I think there’s a message there. Is the Legislature flexing, or posturing?
Yesterday, a couple of legislators had a few things to say about the Governor’s proposed cuts to the highway patrol. A couple of legislators as in a potentially veto-proof 85 of them:
A measure introduced today would restore funding to the Highway Patrol after the Governor cut the department’s budget by $2 million. Of the 105 South Dakota legislators, 85 have sponsored Senate Bill 172.
Right now, the legislation gives the Highway Patrol just one dollar out of the general fund. But only giving an agency one dollar is a strategy used by legislators that allows them to negotiate how much they want to give to that agency.
and..
Republican Senator Gene Abdallah, the former head of South Dakota’s Highway Patrol, is the main sponsor behind the legislation. He says right now the money for the department is slated to come out of the general fund. But he doesn’t care if the money has to come out of the state’s reserves as long as the Highway Patrol gets it’s two million dollars back.
Read it all here at KELOland.com.
This is as powerful a statement from the legislature as we saw in last years’ measure to take over the 4th floor. It’s not often that something like this happens, a bold in-your-face move from a legislature that isn’t one to flex it’s muscle as a supposedly equal branch of government.
Given that Lt. Governor Daugaard has announced his candidacy for Governor in 2010 (with others anticipated to get into the race), and Governor Rounds has already endorsed Dennis, is this an indication that legislators might be more apt to reject some of the Gov’s policy initiatives? Might they even be painting him with the “lame duck” label a year or two early?
Or is the gesture of bucking the Governor to get behind law enforcement “too easy” to pass up in an election year?
Flexing or posturing?
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I just think it is interesting that the lib Dems snd their friends at the ACLU are the first to scream about those SDHP drug-dog searches of vehicles on I-90, but they “support” the SDHP when it is politically expedient. So yes, it is posturing.