Yesterday the House GOP leadership honked Governor Dennis Daugaard's nose and violated the state constitution. This can't end well.
The House passed Senate Bill 53 yesterday, but it wasn't really Senate Bill 53. The original SB 53 was a request from Governor Daugaard's Labor Department for $500,000 for the mostly failed New South Dakotan's program and the mall-tripping Dakota Roots program. Senate Appropriations amended that down to $1; the wiseguys in House Appropriations amended it up to $2. Such dollar-amendments happen as legislators say they're o.k. with a program but need to negotiate a final dollar figure in conference committee.
But then the full House got its hands on Senate Bill 53 and hoghoused it. Poof go New South Dakotans and Dakota Roots; in come four new appropriations, out of the blue:
- $1,000,000 to jump start the delayed Lewis and Clark Rural Water System;
- $500,000 to fund the Readiness and Environmental Protection and Integration (REPI) buffer program at Ellsworth Air Force Base under the Governor's Office of Economic Development.
- $464,000 to fund a shale research facility at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology.
- $500,000 to improve airports.
Whatever the merits of these four surprise projects, all unvetted by the committee process, Senate Bill 53 now violates the South Dakota Constitution. Article 12, Section 2 says the only bill that can fund more than one project at a time is the general appropriations bill. "All other appropriations shall be made by separate bills, each embracing but one object, and shall require a two-thirds vote of all the members of each branch of the Legislature." Senate Bill 53 embraces four objects, different places, different functions.
The unconstitutional hoghouse failed to win two-thirds approval on its first go-round. Then after a motion to reconsider, seven legislators (Reps. Campbell, Craig, Ecklund, Kopp, Qualm, Verchio, and Werner) all suddenly decided violating the Constitution to spread out more election-year earmarks was a good thing, and SB 53 passed 49 to 20.
I know you legislators are getting tired and cranky and stressed over having left so much work until the last minute. But your procrastination does not permit placing the hoghouse above the state constitution. You want to fund four emergency projects? You're going to have to hoghouse four separate bills, the way you've had to all session to build a highway patrol facility in Rapid City, work on the Hot Springs veterans home, and remodel the House Chambers. You have to do four different bills the same way you've required the Board of Regents to come to you with four different bills to fund four different projects on one campus (SDUS: See SB 15, SB 16, SB 17, and SB 20).
The constitution matters. The Legislature must follow it. If the conference committee can't embrace the constitution, let's hope the Governor will with his veto pen. Even if he vetoes Senate Bill 53 purely out of personal pique over the House's rejection of his pet economic development programs, that veto would defend the constitution from greedy, sloppy legislating.
p.s.: You guys would have more time to get these things done if your weren't spending conference committee time haggling over a resolution calling on Congress to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Aren't 50 futile votes in Congress enough?
South Dakota government trying to find a purpose is like Malaysia trying to find a missing airliner.
And to think the State didn't have a few million dollars to leverage the hundreds of millions the Federal government was willing to give us to provide Medicaid coverage to low income South Dakotans.
The shale project is meant to set South Dakota up for Daugaard's high level radioactive waste dump.
It should be noted that those votes changed AFTER another closed caucus meeting where the reconsideration was apparently discussed and decided behind closed doors, as where these amendments purportedly came from also.
How can this be?! Didn't I hear that South Dakotans have a Constitutional Right to an open legislative process?
David N-in Malaysia's defense,they don't have a blueprint to look for lost airliners. SoDak has a constitution to follow,if lawmakers can actually read it. Besides some Malaysians may have trusted a regional subsidiary of SoDaks EB-5 program to invest in airline tracking technology and it would probably work just fine if anyone in SoDak's governor's administration could locate anything. Just a hunch.
Awe come on Disgusted, that bill only applied to the South Dakota High School Activities Association. Oh and speaking of wasting time, Cory, wasn't that bill a waste of time, since those meetings were already required to be open?
It's not too surprising that "Nuke Dump Daugaard" can't be open and honest about the funding for research supporting his secret high level radioactive waste dump proposal. They supposedly had someone working on preliminary research on shale for use as a repository medium, yet have not disclosed the findings as far as I can find. Maybe they should disclose the research they've already completed, before weaseling more money for nuclear industry from taxpayers.
Mr. Pay, is there still a chance we could rebuild Igloo and create a bunch of jobs? You and I are among the few to remember all the jobs there.
The land to construct the Ordnance Depot was taken from ranchers, and when the Depot closed it was returned to private ownership. Some of the land has had restrictions on land use, because of concern about chemical or munitions that may still be out there. In the 1990s there was an attempt to study the hazards out there, and do some cleanup work. I was involved for a time in the Restoration Advisory Board. My own feeling is the highest and best use for that land is for grazing or other agricultural pursuits.
I was not promised or threatened with anything in order to vote for this bill, nor was any other house member. I consulted with two attorneys prior to voting who told me that it was constitutional because it was amending the previous years general bill and that the Supreme Court justice views it as constitutional. Later I determined that was not technically the case, as only HB 1040 amends the general bill. I would have voted differently today. Thanks for calling attention to this matter, I am talking with all the house members to ensure this does not happen next year.
Ammo for Don Pay's comment:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/03/17/shale-nuclear-waste-home/6520759/
Chris Neuzil, the person widely quoted in the USA Today story, did research on Pierre shale near Hayes, SD in the 1980s. I think the American Chemical Society (or some other outfit) is meeting right now, and one of their symposia focuses on shale as a medium for waste disposal. Neuzil and others constitute a lobby seeking to encourage use of shale deposits for high-level radioactive waste disposal.
Neuzil's work in South Dakota in the 1980s was funded, I believe, by the Office of Nuclear Waste Isolation, which was tasked to study geologic medium for disposal of high level radioactive waste. Janklow was pursuing this option less enthusiastically than he was the low-level radioactive waste site at Igloo (on the former Black Hills Army Depot). A South Dakota engineering firm, RESPEC, was involved in research for the Office of Nuclear Waste Isolation, but did not study shale. As far as I can tell, RESPEC appears to be involved as a partner with the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology in Daugaard's efforts to site a high-level radioactive waste facility in South Dakota.
Daugaard appears to be going down the same road that Janklow did.
Mr. Pay, the Pierre Shale has damned two rail lines in western South Dakota and cause DoT to spend millions every year in highway repairs and frost broke water lines all winter: how can developers of KXL possibly believe their pipeline can weather such geology?