This interview originally aired on In the Moment on SDPB Radio.
South Dakota's 99th legislative session is off to a busy start. We wade through the flood of new bills with our Dakota Political Junkie as our guide.
Seth Tupper is the editor-in-chief of South Dakota Searchlight.
He discusses his organization's reporting on five bills that caught his eye, including whether lawmakers are interested in making the tax cut from last session permanent.
__________________________________
Lori Walsh:
All right. The start of session opens the floodgate for new bills introduced in the House and Senate and South Dakota Searchlight is among the local news sources watching closely. Their editor in chief is with us now with a roundup of just a few of those proposed bills. His publication is covered so far. Seth Tupper, our Dakota political junkie today joining us from SDPB's Studios in Rapid City. Hey, Seth, welcome.
Seth Tupper:
Hey, Lori. Floodgate is right. That's a great word to describe how somebody opened it and the bills rushed through immediately this session.
Lori Walsh:
They came-
Seth Tupper:
So it's been a busy start.
Lori Walsh:
They came well-prepared to drop their legislation. And what are some of the things that you want to start with here as far as what's standing out to you that you think listeners would want to know?
Seth Tupper:
Well, I think just thematically, one of the first things to me was sort of Governor Kristi Noem taking maybe less of a hands-on role with a legislature this year. Last year, if you remember, she had various bills that she put a lot of weight behind to try to get through that ended up failing, including trying to repeal the state sales tax on food, which legislators rejected, trying to pass a bill to, I guess, crack down on foreign ownership of agland, which the legislature rejected. And so what we saw from her in the state of the state and the budget address this year was not as many specific proposals and not really putting her full weight behind the ideas she does have. And so it seems like the theme of this session has been more the legislature stepping forward and the governor stepping back a little bit and it's been more session. So if that continues, then the session will be dominated more by the legislature rather than the executive branch.
Lori Walsh:
Which is what they want right? Lawmakers seem excited about, they seemed... when I watched the State of the State, I thought they seemed inspired and enthusiastic. And now when you hear them, they're excited to go forward, at least in their public facing comments right?
Seth Tupper:
Yeah, I think so. In some years past, we've had some very strong governors in the history of our state, and there haven't always been what you would maybe call coequal branches of government. The governor has tended to dominate in matters of the budget and other proposals that they want. So it ebbs and flows. But yeah, it certainly seems like we're at a point now where the legislature has an opportunity to step forward and seize a little bit more of the reins of state government.
Lori Walsh:
As I look at some of your coverage in South Dakota Searchlight, one of the themes I see or read is lawmakers asking for more data, more information, looking at the money and whether or not there is a payoff for that money. Everything from private school scholarships to the Nest Predator program. Do you see some of those themes where lawmakers are saying, "Hey, we want to weigh in on these things. We need these government agencies to give us the data to give us the information so we can make those decisions"? How does that land with you?
Seth Tupper:
Yeah, I think that's a good observation. It continues what we just talked about. Part of stepping forward and having a bigger role in steering where state government goes is knowing what's going on and demanding information. And we have seen that a lot. And it started the day before the session really when the legislature's executive board had the Governor's Office of Economic Development and some other officials in and sort grilled them about the governor's workforce recruitment campaign and demanded more information about that. And that has continued through the session really on both sides of the aisle.
Yesterday, one of the really notable examples of that, which we covered, our reporter Joshua, he covered it when Kadyn Wittman, a legislator Democrat from Sioux Falls, sort of pointedly asked the Secretary of Game Fish and Parks, whether he has any data to show that this trapping program, the Nest Predator Bounty program, that traps skunks and foxes and other animals that prey on pheasants, whether there's any data to show that increases our pheasant population. And he acknowledged that he does not have that data. And there's been quite a few interactions like that. You're right, that we've noted in our reporting where the legislature is sort of demanding, "Hey, we need to know more here. We need more information and we want to..." and they want to seem to want to hold the executive branch accountable for some of their programs.
Lori Walsh:
Tell me a little bit about the tax conversation, where it's at now.
Seth Tupper:
And that'll be a big thing. And it already has been this session that came right out of the gates and last year of course, the legislature and the governor approved a reduction in the state sales tax rate from 4.5% to 4.2%. And just to back up a little on this, this whole thing has been... it's been sort of a crazy ride on this. You go back to 2016 and the legislature increased the state sales tax from 4% to 4.5% ostensibly to raise teacher pay.
You fast-forward to today we're 49th in the nation in average teacher pay, and they reduced the sales tax back from 4.5% to 4.2% last year. And really didn't do anything along the way to do what they said they wanted to do long ago, which was raise teacher pay. And so now we're back again at it because the only way they could get this tax cut through the legislature last session was to include a sunset where the tax cut goes away in 2027. Now some legislators want to take that sunset provision off and make the tax cut permanent, and that bill has passed the house already. But Lee Sean Becker, Republican from Watertown, who's a leader in the Senate, told our reporter that in his opinion, that's not going to make it through the Senate. So not sure where that's headed, but the drama on all things sales tax continues.
Lori Walsh:
Do you think it's fair to say that they didn't raise teacher pay?
Seth Tupper:
I do think it's fair to say that. We had an in-depth story on this by our reporter McKenzie Huber recently, where she really took a deep dive into if we raised the sales tax by half a percentage point in 2016, which we did to raise teacher pay, why are we 49th in average teacher pay? And there was a brief spike in the first year or two after implementation of that sales tax increase. But then we just fell back again, right back almost to where we were before.
And so I do think that that has failed. And the interesting thing this session is I heard Will Mortenson bring it up in your interview, I heard Governor Nolan bring it up, I think in her State of the State and the budget address that she wants teachers to be paid more. I haven't heard the plan yet, other than just a 4% increase in state aid to education, which we've been increasing state aid education every year, some years more, some years less. And obviously that hasn't got us any higher than 49th in teacher pay. So I'm really interested to hear if there's any new ideas that'll come out on that this session.
Lori Walsh:
So the governor has said that these school districts are not putting those raises where they need to be. The school districts are saying it's about more than just how much the teacher's salaries are. Do you think there's a policy solution there? What did McKenzie Huber's reporting reveal?
Seth Tupper:
And there are some things that could be done, and one of the things that the state just hasn't ever done is had any kind of mandate that certain amount of money goes to teachers. And that gets into some pretty thorny debates about school boards should have control over their budget and how they want to spend it. But one of the things that stood out in that story was the fact that school boards have really had to pay bus drivers and school lunch workers and aides and other employees a lot more money as the two legislators you just interviewed said, everybody's having trouble finding and hiring people. That includes school districts.
They've had to increase pay in those categories a lot. And that has meant that they haven't had as much to give teachers. And so I don't know exactly what the solution is. It does seem like if the governor and the legislators are really serious about making schools raise teacher pay, they're going to have to make them and not just increase the amount of funding that goes to state aid and leave it up to chance if it goes to teachers. It'll be interesting to see if anybody's willing to wade into that kind of a discussion. But up until now, there's been more of a hope. We'll give more money to school boards and we hope that teacher pay increases and well, it really hasn't so far.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. All right. So let's talk about how the private school scholarships intersect with this. And this is reporting on South Dakota Searchlight by Joshua Haiar because they're also saying this has an impact on how much money comes to public schools. So help us understand that.
Seth Tupper:
Well, there's this program that a lot of people in the state probably don't know about if it doesn't touch your everyday life. Back in 2016, the legislatures authorized this program whereby insurance companies can donate money toward private school scholarships for kids, I guess low income kids. There's standards that go with that. But basically low income kids. And for every dollar those companies donate towards scholarships, they get a tax credit on their premium taxes that they pay to the state on insurance policies. And so that's been going on since 2016. But multiple times the legislature has come in and upped the cap on those tax credits. The current law is $3.5 million. A bill this session would to raise that cap to $5 million. So in essence, you'd have insurance companies getting a total of $5 million in tax credits and those 5 million going into private school scholarships.
And there's a lot of support for that in the legislature. And there's opposition from some legislators and public school groups and lobbyists and educators who say, "Hey, wait a minute, our responsibility as a state is to provide good public schools. And so why are we increasingly adding millions of dollars, funneling it from what we would be receiving in taxes and funneling that to private schools." So it's really an interesting debate about the nature of education and has sort of broader ramifications. And as the program gets bigger and bigger and bigger and millions more dollars, obviously the debate over it becomes more heated.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. It's not a voucher. It's not taxpayer dollars, but it's money that's not being... it is an incentive and that money's not going into the coffers. Where do you see this going? How much is too much money? Where do you sort of see it going next?
Seth Tupper:
Well, it's had success so far. It's passed a committee in one of the chambers, but there were people who voted against it, legislators. That was sort of the argument that, "Hey, wait a minute." There were legislators who said, "I kind of support this, but geez, how far are we going to go? How many times are we going to raise the cap on this? And how much money should this program really be allowed to have?" And so I think that's where the argument is now.
And you raised vouchers, and that's another criticism of it. And that's what makes it sort of a fascinating issue, is there has been an allegation from some on the public education side that this is sort of a stealth voucher program where, "Yeah, we're not taking money out of the general fund and giving it to private schools, but we are taking money that the state otherwise would be receiving in tax revenue and that money is going to private school scholarships." So some people accuse that of being a backdoor way into vouchers, which there's been attempts to create a school voucher program in South Dakota before, and that's never passed.
Lori Walsh:
There is this one thing in this article that talks about how popular this program is and the fact that some people are applying for public school because they don't feel... I'm sorry, for private school because they don't feel their public school is "safe". So that kind of goes into this idea of the sentinels, and let's just wrap up here with how we're thinking about school safety in South Dakota, because that is also a complicated thing. We all know it could happen here, something bad could happen here, but nobody really seems to know exactly what the right way to increase school safety is right now in public or private schools really broadly, this is a huge social problem. What do you want to leave us with some of the conversations that you're hearing in peer about school safety and how to maintain it?
Seth Tupper:
Well, it really centers around a bill that a legislator named Brent Hoffman from Hartford, a Republican, brought this session and it was already defeated. But what really intrigued me about it was his bill would've required schools to have either a sentinel, which is essentially a volunteer who is trained to carry a gun around the school, or a school resource officer, a trained police officer. Schools would've had to have one or the other. And there were some other requirements about schools having to lock doors and things like that. And that can be an incredibly emotional, intense debate on those kinds of things. But what really interested me was that there seemed to be, even though this bill was defeated in committee, there seemed to be a really productive civil wide-ranging discussion on this bill about how do we do this? How do we make sure our kids are safe?
And I was sort of encouraged by that. And Brent Hoffman, who brought the bill apparently had done a lot of legwork in calling around to schools all over the state and asking questions and learning, and there was discussion about that. So it didn't go anywhere, but maybe it was a discussion starter and maybe it showed that these discussions don't always have to be everybody pick your side and we don't get anywhere. Maybe it was a start of going beyond that toward a discussion where all sides are heard and moving toward a solution. That's certainly what it sounded like. We can maybe hope that something productive will come out of that.
Lori Walsh:
All right. South Dakota Searchlight, Seth Tupper, thanks so much for being here. We appreciate your time.
Seth Tupper:
You bet. Thanks for having me.
