Did last legislative session do South Dakota any good?

By Gordon Garnos

AT ISSUE: The First of July brought with it several new laws that were passed by the last legislative session and signed into law by Governor Mike Rounds. It depends on who you talk to as to whether or not they were good laws, laws that will help the social and economic status of our great state, or will prove to be a waste of our legislators' time. An example of the laws passed, perhaps the one that will prove to be the most controversial, if it isn't already, is the change in agricultural land valuations. Another one that is significant to the larger cities in South Dakota is the change in the antiquated liquor laws. Nor can we forget those proposed laws that didn't make it into law.

WHAT IS THE BEST way to determine the value of farm land for tax purposes?
That issue is so old that if Methuselah had a piece of South Dakota dirt and argued about it the way it has been in recent years he wouldn't have made it those 969 years.

Up until now the taxable value of agricultural land was based on the selling price of comparable land. However, that system was broke when land prices went through the ceiling. Most land sales today go for highly inflated prices, so high it would be extremely unfair to compare those prices for tax purposes.

So what did our illustrious Legislature do about that? The new law says that through some kind of a schedule it will be determined that farm land taxes will be on the ability to produce income. Not being a farmer I can't predict the outcome of this new law, but I certainly hope it doesn't resemble the results of the old personal property tax we used to pay. For example, back in my editor days, a check showed there were only 14 boats in a county that had at least that many lakes.

We hope the new law will prove to be worthwhile and it shouldn't take too long to determine whether it is or not. If I had to predict I would have to say legislators may have to go back to the drawing board on this one.

SOUTH DAKOTA'S liquor laws have not changed for a long, long time. Why? In my way of thinking it has been because of the extremely strong liquor lobby that has pretty well set the rules for decades. The number of liquor licenses to be issued for a community or county were set by the number of residents they had.

A lot of South Dakotans, and others, too, I might add, have long thought that liquor was either a demon of the devil or the elixir of life and there was no compromise. Thus, to get any shift in the liquor laws, a new angle had to be found by those wanting change. So, in the past couple of years those proponents of change came up with the idea that to get more restaurants, the big ones, the chain ones, the need for more liquor licenses became an issue of economic development, at least for those South Dakota towns larger than 5,000 souls.

Opponents to this were primarily those who already owned liquor licenses, fearing what they had paid thousands of dollars for would become virtually worthless. Those wanting the new, fancier restaurants argued that those liquor licenses were nothing more than a commodity, like a can of corn, and as such the price for such a license could go up or down.

THIS PUT OUR legislators to work. They liked the idea, at least some of them did, about the issue being an economic development issue. With this in mind the new law is now on the books. Other related laws now provide for more off-sale licenses and created a combination license to sell beer and wine.

Simply put, the new law allows unlimited licenses for full service restaurants that want to sell liquor by the drink. In other words, if you live in a South Dakota town with 5,000 or more residents, the new law removes restrictions on cities and counties that issue liquor licenses to full service restaurants. However, they must get no more than 40 percent of their gross profits from their booze, excuse me, cocktail sales.

I WOULD BE remiss if I didn't at least mention a couple of potential laws that didn't make it and are the points of argument today between our Governor and some legislators on both sides of the political fence.

The legislature said, "No," to the Governor to spending more money on his laptop computer project for South Dakota schools, but the Governor went ahead and found the money to get 15 more schools into the laptop program.

Another issue between the administration and the legislative body is if and how the ethanol tax should be collected. So far there is no resolution to either issue.

Of course, to at least one state senator is the issue of the Governor curtailing about $2 million from the Highway Patrol's funding for this fiscal year. We understand the senator is still miffed over that one....

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.