This interview originally aired on In the Moment on SDPB Radio.
Jon Hunter and Mike Card, Ph.D., frequently take on the mantle of In the Moment's Dakota Political Junkies. They were the first Junkies to join the show at the beginning of the session, so we welcomed them back at the end for a legislative recap.
They join Lori Walsh to review the overall 2023 session and preview Veto Day. The two lead listeners through the high and low points of the session and speculate on what twists and turns could still be ahead.
Hunter is publisher emeritus of the Madison Daily Leader. Card is a political scientist and professor emeritus at the University of South Dakota.
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Lori Walsh:
You are listening to In the Moment on South Dakota Public Broadcasting. I'm Lori Walsh. Now think back for a minute all the way to January's state of the state address. You will remember we talked to two of our political junkies to recap the speech and I think we did it again for the state for the budget address. Now we are staring down the barrel of veto day here and they are back. Jon Hunter is publisher emeritus of the Madison Daily Leader and he's with me in Sioux Falls. Welcome Jon.
Jon Hunter:
Thanks, Lori.
Lori Walsh:
We'll fix that in a minute. Mike card is with us. He's a political scientist, professor emeritus at the University of South Dakota. Mike, welcome as well.
Mike Card:
I'm glad to be here.
Lori Walsh:
All right. I think by now, listeners have figured out my voice is not 100% yet.
Jon Hunter:
We'll cover for you.
Lori Walsh:
So you two can just talk amongst yourselves for a little bit. No. Let's talk about vetoes first. So Jon Hunter and I just were pulling up one of the vetoed bills, which was 1109, and seeing that they already did try, lawmakers tried to override that veto. That failed so that veto is sustained. Jon, help us understand the regular business of the session and then coming back on March 27th for veto day.
Jon Hunter:
Right. So the laws of South Dakota allow... They're actually really well-defined and I really do need to give credit to lawmakers over the many years in setting this up. So a bill to change things in South Dakota or even to appropriate money needs to go through a rigorous process. It needs to go through both houses, needs to go through committees signed by the governor, and if it fails at any of those levels, then the bill is not enacted.
Now the final one that we're talking about is the governor's veto and all bills require that signature. And if she chooses not to sign it to veto it, the legislature has one more chance to say, "We feel so strongly about this that we want to enact it anyway. So the law sets up that if two-thirds of each chamber agrees on overriding a veto, then it becomes law anyway and it's pretty rare that you'd see both chambers in a Republican controlled legislature feel so strongly and against what the governor believes that it would be overridden. And the example you just gave about business improvement districts was a situation where not enough people wanted to override that. So the veto is sustained and the bill does not become law.
Lori Walsh:
That was basically trying to increase the maximum tax for a hotel stay to $4 a night or 4%. Her logic behind this was we're not raising taxes. This is essentially a tax increase even if mostly it would impact South Dakota visitors. That's just not what we're doing this session. Here's my veto. Mike Card, what else would you add to the conversation about vetoes and the governor and really what it reveals about the relationship between these two bodies and how that intersects with what voters have to say?
Mike Card:
First of all, one thing that Lee Strubinger noted it in an earlier segment was that the tendency is if the governor vetoes a bill, there are fewer people will vote to override the veto than voted for the bill in its original passage. That is once the governor vetoes a bill, it is less likely to be overridden just no matter what the percentage is to vote. That'll come into play later when we talk about some of these other bills that either have been or may be vetoed in the future. One other feature that we're dealing with is the governor doesn't have to sign a bill into law. She has 15 days or the governor has 15 days, if I speak more generically, when the legislature is in recess for the governor to sign a bill, making it law, usually on July 1st of the next year, or if there's an emergency clause that the legislature determines there's an emergency and the bill needs to go into effect immediately.
It goes into effect once the governor signs the bill into law and delivers it to the Secretary of State. Or when the legislature is in recess, there are 15 days and those are 15 calendar days. That will end on March 24th of this year since they adjourned on the Thursday of last week. And on Monday, the legislature will meet to consider vetoes. There are currently 73 bills as of about an hour and a half ago that I counted them up that the governor has neither signed nor have they the timeline for the governor to sign a bill passed. So there are 73 bills yet to be talked about.
The most probably significant of these is the general appropriations bill to fund the existing and ongoing institutions of state government. What these, the override, represents with the governor is there's been a little bit of a contentious relationship. There were some priorities of the governor including putting a or reducing in the state sales and use tax to remove the grocery tax from that. That bill was killed in committee. There was a resurrection of that bill in the Senate last week on Monday, but on Tuesday morning of last week, the House of Representatives fail to concur with the amendments in the Senate. As Jon noted, it has to pass both chambers with at least a majority. If it's a tax bill, it needs to have two-thirds vote of the members elected and if it doesn't equal that and they don't concur, means that the bill doesn't pass both chambers with the same language. So then it died. So what we have is a reduction in the state sales tax from 4.5% to 4.2% with local governments and tribal nations in South Dakota able to add to that.
Lori Walsh:
Okay. So that is super important, listeners, because that general appropriation bill, it's only the 15th of March. She hasn't been signed yet. So March 24th would be that those 15 days, March 27th would be when they would override a veto. Jon, it's still possible that the governor could veto the general appropriations bill and Will Mortenson said, I don't want to misquote him because I'd have to go back and listen to exactly what he said to me but when I asked him the last time I interviewed him on the show whether they had the votes to override a veto of the general appropriations bill, he sounded confident that that was something they would have the votes to do, that that bill has a lot of support when it goes forward in the body. What are you watching for here, Jon?
Jon Hunter:
Yes, and I remember that conversation you had with Mr. Mortenson. Also, Casey Crabtree has had made comments about that as well. They both are, I think, nonplussed about the situation because there is a lot of back and forth between the governor's office and the legislative body during the whole session.
Lori Walsh:
Every day. I'm talking to the governor's office every day.
Jon Hunter:
Yeah, multiple times a day. And so if there is something in that that the governor doesn't like and it could be very well that they would be prepared and both Will and Casey are fully prepared to negotiate and start working again and try to resolve those differences. And eventually you get to a point where the legislature could say, look, we just don't want to bend anymore to what the governor's office wants and we're going to override this and then they can do that. Or they could say, no, let's try to work out something in the middle or let's completely accede to what the governor. So the good news is that this is not at all a possibility of some sort of crisis just because that now it may end up being a really long session, so get your sleeping bags ready. So you're going to be sleeping on the floor of the chamber, but to work this out. But I think everyone's prepared to do what needs to be done if it's vetoed. And so I don't think it's a crisis brewing at all.
Lori Walsh:
Okay. Mike, do you concur? It's not really a crisis brewing, it's just interesting political theater in some ways?
Mike Card:
Excuse me, Chancellor Bismarck of Germany in 1870 or so noted that if you don't like the sight of blood, don't watch laws be made or sausages be made. In a sense, what we're seeing is, you could call it political theater, but politics is about power and it's the power to decide. And in this case, the governor very much wants this grocery tax elimination, the House of Representatives voted 70 to nothing to eliminate that. There is some strong negotiation yet to take place. The legislature can suspend the rules, introduce a new general appropriations bill that contains the compromise. It is somewhat like the stalemate in the US Congress, but not exactly. And as Jon noted, again, not in a manner that we should lose any sleep over. We have until July 1st before that would take place. But I would suspect if the governor does veto the bill, the legislature will either override or they will suspend the rules and introduce a new bill to give her another bill to consider.
Lori Walsh:
Interesting. Jon Hunter, what do you think overall her session emerged as? Did she have a successful session? We've had a few conversations and I think from the legislative perspective, I think a few people used the word disciplined or it was a little less sort of a flamboyant session, in which case the focus was really on this tax conversation versus some of the things that it could have been on. Notable exceptions to that, not withstanding, but from the governor's perspective, when you heard her give that state of the state address to today, do you think she got things that she wanted this session?
Jon Hunter:
There's some that she did and some that she didn't. And what I find interesting, it's a little bit of different style that she uses versus what we've had recent governors and again, she has introduced some things that matter maybe to other states and the nation as a whole.
For example, the Chinese land kind of thing or Chinese Communist Party kinds of things. Social studies, some of those are more on a national scale than South Dakota, but what we're seeing at least a little bit is recent governors and we're talking Janklow, Rounds, Mickelson, and Daugaard, did a lot of heavy lifting before the session got going and during the session and I think probably were able to get their bills farther along and there wasn't as much legislative pushback.
Now, I agree that this session did seem to serve the state well in that representatives and senators are representing their districts and their constituents and the governor is representing, she believes that the constituents of the state, those aren't always concurring, but we did pass all the things we needed to pass. Some agreed, some didn't. So I think it was a successful session in terms of South Dakota. The governor may have wanted some other ones, but I still think it was an overall success.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Mike Card, overall thoughts on this legislative session and how it unfolded?
Mike Card:
I think the major difference between this year and last year is the leadership of the two bodies. The House of Representatives and the State Senate were more in alignment with what they wanted to accomplish and what they consider to be solving some of the issues in front of the state, recognizing that not everything can be solved in one fell swoop and that some of these take time and sometimes more information is needed. But I think that the chambers of the legislature were more in alignment with what they wanted and that's different than it was last year.
Lori Walsh:
All right. We're going to leave it there for now and have more on this in the weeks to come. Mike Card. Thank you so much, Dr. Card for being here with us today.
Mike Card:
I'm pleased to be here.
Lori Walsh:
And Jon Hunter, thanks as well. We'll see you next time.
Jon Hunter:
Thanks, Lori. Take care.
