Rep. Tom Pischke, District 25
With the 2nd week of the 2022 Legislative Session now completed, we are starting to see a good number of bills being introduced. We already have 112 bills introduced in the House and 97 introduced in the Senate. Our job will be getting very busy in the upcoming weeks as we manage to navigate through all of these proposed pieces of legislation.
This last week was highlighted with the House Select Committee on Investigation which has been tasked with the duty of investigating the possible Impeachment of Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg. This committee met multiple times last week to investigate the accident that occurred in September of 2022 and took the life of Joe Boever. Several testifiers were questioned included Dept. of Public Safety Secretary Craig Price, Colonel Rick Miller and Hwy Patrolman Kevin Kinney. The committee seems to be a fine job investigating as I was present in the room for a large portion of these meetings and many of the questions were very detailed.
Another highlight from this past week was the Dept of Revenue’s presentation to the House Taxation Committee regarding the intricacies of the property tax system in South Dakota. On average, 56% of your property taxes go to your local school, another 27% go to your County and the remainder goes to your townships, fire and water services or other public services. If you’d like to listen to the presentation, I’d advise to visit the audio playback of the House Taxation committee on January 20th, 2022 on www.sdlegislature.gov
As always, if you are interested in following along with any of our committees or chambers this session, there are two great ways to do that. First, visit www.sdlegislature.gov as this is the Legislature's home page where you can find any information about session that you are looking for. On the front page you will find a schedule of committees and when the House and Senate will be meeting and what's on the agenda for each meeting. You can also find listings of all the bills that we will be working on this session. Additionally, if you want to listen into a committee or chamber you can click on the South Dakota Public Broadcasting icon next to that scheduled meeting to listen live. The Second way to listen and watch is to visit www.SD.Net where you can find all the live audio from the committees and the live audio and video streams from the House and Senate Chambers.
Finally, if you have any questions about how to find information about a bill or committee, or any questions at all about session please contact me. I can be reached most anytime by phone at 605-999-2948 and by email at . If you do call and I’m unable to answer, try sending me a text and I will call you back later. Additionally, if you email please include that you are from District 25 and what town you're from. We get 100s of emails a day and I cannot reply back to them all, but if I know that you are from our district, I will get back to you! Lastly, if you are planning a trip up to the Capitol for a visit during session please let me know so that we can find a time to meet up while you are here! Have a great week and God Bless!
