HURON — K-12 school children are reaping the benefits from steadily increasing revenues from state-owned land and mineral leases and investments, the commissioner of the state School and Public Lands Office said Monday.
“Every year for the last five years we’ve set a new record for the amount of money generated from our surface leases,” Ryan Brunner said.
Overall revenues have risen from $7.4 million to $12.1 million, he said at the first in a series of weekly Beadle County Republican Party campaign lunches.
Brunner, a native of Midland, an hour north of Rapid City, is seeking a second four-year term in the November general election.
Married and the father of three young children, he has a degree in agriculture economics from South Dakota State University. While in Brookings, he served on the City Commission and also worked for a time for the local economic development corporation.
In his address before the GOP, Brunner provided an overview of the responsibilities of his office while also sharing a little state history in terms of how South Dakota came to own and hold land at the advent of statehood.
“In 1889, we got Section 16 and 36 of every township,” he said. That amounted to 760,000 acres of state surface land spread out across South Dakota.
“That land was set aside to be used for funding for schools, and a lot of constitutional protections were put in place to help with that,” Brunner said.
Some eastern states were the beneficiaries of land, too, but he said many of them sold it early on in statehood and spent the money rather than holding onto it.
In South Dakota, state-owned acres are leased at public auction. Successful bidders have five-year leases with five-year options. The rental money from the land, much of it in western South Dakota, goes to public schools.
For the surface land, revenues have increased from $4.5 million five years ago to $8 million today.
South Dakota also owns mineral rights on 5.2 million acres.

“Now a lot of them don’t have a lot of value right now,” Brunner said. “There’s not any oil and gas exploration going on.”
However, there are 85 wells. Mineral rights are leased at auction, and successful bidders have five years to explore for oil and gas. If they drill and find oil or gas, they pay a royalty to the state each month.
“Right now, it’s around $2 million a year,” he said. “Our royalties are tied to the price of a barrel of oil.”
At statehood in 1889, when the two sections per township came under state ownership, much of South Dakota had been homesteaded. So because the state couldn’t get Sections 16 and 36 in Yankton County, it was given land on an acre-per-acre basis in Harding County.
“On a value basis, that’s not a very good trade, to trade Yankton County farm ground for Harding County pasture, except we also got the minerals,” Brunner said. “The mineral activity we do see in the state is mostly in Harding County.”
The school and public lands office also is responsible for managing investments.
When state-owned land is sold, the revenues go into a trust fund. Before the year 2000, the office could only invest the money in savings bonds and make direct loans to communities.
But in 2000, voters amended the Constitution so funds could also be invested in stocks and with the South Dakota Investment Council.
“That constitutional amendment did a lot of great things for the school and public lands trust fund,” Brunner said.
Eighteen years ago, the bottom line was $135 million. As of the council’s last meeting three weeks ago, it stood at more than $300 million.
When South Dakota became a state, it set aside 40,000 acres for universities and other public institutions. Each year, $2.5 million goes to those endowed institutions.
The office also manages 99 state-owned dams that were built by the federal government in the 1930s and 1940s in programs that put people back to work.
Brunner’s staff also serves as the real estate agent for other state agencies.
“One of the things we get involved with is when other state agencies have surplus land or land they want to sell they go to the Legislature and ask for permission to sell it,” he said.
A lot of land has been sold in the past few years. The next auction is Oct. 10 in Plankinton for a 100-acre hay field the state Department of Corrections is selling.
Then, on Oct. 16, Brunner will sell about 97 acres along Corps of Engineers property adjacent to the Missouri River in Sully County. The acreage was donated to the South Dakota State Historical Society in 1928.
“But nobody at the historical society or the state knew that we owned it until 2013,” he said.
Brunner calls these situations cases of “lost land.” Ownership only came to light when the county called with a tax-related question.
“A lot of times unless you go in and audit some of these things at the register of deeds office, you’re not going to notice that nobody’s paying taxes on the land, or that it’s a different owner than the government land right next to it,” he said.
If the land sells, the money will be held in trust, with the interest and dividends directed to the historical society.

PHOTO BY ROGER LARSEN/PLAINSMAN
School and Public Lands Commissioner Ryan Brunner, seeking a second four-year term in the November general election, talked about the duties of his office at a Beadle County Republican Party campaign lunch in Huron on Monday.