HURON — District 22 legislators Rep. Lynn Schneider, Rep. Roger Chase, and Sen. David Wheeler presented a wrap-up of the the recently-completed 2022 session to the Beadle County Republican Women Thursday.

Rep. Schneider opened the reports by describing the session as a “hangover” from the redistricting process that was quite tedious and ended up leading into a fairly contentious session that had a number of fairly heavy topics to work through as well as a significant amount of dollars to disperse.

Schneider identified marijuana, workforce housing, and party “in-fighting” as the three things that highlighted the session.

On the last item, Schneider identified having multiple House members who are running for Governor while Governor Noem was attempting to push her legislation through pushed a seeming battle of “who could be more conservative” than the other, in his eyes.

In the end, he said, everything got worked out and the budget is completed, so he was pleased with the session.

Sen. Wheeler identified the work he did on the summer study around marijuana as a major focus of his time this year as he worked to clarify the medicinal marijuana laws within the state as well as attempting to work together to create reasonable recreational marijuana laws that came through the negotiations of the legislative process. In the end, the Senate barely passed recreational marijuana, but it was defeated in the House.

Rep. Chase closed remarks by discussing the stressed and divisive atmosphere of the session and related that atmosphere to the amount of money that was dealt with and the 550+ bills that legislators had to process.

“The two largest appropriations ever legislated were done this session,” stated Chase, referring to the $600 million infrastructure bill through federal funding and the $200 million housing funding that utilized $150 million of state general funding, which was the highest amount ever approved in outlay of state funds.

Chase discussed the housing bill that was passed and the work done with Gov. Noem to pass the legislation from her initial proposal.

He stated that the intent of the bill from the summer study committee on housing was to focus on building infrastructure for expanding housing to ensure the state can support expanding housing, and the $200 million funding is set up to do that.

Chase mentioned bills that got very little publication that he was very pleased about. One of those was HB 1306 that funded $25 million to small structures and bridges in counties and townships, something that added to legislation that was passed in the 2021 session and gave $3 million for similar projects.

Finally, Chase expressed how thankful he was that he, Schneider, and Wheeler work together and can take the time to help one another in order to help the people of District 22.