It’s About Time
By Sen. John Thune

It was way back in August 1986 when President Reagan signed the last meaningful and comprehensive tax reform legislation into law. Randy Travis’s “On The Other Hand” was at the top of the country music charts, Bo Jackson was the first overall pick in the NFL draft, and Kimberley and I were in our second year of marriage. Just think for a moment about everything that’s changed in your own life over the last three decades: marriage, children, jobs, homes. Needless to say, reviewing, modernizing, and reforming our tax code is long overdue.

If you’ve ever flipped through the Internal Revenue Code – it’s not a light read – you’d know just how big and overly complex it has become. Most folks wouldn’t have to go to those lengths, though. For a lot of families, just filing their annual taxes can be a large enough burden. Even with online tax preparation programs and professional tax preparers, which nine out of 10 Americans now use, many people are still uncertain about their return’s accuracy when they file it.

There’s been a lot on the Senate’s agenda this year, but I’ve been working hard to get a head-start on tax reform so we can hit the ground running when the Senate returns to Washington from its summer state work period. While I’m back in South Dakota, I plan on visiting different parts of the state to take my message about pro-growth tax reform directly to the people who would be affected. With a code as massive as the one we have in the United States, it’s hard to find a single American whom tax reform wouldn’t touch.

My goals for tax reform are actually pretty simple. For starters, I believe we must provide middle-class tax relief, simplify the code, and pursue reforms that increase wages, jobs, and economic growth in South Dakota. While creating an environment for new job growth is important, I also think tax reform must encourage employers to keep good-paying jobs here at home. Finally, whatever we do, we must improve and strengthen America’s competitive edge in an ever-growing global economy. It’s not just the nation’s largest corporations, but also our hometown businesses that make up the supply chain that are at risk if America continues to fall behind in the global marketplace.

Setting these goals is the easy part. The hard, but necessary work of getting a bill on the president’s desk comes next. I’ve already introduced several individual tax reform bills this year to help lay the groundwork for that effort. If you’re interested in learning more about them, go to www.thune.senate.gov and click on the tax reform icon on my homepage.

Over the next few weeks and months, I look forward to hearing from you and continuing to work with my colleagues on the Finance Committee as we work toward creating a tax system that works for South Dakotans, not against them.

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The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally Rolls into Town
By U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.)

Every August, South Dakota welcomes hundreds of thousands of motorcyclists from across the country to participate in the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. No single week in the entire year boasts a greater influx in the state’s overall population than the week of the rally and the weeks before and after the rally. During this time, motorcyclists gather together in perhaps the largest bike gathering of all time.

What began as a single motorcycle race in 1938, the weeklong rally takes place in the small town of Sturgis in the Black Hills of Western South Dakota, a normally quiet town with a population of almost 7,000. During the week of the rally, however, Main Street Sturgis evolves into a bustling hub where motorcycle enthusiasts and other tourists come to enjoy like-minded company, entertainment, the South Dakota landscape and local food. The economic impact of the rally is impressive. A study conducted by the Rally Department of the City of Sturgis gauged the economic impact of the 2010 rally, which hosted 466,000 attendees, as generating roughly $817 million dollars in economic activity for the state. That is just in one year.

The city of Sturgis benefits from the rally, but so does the entire state of South Dakota. Though the rally only lasts 10 days, visitors often like to extend their trip to explore the rest of the state. With the Black Hills National Forest, Badlands National Park, Mount Rushmore National Monument, the Mickelson Trail, Jewel Cave, historic Deadwood and the Crazy Horse Memorial all within biking distance of Sturgis, visitors can experience the fun and excitement of the rally one day and the pristine beauty of South Dakota’s Black Hills the next.

While the Black Hills are a must-see for visitors to our state, opportunities for fun and adventure can be found in every part of South Dakota. In the central and eastern part of the state, a number of glacial lakes and reservoirs provide for top-notch fishing, especially if you’re trying to catch walleye or smallmouth bass. Visitors to our great state often like to camp, kayak, canoe, hike, bike or golf during their vacation—all great ways to explore the land of infinite variety that is South Dakota.

Jean and I wish everyone attending this year’s Sturgis Motorcycle Rally a safe and fun-filled trip.  We hope that visitors will take some time to explore South Dakota’s stunning landscapes and rich history while they’re here in the land of great faces and great places.

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It’s been dry…
By Rep. Kristi Noem

It’s been dry to say the very least. Every county in the state has experienced this year’s drought to some degree, with many facing severe or extreme conditions. Well over half of South Dakota’s wheat is in poor or very poor condition, as is most of our barley, oats and alfalfa. Corn and soybeans are hurting too.  Meanwhile, many pastures have been brown for some time, leaving ranchers with a severe feed shortage and forcing many to downsize their herds.

Every farmer and rancher understands agriculture is a risky business. You can have good crops for a decade, but one or two bad years can change everything. Times like this underscore the importance of providing a safety net to those who maintain our food supply.

Earlier this month, I joined members of the House Agriculture Committee for a Farm Bill listening session where these safety nets were a primary focus. During the 2014 Farm Bill debate, I fought hard as a member of the final negotiating team to strengthen crop insurance and make the Livestock Forage Program permanent, because ranchers should have some certainty about the safety nets available when drought conditions leave wheat heads unfilled and pastures bare. At the same time, taxpayers deserve certainty too. By building safety-net programs like this into the budget rather than doing crisis-by-crisis emergency spending, we can better predict financial needs and avoid deficit spending.

Additionally, I’ve been pleased to see Secretary Perdue incrementally open South Dakota’s CRP acres for haying and grazing, following a request I made to do so. He also allowed for certain CRP contract holders to donate their hay to livestock producers in drought-stricken counties. This relief was needed, but I believe this is an area where ranchers ought to have more certainty. In late July, I introduced the Donations in Rough Years (DRY) Act. This bill would permanently allow the hay harvested on certain CRP acres to be donated to ranchers struggling to meet their feed needs.

Droughts and fires can leave thousands of acres bare, while farmers and ranchers elsewhere are forced to destroy good hay. There’s just no reason feed should be wasted. The DRY Act offers a commonsense solution. More specifically, the bill would allow for hay harvested in line with CRP management practices to be donated to ranchers suffering from a severe drought (categorized as D2 on the U.S. Drought Monitor) for eight weeks or an extreme drought (categorized as D3) for any length of time.  If a presidential disaster is declared due to fire, ranchers would also be eligible to receive donated hay.

Too often, the federal government waits until a situation gets bad before figuring out how to deal with it. In situations where days matter – such as in the midst of a drought-induced feed shortage – relief can come too late. We should be more proactive. That’s why it was important to fight to strengthen crop insurance and make livestock disaster programs permanent. It’s also why I believe the DRY Act is necessary.  It won’t make the rain fall, but perhaps it can give a little peace of mind at a very unpredictable time.

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The 2017 Sturgis Motorcycle Rally
A column by Gov. Dennis Daugaard:

It’s almost rally time in South Dakota. What started in 1938 as a single motorcycle race in a small town has grown into one of the largest and best-known motorcycle gatherings in the world. This year is the 77^th Annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, and though we don’t expect the numbers will approach the levels we saw two years ago, the rally is sure to bring a crowd.

Motorcycle enthusiasts won’t just be visiting Sturgis. They will be traveling all around the Black Hills – staying in our hotels and at our campgrounds, eating in our local restaurants, shopping in our stores and refueling at our gas stations. Each year the rally has a big economic impact on Sturgis and all of the Black Hills, and that creates benefits for our state too.

An event this size is not without its challenges. To help things go smoothly, the state has opened the Rally Operations Center and a Traffic Operations Center. Local law enforcement, the Highway Patrol and ambulance services will have additional personnel working during the rally.

Many state agencies will provide additional staff to support food safety, drinking water safety, fire safety, roadway safety, emergency communications, and vendor sales tax registrations and collections. National Guard soldiers will also be prepared in the event they are needed to respond to a large-scale disaster.

For the past 76 years, we’ve had no major emergency at the Sturgis Rally. Our goal is to get through the 77^th rally with that record intact, but we need help.

We’re asking South Dakotans to do their part to help make this a safe journey for our visitors. Drive carefully and be particularly mindful of the motorcycles on the road. Don’t get distracted by electronic devices. It only takes one mistake to alter your life and someone else’s forever. If you live in the Black Hills area, leave extra time to reach your destinations, and be patient with law enforcement and emergency responders. If something doesn’t look right, let law enforcement know.

For those who are attending the rally, be careful and be prepared. Wear a helmet and proper riding attire. If you are driving a vehicle, wear your seatbelt. Most importantly, don’t drink and drive.

Riders can visit SouthDakotaRides.com for real-time information and some helpful tips. On the website are links to weather updates, fire danger information, Twitter feeds from the departments of Transportation and Public Safety, and a map of hospital, urgent care and police station locations.

One of government’s primary functions is to keep people safe. The state of South Dakota is ready to perform that responsibility and we welcome the opportunity to host so many visitors in our great state. If South Dakotans and our visitors do their part, it will go a long way toward helping make the 77th Sturgis Motorcycle Rally a safe and fun event.

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In recent weeks, South Dakota Democrats passed on another opportunity to amend the constitution, and force their state party chairman Ann Tornberg to be up for immediate election after kicking the can down the road earlier this year when they try to do so on the day they held their big dinner in Sioux Falls.

Why is there such discontent? One word: performance.  And we are continuing to read about the Democrat party’s ongoing problems. 

The folks over at Sioux Falls drinking liberally have another missive today about the poor performance of the staff at the South Dakota Democrat party, and their continued efforts at driving the Democrat party to oblivion in South Dakota:

In South Dakota, that extension of the University of South Dakota’s student government politics called the South Dakota Democratic Party (SDDP), continues to go through the motions of a functioning political party and the staff periodically reprints passages from their job descriptions to justify their paycheck and the monthly subsidy the Party receives from the Democratic National Committee. For example, in an e-mail on May 24th, the SDDP announced a statewide voter registration campaign. “Today we’re announcing the Summer Voter Registration Challenge for county party organizations. We’re challenging every county party to register as many voters as they can this summer…The Challenge will run from June 1 to September 1…We are encouraging every county party to have some sort of registration event on June 3…”

The e-mail didn’t specify what “sort of” registration event should be held but it did ask recipients to contact the SDDP with any questions anyone may have, such as “What the hell should I do”.

The results of the “Summer Voter Registration Challenge” have been predictable. Since the late May announcement, Democratic voter registration has declined statewide by 983 voters. I know it is summer vacation and school is still out, but the USD football team is already practicing for the opening game. Perhaps it is time for Ann Tornberg and her USD staff at the SDDP to pick it up a notch and send out another e-mail. It may seem like Student Government at the SDDP and who really cares about that but you are getting paid.

Read it all here.

If you hadn’t caught it, State Senator Al Novstrup is celebrating another trip around the sun today.

Go to his facebook page, and give him some good cheer from his friends at dakotawarcollege.com!

From facebook, former State Representative Fred Deutsch is going to be giving a presentation tomorrow in Sioux Falls against the proposed Assisted Suicide Act. (Otherwise known as ‘not killing grandma’)

Make a point to show up and learn about the pitfalls of passing laws to allow people to kill themselves and their loved ones. Aside from the obvious.

Remember: the life you eventually save may be your own!

From the Argus Leader:

Gov. Dennis Daugaard on Thursday said he’ll support a proposal to ban out-of-state money to South Dakota ballot measure campaigns.

And…

“I’m hopeful that that will have some success and I might just help him out,” Daugaard said.

The Republican governor clarified that he would likely be willing to provide financial backing to the ballot measure committee.

Read it here.

Interesting that the Governor is in support of the Mickelson measure, especially in light of the AG’s warning on constitutionality. 

State Senator Stace Nelson, who is apparently spending his summer trying to get as much media attention as he can, appeared on the Greg Belfrage show this morning talking about one of his favorite subjects: Himself.

That is, he was given 20 minutes to talk about how everyone else is corrupt, “people” are trying to cover things up, everyone in Pierre is in on it, and ramble on how they’re all stonewalling his efforts.

As he was claiming “a coverup is afoot” he did mention something that caught my attention from the e-mails I was furnished earlier this week.  As he was talking about himself, he spoke how earlier this year, he “put out a list of ten questions that people in my district had of Representative Kyle Schoenfish,” who Stace claims is one of the auditors that worked on Mid-Central.

A couple of problems with this claim.

First, when Stace is talking about a list of questions that “people in his District had,” as typical of Stace, that’s a obfuscation. It isn’t a list that of questions that people had. It’s a list of ten questions that one person came up with, and sent to Stace with his command to ask the questions of Schoenfish:

Just so you can read it a little better, I’ve blown up the mail header for the e-mail of questions…

As I was noting his inexplicable inclusion in a mass e-mail from Nelson earlier this week, Stace Nelson’s witch hunt against Representative Kyle Schoenfish appears to be directly at the request of former Democrat Legislator Frank Kloucek.

The other prolem with what Nelson is shoveling, as recognized by the GOAC committee, is that despite Nelson’s marching orders from Kloucek, there’s one little problem with Nelson trying to carry out his mandate.  By all indications, Kyle Schoenfish has nothing to do with the audit.

In fact, when appearing in the media over the past several months, Nelson may have flat out lied when he claimed that Schoenfish was conducting the audits under the supervision of his father, or that he was “one of”‘ the auditors working on the mid-central audit.

Except for Nelson continuously making the claim, and trying to question him at Kloucek’s behest, there’s yet to be any evidence presented to show that Kyle was specifically involved in the audit.

Which makes Nelson’s e-mail tantrum the other day even more understandable.

Because if people start realizing that Nelson’s pressing the attack against Kyle Schoenfish is little more than Stace (at Franks Kloucek’s request) attacking a political rival – they’re going to start to wonder how many of his other wild-eyed claims wither in the light.

Attorney General Explanation Released for Constitutional Amendment Regarding Initiated and Referred Measures

 PIERRE, S.D. – South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley announced today an Attorney General Explanation for a proposed constitutional amendment has been filed with the Secretary of State. This explanation is for a revised amendment submitted by the sponsor. The Attorney General Explanation for this prior version of this  amendment was filed June 5, 2017. The explanation will appear on a petition that will be circulated by the sponsor of the amendment. If the sponsor obtains a sufficient number of signatures (27,741) by November 6, 2017, as certified by the Secretary of State, the amendment will be placed on the ballot for the November 2018 general election.

The amendment is entitled “An initiated amendment to the South Dakota Constitution regarding initiated and referred measures.”

Under South Dakota law, the Attorney General is responsible for preparing explanations for proposed initiated measures, referred laws, and South Dakota Constitutional Amendments. Specifically, the explanation includes a title, an objective, clear and simple summary of the purpose and effect of the proposed amendment and a description of the legal consequences. The Attorney General Explanation is not a statement either for or against the proposed amendment.

AG Statement Regarding Initiated and Referred Measures by Pat Powers on Scribd

To date the Attorney General has released Attorney General Explanations for the following:

1. An initiated measure requiring students to use rooms designated for the same biological sex, and requiring public schools to provide a reasonable accommodation for students whose gender identity is not the same as their biological sex
2. An initiated measure authorizing a South Dakota-licensed physician to prescribe drugs that a terminally ill patient may take for the purpose of ending life
3. An initiated measure to legalize marijuana for medical use
4. An initiated measure to legalize certain amounts of marijuana, drugs made from marijuana, and drug paraphernalia, and to regulate and tax marijuana establishments
5. An initiated measure requiring people to use certain rooms designated for the same biological sex
6. An initiated measure to legalize all quantities of marijuana
7. An amendment to the South Dakota Constitution regarding initiated and referred measures
8. An initiated amendment to the South Dakota Constitution changing campaign finance and lobbying laws, creating a government accountability board, and changing certain initiative and referendum provisions (VERSION #1)
9. An initiated amendment to the South Dakota Constitution changing campaign finance and lobbying laws, creating a government accountability board, and changing certain initiative and referendum provisions (VERSION #2)
10. An initiated amendment to the South Dakota Constitution changing campaign finance and lobbying laws, and creating a government accountability board (VERSION #3)
11. An initiated amendment to the South Dakota Constitution changing campaign finance and lobbying laws, and creating a government accountability board (VERSION #4)
12. An initiated amendment to the South Dakota Constitution establishing open primary elections
13. An initiated amendment to the South Dakota Constitution providing for state legislative redistricting by a commission
14. An initiated measure prohibiting contributions to ballot question committees by non-residents, out-of-state political committees, and entities that are not filed with the Secretary of State
15. An initiated measure increasing the State tobacco tax and creating a postsecondary technical institute fund for the purposes of lowering student tuition and providing financial support to the State postsecondary technical (VERSION #1)
16. An initiated measure increasing the State tobacco tax and creating a postsecondary technical institute fund for the purposes of lowering student tuition and providing financial support to the State postsecondary technical (VERSION #2)

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