It's time to pull out the report card on this legislative session

By Gordon Garnos

AT ISSUE: Near the beginning of this legislative session there were five key issues spelled out. They were teacher salaries, open records, public safety, renewable energy and health care. If there were successes in all five items the 2008 legislative session would receive an A grade and go downhill from there. Let's see how they did.

WHAT HAPPENED, or should I say didn't happen, in the realm of Public Safety during this session was getting $2 million put back into the Highway Patrol budget. This issue has bounced all over the capital, but in the end Governor Mike Rounds got his way and the bill by Sen. Gene Abdallah met a tragic death.

What was so discouraging was the fact that when the bill was introduced, most of the legislators signed on as co-sponsors. It would be thought that with such support there would be no question that this money would be put back into the Patrol's budget. But politics is fickle as the history of this bill has proven.

Therefore, considering the strength this bill had at the beginning of the session and what eventually happened, that knocks down the overall grade to a B.

WHAT WAS GOING to happen to what I thought was a good open records bill by Sen. Nancy Turbak Berry, D-Watertown, didn't happen. What she proposed was a bill that went further than the bill that was finally recognized to become law. She asked for a new law that government records were presumed to be open unless a state record is specifically closed by law. That failed muster with our legislators and a less significant bill that includes a mechanism to resolve disputes when there is a question about whether a record is open or not.

From the start of the session Turbak Berry was hesitant about its outcome. She said there was a fear of change. Its failure has to pull the legislative report card down to a C.

ONE WOULD HAVE to say state aid to education got more than the 2.5 percent raise Governor Rounds had recommended, but not as much as many wanted it to be. During the last minutes of the session legislators approved a three percent raise for state aid to education, which one-half percent of that must be used to raise teachers' salaries above what they would normally receive for an annual raise.

This, too, was argued throughout the session, where at one point Sen.
David Knudson's proposal of a 4.25 percent raise was in the limelight. But legislators then almost fell back to the Governor's wishes, setting the 3 point percentage raise.

Because of the legislative action that was taken an entire point cannot be subtracted, but I still have to take off some credit, knocking the legislators' score down to a C-.

AT THE BEGINNING of the session there were dozens of renewable energy proposals. The Governor had a plan to cut by two cents a gallon the tax on biodiesel blends. In the end, Governor Rounds did get that two-cent cut on biofuel tax so it is the same as we pay now on ethanol. Passing this bill was a good move by the Legislature.

Another thing done in this area was the Legislature passing a bill that stated 10 percent of the state's energy needs would come from renewable sources by 2015. But the plan is strictly voluntary. What does all of this mean? It is an attempt to get as much mileage as possible out of our state's renewable energy resources such as ethanol and biofuels. If it could be attained it would be a great benefit to South Dakota.

Because something was done, reducing the tax on biofuel, to help the people of the state, the Legislature's grade won't go up or down on this one so it remains as an overall C-.

AS FAR AS THE health care issue goes, the Legislature did give a three percent raise to nursing home employees, who have been so severely underpaid. While this is a health care issue, this actually was a Social Services bill. Hopefully, this will help long term health care in the state.

There were only a couple real health related bills worth noting here.
One was to establish a state-wide web-based system for reporting hospital charge information by June 1, 2009, and an act to establish a state-wide trauma system. An interesting note here is trauma is the number one cause of death for South Dakotans from 1 to 44 years of age. In 2005 543 South Dakotans died from trauma (injuries) and this law should help reduce that death rate through coordination of hospitals throughout the state.

All in all, as I have said in earlier columns, not very much really new was expected to be accomplished this session. So should the Legislature get a C- or a D for its efforts. You decide....


Gordon Garnos was long-time editor of the Watertown Public Opinion and recently retired after 39 years with that newspaper. Garnos, a lifelong resident of South Dakota except for his military service in the U.S. Air Force, was born and raised in Presho.