By Kevin Van Diepen, District 22 Representative
As I sit at home after a long and sometimes contentious week in the South Dakota House of representatives, I look back at what took place.
We started this week on Tuesday with the House Ag and Natural resources committee meeting at 7:45 a.m., and we heard from Secretary of Agriculture Hunter Roberts.
After his briefing the committee had two bills on the agenda, one was immediately removed and deferred to another day which was HB 1019, in reference to pesticides and mislabeling.
Next, we heard HB 1021. This bill is only to authorize the Dept of Agriculture and Natural Resources to spend funds they had to demolish buildings on the South Dakota State Fairgrounds that are beyond saving. I supported this bill as it moved our South Dakota State Fairgrounds forward.
On Thursday we heard HB 1002, which was to increase the food allowance for wildland firefighters to meet the federal levels to make sure that as they fight fires in our forests that they are eating enough calories to maintain the energy that they need to do their job to protect our state.
HB 1020 authorizes the South Dakota Brand board to increase fees up to $1.60 to cover what they have been short for several years. They have been using reserves for years to cover their shortages. Everyone that testified in committee was involved in a summer study and agreed to this increase.
Local Government didn’t meet on Tuesday. However, on Thursday, we had fourbills on the agenda. HB 1030, HB 1060 and HB 1088 were in reference to election cleanup for scheduling, and cleaning up bills that just made it easier for county budgets.
HB 1004 was the main point of the committee hearing. It is in reference to removing county commissioners. As I listened to testimony and read the bill I was concerned by many parts of the bill, including due process for commissioners accused of something and the process that was proposed to remove them. I asked the sponsor of the bill after testimony and heard that it was based on an incident with him and a county commissioner. He said that his rights were violated, so I asked him if his rights were violated as bad as he said, had he contacted an attorney since, if it was that egregious, most attorneys would accept a civil suit. He stated that he had spoken to 37 attorneys, and none of them would accept his case. With all the facts I voted to send the bill to the 41st day. This afternoon, it was smoked out and will be heard on the house floor on Monday. Smoking a bill out is a process to bring a bill back to the floor after the committee had voted to kill the bill.
We attended a memorial service for our lost legislators over the past year this week also.
Friday had a very short floor session because of the extreme weather conditions and legislators’ travel.
The biggest bill that was dealt with was HB 1078. It would have bypassed the Department of Education’s rules process to allow schools to add Ag Sciences courses to the science curriculum without proving that they meet the standards set out in the process. I would agree that this would be a great thing for schools, but it basically comes down to following the established standards and processes. We heard that several schools had gone through the process and found that it was not that strenuous. I know personally that schools have engaged in the CTE school which must also be approved by the Dept of Education and they had great classes to offer. I don’t believe that if you don’t like the process because it includes work then you should make another process just to make it easy. I truly believe that our kids should be offered ag courses, but just follow the process to get them the best education that we can. They are our future.
At the end of the week, we already have 250 bills submitted, and I would guess that it could top 500-600. It’s going to get busier. As always, Senator Wipf, Representative Greenfield and I will continue to work to do the best we can for District 22.
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