Several members of State House of Representatives focused on Legislative Branch power grab

@SoDakCampaigns

If you recall a few days ago, I reported that State Representative Rhonda Milstead had introduced a resolution to block the executive branch from lobbying…

A CONCURRENT RESOLUTION, Urging the executive branch to refrain from seeking or promoting specific legislative outcomes.

And..

WHEREAS, it is a direct conflict of interest for the executive branch to introduce legislation that, once enacted, is subject to the executive branch’s independent exercise of enforcement authority;

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, by the House of Representatives of the Ninety-Seventh Legislature of the State of South Dakota, the Senate concurring therein, that the executive branch is urged to serve as a transparent resource in the provision of accurate and objective information to the Legislature, but to refrain from utilizing public resources, directly or indirectly, to introduce legislation or lobby members of the Legislature, in an attempt to seek, or promote, a specific legislative outcome.

Read that here.

But come to find out from a correspondent, this isn’t the only legislative push from the State House to block suggestions from the executive branch on legislation to fix problems and challenges they‘ve come across in the preceding months.

In addition to the resolution, there have been three bills filed along the same lines:

These bills certainly appear to be a power grab by the legislative branch, because why else would they be trying to ban proposals from the Governor, department head of an executive agency, a constitutional officer or board, or the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court (as Randolph & Milstead attempt to do in HB 1260.)?

If Secretary of State Barnett finds a deficiency or loophole in our election process, they don’t wanna hear it. If as State Auditor, Rich Sattgast wants to improve a process for paying the state’s bills, or expand open government for the documents he holds, they’re telling him to talk to the hand. Or if the Chief Justice wants to fix a problem in the guardianship law they passed a session or two ago, he would have to jump through new legislative bureaucratic hoops just to get a fair hearing.

Or not get a fair hearing, as they did to the Governor last week.

HB1290 might be even worse, in that some legislators simply want to turn a deaf ear to any concerns that the people who would have to carry out the changes in legislation on a day to day basis can quickly identify at the time of introduction of bills, whether the bright ideas coming out of session could add time and/or expense, all the way to measures being violative of the United States Constitution.

Then we have HB1251, Steve Haugaard’s open-ended vehicle to introduce whatever changes he wants to make to the process of lobbying the Legislature in South Dakota. I’ll defer to Yvonne Taylor’s judgment on whether giving Steve the authority to write that measure on lobbyists would be a good idea.

Fortunately, I suspect all of these measures will go down in flames at some point, whether cooler heads prevail in the House itself, or in the State Senate.

But it’s a good indication of what some members of the House of Representatives are looking for in the years to come for the State Legislature.

More power for a part-time Legislature at the expense of the people who keep the trains running on time each and every day.

16 thoughts on “Several members of State House of Representatives focused on Legislative Branch power grab”

  1. So why should we even have names for the three branches of government ? The legislative branch makes a generous offer to the executive branch in that they can jump the process straight to committee. If the proposal holds merit, it will win out and the people will possess by in, from wherever its origin. Remember this: “Under God the People Rule”.

    1. And the state constitution says: “The Governor shall at the beginning of each session, and may at other times, give the Legislature information concerning the affairs of the state and recommend the measures he considers necessary.”

      Only makes sense that the person running the state government should have some way to propose legislation. Still had to go through the legislative process like any other bill.

    2. If you believe the legislature is the only part of the process then this is a good bill.

      There is a problem with too many white and blue badges sometimes.

      Many of the white badges are there on behalf of governors.

      1. I wouldn’t mind seeing some restrictions on paid lobbyists. They cook up ideas just to make money sometimes.

        1. Blue = state official/employee; white = private/paid lobbyist

          I think the insinuation is the commenter believes a state office his hiring lobbyists.

  2. Funny, the good legislators never have any trouble getting their bills passed. If I were then I’d try harder to have better bills. It’s a sign of weakness to try to ban your opposition.

  4. RE HB1290, one person’s “lobbying” is another person’s “disseminating objective, factual information.” Who’s gonna police that?

  5. Is this possibly a payback for someone secretly hiring a push poll phone bank, to get constituents to call their representative on the house impeachment committee?

  7. None of this would be happening if we had a competent Governor. Instead we have a narcissistic empty vessel who couldn’t manage her way out of a phone booth. Her tenure so far is evidence of this. It’s unfortunate to be sure.

  9. There are more bills than that – check out 146. But since this is year #2 for many newer legislators, I’m wondering if some Legis. believed they would have more “power” over state government (day-to-day) when they ran for office. They have the “power” to legislate. That’s it. They can’t call XYZ office and demand ______. XYZ office tells Sen.Doe to apply the right way. Government doesn’t work like that. It’s a lot of people following/applying a LOT of laws (both state and federal) and getting work done. Power play is right – but they need to take a Macro look at the process instead of a Micro.

  10. HB1290 sponsors is a complete list of Haugaard’s supporters in his Governor’s Campaign. That or a list of the inhabitants of the Island of Unfit Legislators.

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