Thursday, February 17th marked the end of week 6 of the Legislative Session. Our committees remain very busy, especially House State Affairs, House Judiciary and House Education as there have been a larger than usual number of bills introduced in those areas of interest. Every bill gets a hearing in South Dakota but every bill needs to have a decision before Crossover Day on February 23rd so we are hard at work to make that happen.
On February 10th, HB 1166 was heard in House Agriculture and Natural Resources. As you may remember from my article a few weeks ago, HB 1166 asks for $1,000,000 for the purposes of making improvements to 485th Avenue from Highway 11 to the current, but soon to be former entrance into the Palisades State Park between 255th and 256th Streets. During that February 10th hearing, many of the good people from Garretson came to Pierre to provide proponent testimony including former Representative Oran Sorenson, Joe Vandersnick, Jim Kurtz and Craig Nussaum. All of the District 25 delegation (Representative Jon Hansen, Senator Marsha Symens & myself) were also present to provide proponent testimony for this funding. THANK YOU ALL for coming to Pierre to testify! During that hearing, things went a little sideways. The committee had questions that needed to be answered by GF&P, but they weren’t in the room to answer those questions, and the committee was missing a few members, so the motions to pass and/or defeat the bill were lost. In an effort to get their questions answered, the committee decided to table, which usually defeats the bill. However, at the February 17th meeting, the committee took the bill off the table and sent it to House Appropriations for further discussion. In conclusion, the bill is still alive and I’m still working hard to get the funding to fix the road!!!
The Legislature continues to deal with a large number of bills dealing with marijuana. HB 1045 sets a tax structure for recreational marijuana if it were to be passed via Initiated Measure on the ballot this coming November. There would be a 15% tax on all marijuana products with 4.5% to the State, 2% to the Municipalities and 8.5 to the County. This would line up with the 15% tax proposed with Constitution Amendment A and it appears to be correct amount based on research from other States, as it’s low enough that people would still be able to afford the products and resist the black market, but it’s high enough so that the county can deal with the law enforcement aspects. Please reach out if you differ in opinion on this tax structure.
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!
-Rep. Tom Pischke
