Bill 70) and the omnibus economic development/education plan (Senate Bill 235) don't bear the alabaster gleam of great legislation. SB 70 was hurried along, insulated from amendment. It also bears the unpleasant backdoor restraint of the ballot initiative. Senate Bill 235 manages to implement some reasonable education and community development policies, but it comes at the price of our continued addiction to corporate welfare.
I have to agree with the Yankton paper over Mr. Mercer: the Legislature got some work done, but it's hard to see how we come home from Pierre cheering lustily for this year's performance.
I have never known a school district to voluntarily send one-time aid back to the state treasury. There are legislators including Senate Republican Larry Rhoden who are making plans for trying to get state aid back up to normal in 2014. They also are talking about realigning the general-education tax levies in 2014 and taking the cap off agriculture's share.
The $500,000 that the Legislature gave itself at the end will be monitored by at least this reporter, I assure you. Medicaid expansion being blocked was a foregone conclusion the day before the session began; we'll see if that's still true after the 2014 session. I'm still waiting for the plan to pay for the expansion at the federal level. The president and the members of Congress who voted for Obamacare, which included the Medicaid expansion, haven't come up with that answer yet. So whatever South Dakota spends, if and when Medicaid is expanded in South Dakota, will only be digging the federal debt deeper. We've had that discussion here before.
School sentinels are a local choice now with the legislation that the governor signed into law. I haven't heard yet of a petition drive to refer the law to a statewide vote. That would be quite a campaign to cover. Meanwhile, if the law takes effect July 1 without a statewide vote, we'll see if any school board approves having sentinels, and we'll see if the local voters refer that decision, and if it's referred, we'll see what the local voters decide. The nucleus of support for that bill, by the way, came out of Rapid City, Sioux Falls and the Sioux Falls suburbs. (And it was Rhoden who insisted on the local-referral language, fyi.)
Pre-natal care expansion... well, let's just watch and see if somehow that doesn't come about anyway. I'm still unclear whether stand-alone legislation was necessary. My guess is that if the governor wanted it, whether the Bernie Hunhoff version for the unborn children of illegal aliens, or the Jean Hunhoff version seeking broader coverage for lower-income mothers-to-be, we would have it. I don't know whether the governor would have vetoed either version (or both), but I don't think there was sufficient support for either version in the Legislature to fully override a veto.
Just on a final note, it's easy to pick apart the Legislature from the home or office. There are steps in the process that could be improved. Like most your readers, I dislike the blatant and growing use of "vehicle" bills -- legislation introduced only for the purpose of serving as a carcass later in which they can insert some big piece of proposed law after the bill introduction deadline -- and the reason I dislike it that the public doesn't get a full chance to participate when the lawmakers resort to that hoghouse approach. But generally they work about as hard as most of them can over the 37 official days in the main run. Until you get here, and see their social calendar, you have an incomplete picture of the expectations that the voters back home place on them. Nearly every day there is at least one breakfast and at least one or more luncheons and at least one or more evening receptions and at least one or more suppers hosted by various business groups, agriculture groups, public-interest groups and other groups. Most days, a legislator can spend as much time fulfilling expectations of visiting constituents by attending their functions as that legislator spends actually working on legislation. And believe me, constituents notice when their legislators don't attend their events. Then of course there are the cracker barrels on weekends... But I digress.
I think that perhaps if left to a choice of reading bills, demanding that there is substance to read in a bill that you are supposed to vote on and keeping up with the 'social calendar'. I would skip the parties and meals and get to work.
"And believe me, constituents notice when their legislators don't attend their events."
Bob, you mean the few constituents who can afford putting on those events. The rest of the constituents are not represented nearly to the same level as those special interest lobbyists.
Right on Sibby!
Being busy which we all know they are is not an excuse for poor legislation. grade for this session---D plus
You're too good Charlie.
Charlie, once you use the Constitutions (Both US and SD) as the standard, then the only grade that makes sense is an "F". They failed.