LEGISLATIVE REPORT

Gregory/Tripp Charles Mix/

Bon Homme Counties

Committees: Agriculture and

Natural Resources, Legislative

Procedure, Chair of Transportation

Capitol Address: 500 E. Capitol Ave. Pierre, SD 57501-5070

Cell: (605) 933-2042

e-mail: Caleb.Finck@sdlegislature.gov

We have made it through another Legislative Session and I am pleased with how the budget pieces came together in the last week. We again passed a balanced budget of just over $5 billion and here are a few accomplishments that I think are worth noting.

First, we were able to hold to the request of Governor Noem to have a 2.4% increase for our “big three” which includes education, state employees, and providers. I am also very happy that we have been able to address funding provider reimbursement rates at 100% of methodology. This is big news for our nursing homes, assisted living centers, and community support providers as we have not been reimbursing at the 100% level for some time now.

Additionally, we were able to fund HB1259 for rural access infrastructure at $6 million which will be enough to fund that program for the initial two years. HB1237 for the match of the local bridge grants was killed but, we were able to find funding through DOT to continue the matching funds for the upcoming year. Finally, SB 93 was funded at the full amount of $20 million for upgrades to the rail line from Ft. Pierre all the way to Rapid City.

Finally, I would like to address the topic of the “Style and Form Veto” of HB 1217 which is the bill to promote continued fairness in women’s sports. I strongly believe that this is an inappropriate use of the executive branches constitutional power of a style and form veto. Typically, a style and form veto has been used by governor if there were problems with grammar and punctuations, and some have used it for minor word changes to help clarify specific sections of legislation. However, the constitution does not specifically define what the words Style or Form mean, so we need to use more conventional methods to do so. From Merriam-Webster the definition of the word “style” is as follows: a convention with respect to spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and typographic arrangement and display followed in writing or printing. Additionally, Websters defines “form” and more specifically “linguistic form” as a meaningful unit of speech (such as a morpheme, word, or sentence).

Now that we have the definition of the words “style and form” we can look at what the Governor is proposing as changes. In sections 1 and 3 of HB 1217 the Governor is proposing to add language to help clarify which type of school the language applies to and additional language to clarify the verification process. These two changes I think are a little bit of a stretch however, there is historical precedence for this as I mentioned above. However, the Governor is also proposing to strike sections 2 and 4 all together, and I cannot see how this possibly fits within the definition of style and form.

If the Governor truly wanted to make these drastic changes to the bill she should have brought them before the legislature during the course of our regular process. HB 1217 was first introduced on Feb ruary 3rd and was not passed by the Senate until March 8th, that gave the Governor 33 days to work with the legislature during our normal session and she did not. I supported HB 1217 on the House Floor on February 24th and I will continue to support the bill as it was written.

The legislature will return to Pierre for Veto Day next Monday, March 29th at 11:00 a.m. to look at the Veto of HB 1217 and any other vetoes that may come this week. If you would like any additional information on these or any other issues, please contact me by email at Caleb.Finck@SDLegislature. gov or call me at 605-933-2042. Have a great week!

Representative

Caleb Finck