Second Rapid City 2008 Legislative Crackerbarrel

The second Rapid City legislative crackerbarrel of the 2008 South Dakota legislative session was held at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology today from 9:00 am to 11:00 am.

On hand were Rep. Gordon Pederson (Dist. 30), Rep Brian Gosch (Dist. 32), Rep. Gordon Howie (Dist. 30), Rep. David Lust (Dist. 34), Senator Dennis Schmidt (Dist. 33), Senator Tom Katus (Dist. 32), Rep. Mark Kirkeby (Dist. 35), Rep. Ed McLaughlin (Dist. 34), Rep. Jeff Haverly (Dist. 35), Senator Bill Napoli (Dist. 35), Rep. Mike Buckingham (Dist. 33), Rep. Don Van Etten (Dist. 33), Rep. Brian Dreyer (Dist. 32), Senator Mac McCracken (Dist. 34), and Senator Jim Lintz (Dist. 30).


Senator Jim Lintz was the first featured speaker of the morning. He talked about efforts to fix problems and inequities with the current agriculture tax system and said HB 1005 addresses this.

Senator Bill Napoli was the second featured speaker. Napoli encouraged attendees to review the brochures about South Dakota license plate changes which were handed out at the crackerbarrel.

Napoli referred to a recent article and political cartoon in the Rapid City Weekly news regarding his position on term limits. He said the article was correct in quoting him stating he wouldn’t serve in the legislature beyond 2010, but the cartoon implied that Napoli wanted to go by 1992 standards, meaning his earlier statement was not true. He was critical of the misleading impression given by this cartoon.

Napoli said he had pushed term limits when it was passed in 1992 and finally went into effect in 1994. He said that more than anything else, the original intent was to include the federal representatives, and when a court challenge knocked that down, it was left only impacting the legislature.

Napoli said it has destroyed the integrity of the system of the legislature. He said it has served to get rid of some of the folks that wouldn’t get out when they needed to, but it got rid of some good folks, too. Napoli said he made a mistake in supporting term limits and he believed it should be fixed.

Napoli said that there are some good legislators that, even though he has opposed them often, they should be allowed to stay and continue serving the people of South Dakota.

Napoli said we need to pass SJR 1 to repeal legislative term limits.

Napoli said while he believes liquor laws are outdated and need to be changed, he doesn’t believe the current bill dealing with this is the right bill to do it.

Rep. Buckingham was the third features speaker, and said South Dakota is 35th in the nation in student funding. Yet the newspaper says we’re 51st in teacher salaries, and that’s true. He said the problem is that the legislature is blamed, but they don’t control teacher salaries; school boards do. He said last year the legislature added $30 million in new spending. Buckingham also said that because of Rep. Van Etten’s tobacco tax increase, additional money was raised for education while keeping property levels stable with no increase, yet there is no recognition of these efforts in favor of education in the media.

Pre-kindergarten is a good program, Buckingham said. He said pre-K programs help prepare kids for kindergarten, but it “isn’t a level playing field.” He said the personal experience he and his wife had illustrated that some programs don’t do enough to help children academically.

He said no rules were defined for last year’s bill when it was submitted, and that’s the reason he opposed it. He said he wants to make sure that religious and private pre-k systems get to participate in any new system. Buckingham said he thought the Department of Education would draft some standards and bring them to the legislature this year, but instead they brought a law that says it’s not mandatory but doesn’t define rules. Buckingham says this means he can’t predict what this will do to good private preschools around the state. He says he will remain opposed until he sees a draft of the standards.

Buckingham encouraged attendees to look beyond the headlines to see what the legislature is doing for education, because the people aren’t getting the whole story.

Rep. Gordon Pederson was the fourth and final featured speaker. He serves on the commerce committee, and said federal funds will be shorter than normal this year. He said too much of federal money is going to “pure pork.”

He said that projects such as the I-90 Exit 61 revamp is paid for first by the state, which is then reimbursed by the federal government, so this requires the state to have reserve funds on hand to pay for this until reimbursed. This has considerably drained the state’s reserve funds.

Pederson said the money which was taken out of the Highway Patrol budget will not affect public safety and emergency response. The Patrol is looking at ways to cut expenses in the way they drive around, and through other administrative considerations.

He also discussed Lintz’s SB 167 to address long trains that block traffic in towns. He said there was a situation in Edgemont where emergency services were blocked from responding to an incident for 45 minutes by a long train.

Q & A Session

A local doctor asked how the legislature is dealing with the problem of uninsured people in South Dakota. The local legislators deferred to Rep. Joel Dykstra, Republican from Canton and U.S. Senate candidate, who was present in the audience, since he served on the Zaniya Health Care Task Force last summer.

Dykstra said the commonly-cited figure of 90,000 uninsured people in South Dakota was based on an extrapolation using national factors that didn’t fit South Dakota’s situation; the South Dakota number is actually about 48,000 people. He said South Dakota has a bigger problem with long-term uninsured people (more than 5 years) than the national average, and a large part of the people in this situation are self-employed people like farmers and ranchers.

Dykstra said there are bills in the legislature this year to increase funding for certain programs like prenatal care and elderly patients. He said the legislature is working with the medical industry to provide more information to the people to make better health care decisions, enabling them to identify facilities that give better care for a better price.

Rep. Van Etten said the 2006 campaign brought up the 90,000 figure several times and he rebutted it several times, stating it was bout 45,000 and the study done by the Zaniya task force proved it. He said “free” medical care or mandatory insurance laws are not the answer. He said even states with mandatory car insurance laws still don’t have universal coverage.

Katus said he was on the Zaniya task force, and he was most disappointed when Gov. Mitt Romney’s task force director said the question of mandatory coverage was not really addressed in the Massachusetts system. He said their system has had good success and their percentages of coverage are quite high. Katus said he had promoted a system to address gaps in coverage, but the governor shot it down.

A question was asked about SB 164, the bill which would remove the right of pharmacists to decline selling birth control to customers based on moral conscience reservations.

Van Etten said the bill just came to his attention yesterday, and though he hasn’t studied it, he “vehemently object[s] to this bill.” He read part of the bill aloud to the audience, and said that this bill purports to address a “government intrusion” into people’s lives, the bill itself is a government intrusion into the lives of pharmacists, and applies not only to contraceptives but other drugs the pharmacist thinks may be dangerous, or may involve dangerous doses. He said most pharmacists going into the field these days have a PhD in pharmacology, and this bill would interfere with their informed and moral choices with regard to how they do their job.

A local resident objected to SB 26, the pre-k bill. She said, “This smacks of communism, socialism and the Soviet Union,” in taking kids out of homes and instructing them by the state. She said kindergarten started as voluntary, but now it’s mandatory. She asked which of the legislators was going up to the hospital to take babies out today (implying that since the state is assuming responsibility for children at a younger and younger age, infants will be next).

Howie said many legislators here today do not support that bill, and reassured her. He said many legislators will stand to defend the rights of parents to raise their children.

Lintz said everyone who has favored this bill in the legislator knew funding would be an issue, and this pre-k bill would cost $25 to $90 million dollars. He said that with teachers’ salaries already a problem this isn’t moving in the right direction.

Buckingham reiterated what he’d said earlier, that he would vote against this in committee if they don’t see a draft of the rules.

Haverly said he doesn’t think he’d vote for it even if he does see the rules. He said there is a big difference between having standards for child care and standards for pre-K. He said pre-k programs now are governed privately and can decide how they are accredited, and it’s “flat wrong for the state to get involved in people’s private business yet again.” He closed by saying he would definitely oppose this bill and speak against it on the House floor.

Napoli said government is supposed to make sense and while we heard the governor say we have no money, we put forward this pre-k proposal that will cost more money, and that doesn’t make sense. He said all the discussion about this so far has been about government, with no discussion about how it will affect families.

Schmidt said he was one of the 11 legislators who voted against this, and he said he’s pro-family all the way. Schmidt also pointed out how on one side, people are saying the state doesn’t have enough money, but on the other, programs like this are being promoted. He said the lack of standards and specifics are disconcerting, as well. Schmidt commended the woman who had asked about SB 26 and said more people need to speak up in defense of their values. He said, “We need to stop being mamby-pamby and stick with what we know is right.”

Katus said he’s one of the ones who voted for this bill. He said he didn't appreciate being called a communist, since he has served in the military and the Peace Corps. He said some families don’t have many options. He said nutrition is important to kids and the headstart program has helped with this.

I had to leave the crackerbarrel about 10:15 am, but my sources tell me the pre-k bill was discussed again throughout the remainder of the event, and most of the legislators remained adamant in their opposition to the bill.