Another Republican state legislator bites the dust: last week Rep. Christine Erickson (R-11/Sioux Falls) announced she's one and done in Pierre, choosing instead to run for Sioux Falls City Council in 2014. Erickson is 35 and has three young sons. She says her decision comes in part from wanting to be closer to her family while serving her local community.
Bob Mercer says Erickson's departure from state politics marks a problematic under-representation of young working parents in South Dakota lawmaking:
The Legislature, because of its intense three-month session in the dead of winter, is a difficult place for younger people — especially younger parents — to serve. They must depend on spouses to keep the households running, they have to deal with the separation from their children, they have to reconfigure their household budgets. And they have to be in situations where their employers will allow them to be away, or they have to be self-employed with flexibility in their business, or they have to depend on spouses’ incomes. Because the Legislature meets January through March, women with school-age children and younger people in general will continue to be under-represented. Decisions are made by the people who can and do show up [Bob Mercer, "A State Tradition Leads a New Legislator to Select a New Stage," Pure Pierre Politics, 2013.11.21].
The tradition Mercer says keeps a lot of folks out of the Legislature is the scheduling of the session in the dead of winter, between harvest and planting. That tradition is mostly irrelevant to the modern workforce.
Service in Pierre is inconvenient for everyone. We can't make the session or the drive shorter (though maybe . But we could spread out the days to make it easier for moms like Rep. Erickson, dads like Russ Olson to stick with state politics.
Remember my weekend warrior proposal? We could have our Legislature meet on a National Guard schedule: work one weekend a month, with one one-week or two-week session. Spread out the session, give legislators more time to study bills and get public input while also enjoying fewer long stretches away from family and jobs. That would be family-friendly and worker-friendly politics. That might also bring a broader range of leaders to do the people's business in Pierre.
The schedule needs to be changed, but they also need to pay more. I know of numerous professionals who would take time off to be legislators if it made financial sense, but it doesn't.
Pay more, get some full-time staff for the legislature (not the LRC). And see what happens.
Weekend Warrior idea makes sense to me.
Change a tradition that keeps out people with kids, who might be gestating or lactating, people who are poor or at least not financially independent, a tradition that keeps out younger people...Cory, I don't know. What kind of state will this be?
[sarcasm]
Weekends would increase the mileage and make logistics different for making sure bills get moving along before the next break but a thursday thru sunday or friday thru sunday schedule and at least having part of the session outside of the dead of winter would be better. Driving to an 8am meeting from sioux falls in the beginning of february on a tuesday is very difficult for many.
I'm sure it would be a lot easier for employers to deal with and work around a couple of short work weeks a month rather than a three month block.
I'd up the salary to the $20K range with full medical benefits.
Expand the session to 60ish days
Go 2 full weeks right around the first of the year, a week in late June, then spread out the other 40ish days throughout the year.
I'd then give them a little more of a work budget and give each party some actual paid staff (5 for House, 5 for Senate) (3 for majority party, 2 for minority).
The Legislature currently uses lobbyist as their staff
may and june are the only months when pierre isn't tundra, mosquito habitat, stinky, or filled with fat white guys killing things.
I don't personally as a fiscal conservative have a problem with them raising the salaries of legislators. The problem I see is that the lobbyists giving them money wouldn't like them being less beholden to them, and if the voter just hears "the legislators are giving themselves a raise" it will sound bad. There would have to be a concerted effort to explain not just to Democrats but also Republicans why raising the salary would make them more interested in the needs of the taxpayer and less interested in the needs of lobbying groups and crony capitalism.
This EB-5 fiasco, et al., is one of the continuing highlights that the South Dakota legislature is hopelessly broken. In addition to having a poor meeting time, the SD legislature is too large, too expensive, and fosters too much go-along-to-get-along. South Dakota should follow Nebraska's lead in having a referendum to dump the current legislature for a non-partisian unicameral of 37 senators. (Why 37? Nebraska has 49 yet provides legislation for over one million more souls.) If SD would cut its bloated, ineffective legislature then SD could afford to pay unicameral senators, a legislative support staff, and still save money. Too bad that it will never happen here.
Sounds like a horrible set up. I'll stick with my support for the bicameral legislature patterned after our own U.S. Congress.
In addition to the weekend warrior, I would add that Skype might be considered as a way to do business through a secure webinar setting. You could stay at home and handle business just like the big boys do. Its more or less free too and you can access it from just about anyplace you can get cell phone service.
BAH. Any idea that Mr. H proposes and Mrs. S likes (did you see the RCJ article about the insane Sibby-level insane! amount of federal welfare going to Sully County!) is probably insane.
I say BAH to this weekend crap. It seems like a huge growth of government to me. Pull the tape off all at once, not drag it out. I say make this legislatures meeting be for a week with 2 bookend weekends. Give them 9 or 10 days. Get it done.
Grudz, do you have an answer yet for why Rhoden would oppose a bill that would make it illegal for businesses to knowingly hire illegal aliens?
@Bree I think Rhodent is telling people not to look at how he voted, but what he accomplished. He accomplished helping kill bills to deal with our growing illegal immigrant population, and he helped Rounds grow spending, state government, and created a huge deficit that resulted in education getting cut across the state. Before all that, as CAH pointed out, Rhodent was a dedicated liberal Democrat.
south dakota: the prostitute state. ye gods:
http://www.keloland.com/newsdetail.cfm/south-dakota-surprise-70-million-windfall/?id=156551
http://www.keloland.com/newsdetail.cfm/montana-ranchers-donate-cattle-to-south-dakota/?id=156554
Of everything Rhoden has done what concerns me most is his opposition to this statement being added to the Republican Platform:
THE EXPLOITATION OF UNAUTHORIZED ALIENS IS AN UNQUALIFIED EVIL.
One of my concerns about an even shorter legislative session, is that it will further the imbalance between legislators and the governor. The House and Senate are only in Pierre a few weeks as it is. The other 40+ weeks are the governor's alone. Little to no oversight.
Does that make sense to you commenters?
If my concern about the power imbalance holds water, then the long weekend sessions would be more effective.
I'm interested in your thoughts.
Deb, that's a good point. The ongoing presence of legislators in Pierre could improve the Legislative check on executive power, allow them to respond more often to more situations.
Didn't George Washington believe that people shouldn't pursue politics as a career, but only for short periods as public servants?
But Larry ... You forgot that May and June are peak tornado season in Pierre.
Yep, he said that alright and he meant it. The thing was that at that time, you died before you got any tenure. Now, it seems that all we have in Pierre are either old farts that are too lazy to do much of anything other than go aye with their party, or those that are looking the other way at corruption.
How about a part-time governor? Might keep 'em out of mischief.
If they would pass a 5 yr budget plan, the legislature could spend its time more effectively.
South Dakota is a welfare recipient: the illegitimate offspring of raped virgin prairie and white privilege.
Bree - email me at sd101112@yahoo.com. This is more than something we can accomplish in replies in a blog post. Can you initially provide the bill numbers from each of the years you were talking about to start with and then we'll go from there. I'll get you an answer but need some information first.
DD - so wrong. Starting with this "dedicated liberal Democrat". CAH did nothing but show his party change. You cannot correctly infer someone was either dedicated or liberal from that.
Also, he encourages people as most legislators do, to view the voting records but the REAL bills and read them; not just some piece of paper put out by an opponent. The bills are VERY easy to look up and read. You may not be able to glean what was said when the bill was presented but the facts should be pretty evident.
Sorry Cory - I guess that was totally off topic (responses) of your post.
Before we change the Legislative calendar, lets deal with the gerrymanding of districts so that we can restore balance to our government and insure that more people truly have a voice in deciding the direction of state government. The ruling party of the state legislature has a vested interest in keeping the rest of us out of their way while they promote corporate interests instead of the interests of South Dakota citizens!
Hear, hear! Robin is right! End gerrymandering now!
It's just not so simple as changing the Legislative calendar. There are aspects of the entire South Dakota governmental system that have timelines geared to the Legislative calendar. There would have to be adjustments to the budgeting process, dates when laws go into effect, etc. There are also issues of housing and staffing up in Pierre. So, there would have to be a lot of input provided.
I believe the original idea was to have the session when farmers could get away from their places. Back when SD was agrarian, not agribiz. Perhaps it is time to relook at the schedule.
Joelie, definitely. The economy has changed; the Legislature should as well.
Donald—curse your complicated pragmatism! True, budget and law enactment dates are a major factor. Even if we kept the session tight and did it all before July 1, we'd still need to delay the enactment a couple months to give the various offices time to prepare and adjust. Even the referendum process would be affected: a law passed in a weekend-warrior 2014 session probably couldn't be referred in time to make the 2014 ballot the way it can under the current session.
Indeed, we couldn't just re-pencil the session calendar; we'd have to change a number of elements of state business. But hey, we built state business in the first place; we can rebuild it. On the budget, we might need one extended budget year for the transition: if we worked up this bill in 2014, we might have to pass an extraordinary funding measure saying that Fiscal Year 2015 would run from July 1, 2014, to December 31, 2015. From there on, fiscal years would coincide with calendar years, as they do for most South Dakota municipalities. That's doable, isn't it?
Gerrymandering is another important part of opening up opportunities to run. Robin, I'd be happy to include non-partisan redistricting in the Legislative Reform Omnibus Bill (L-ROB?).