Pure Pierre Politics

Based on the official registrations with Secretary of State Chris Nelson’s office, there are 307 different people who are public lobbyists at the 2010 session of the Legislature. Two of those people have double registrations, meaning they represent more than one agency, department, board or commission. I checked the numbers today because a state senator mentioned last week that he wishes government officials were banned from testifying in committees or lobbying legislators unless they were requested to appear by a committee or a legislator.

The 307 include many board and commission members who make their living in non-government jobs. The number also includes many Revenue and many Bureau of Finance and Management staff people who need to be in committees to provide information about money and taxes. There are also many Board of Regents employees who are registered, because of their roles at each of the six state universities, the three university centers, the two special schools, the regents’ central administration and the board itself.

When you consider there are 105 legislators and 20 committees in the House and the Senate, the 307 doesn’t seem like such an outrageous number. By comparison, private lobbyists have registered with Nelson’s office on behalf of 570 clients. Many lobbyists have more than one client. Just taking two of the first multi-client lobbyists from the alphabetical list as examples, Doug Abraham of Pierre is registered for four clients and Marc Aguilar of Pierre is registered for four.

Who has the most clients? Harry Christianson of Rapid City has eight; Tim Dougherty of Sioux Falls has 13; Dennis Duncan of Parker has 16; Drew Duncan of Sioux Falls has 13; Dick Gregerson of Sioux Falls has seven; Julie Johnson of Mina has eight; Brett Koenecke of Pierre has 12; Dean Krogman of Brookings has eight; Larry Mann of Rapid City has six; Matt McCaulley of Sioux Falls has seven; Jeremiah D. Murphy of Sioux Falls has six; Larry Nelson of Canton has eight; Lorin Pankratz of Sioux Falls has eight; Darla Pollman Rogers of Pierre has six; Mitch Richter of Sioux Falls has nine; Bob Riter Jr. of Fort Pierre has 17; Lindsey Riter-Rapp of Pierre has six; Roger Tellinghuisen of Spearfish has six; and Richard Tieszen of Pierre has 11.

There are two state government lobbyists who also work as private lobbyists. They are Dianna Miller, who represents the governor’s office, and Mike Shaw, the long-time lawyer for the state Gaming Commission. Miller has six private clients in addition to her state contract. Shaw has eight private clients. A third person, Ron Wheeler, who is director for the South Dakota Science and Technology Authority, is listed as a public lobbyist and a private lobbyist.

I addressed this matter more than a year ago in my Capitol Notebook newspaper column (Nov. 29, 2008, editions and after), and it’s good to see another major news organization in our state take it up again. Reporter Jonathan Ellis has a strong pair of stories in the Sunday editions of the Sioux Falls Argus Leader about travel by state legislators to out-of-state meetings.

Still unresolved is the specific matter of state-paid travel to American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) meetings which was addressed in the 2008 column. ALEC has a clearly conservative political philosophy and cleary expresses it. The Legislature’s Executive Board has continued to allow payment for legislators’ trips to ALEC meetings. Some legislators have tried to curtail or stop the practice but have hit dead ends.

The issue isn’t specifically disagreement with ALEC’s positions (although in a notable example, ALEC opposed collection of sales tax on Internet-transacted sales, while our Legislature specifically supports the collection of those taxes and has paid many thousands of dollars annually for travel by legislators to streamlined-sales tax meetings). Rather, the ALEC travel is under question because public funds collected from all citizens are being used to underwrite travel to a group with a specific agenda that runs counter to many of South Dakotans’ political values. This would be no different if legislators were being paid to travel to a liberal organization’s meetings on a regular basis.

Legislators have offered 13 different proposals to put constitutional amendments on the November election ballot. They include six in the House and seven in the Senate. Two already are dead while the other 11 await their first committee hearings this week.

Sen. Al Novstrup, R-Aberdeen, asked the Senate Education Committee to kill his proposal to let voters decide whether to remove the school for the deaf from the responsibilities of the state Board of Regents. It was just the latest twist in the years-long saga over what to do with an institution where annual enrollments have fallen to the single digits.

The Senate State Affairs Committee meanwhile decided to not test voters’ mathematical abilities and killed an unusual proposal to change the length of the Legislature’s terms. The plan offered by Sen. Tom Hansen, R-Huron, and Rep. Marc Feinstein, D-Sioux Falls, would have set up a staggered approach. Legislators now are elected to two-year terms. The Hansen-Feinstein plan called for four-year terms for terms that begin in years ending in three or seven and two-terms for terms that begin in years that end in one.

So far the only issue that will be on the November ballot for certain is the referendum on South Dakota’s expanded ban against smoking. The Legislature voted last year to ban smoking in bars, casinos and restaurants with alcohol licenses. Opponents circulated petitions and won a court battle last fall to refer the ban to a statewide vote.

Petitions have been circulating for a public vote on legalizing medical marijuana in South Dakota. Those petitions haven’t been submitted however.

Ballot measures still under consideration in the Senate include giving the Legislature’s interim committee on appropriations the increased authority to block government budget transfers during the months when the Legislature isn’t in session. Two others deal with the office of state treasurer: one would combine treasurer and auditor into a new office of state comptroller while the other would combine treasurer and lands commissioner.  There’s a proposal would guarantee the right to a secret vote in elections including unions. And there’s a move to prohibit school districts from spending public funds to sue state government.

In the House the constitutional amendments cover an even broader range of topics. One would impose a corporate income tax. Another would guarantee freedom of choice in health care. Two others that would change the restrictions on the state’s health and education trust funds and the cement plant trust fund. Another would limit the Legislature to appropriating no more than 98 percent of the anticipated revenues for a budget year. Yet another would strip the income tax language from the state constitution and further clarify that a new tax can’t be imposed without a two-third majority vote of each chamber of the Legislature.

While the alarm bells ring among the blogosphere over the Hamiel/Turbak Berry legislation, let’s take a breath. Libel is libel. Slander is slander. If someone anonymously commits libel or slander with malice of forethought, should the victim simply have to take it because the attack is made through a blog site or some other medium which affords anonymity? Should a rape victim or a beating victim or a murder victim or a theft victim have to take it because the criminal wore a mask and couldn’t be identified by sight?

There’s a wide range between political speech, stupid smart-ass comments and libel or slander. Calling me an idiot for this post is unkind but fair comment. Saying I have a fat gut would be unkind, off-point but true. Calling me a great former outfielder for the New York Yankees would be kind but untrue. Calling me a convicted bank robber would be unkind, untrue and possibly libel or slander if you were trying to hurt me.

So if you want to be a brat and be mean to me, go ahead. Just don’t accuse me of being a convicted bank robber. Or for that matter, don’t accuse me of being the Yankee centerfielder, because that Bobby Murcer is no longer with us. The Gold Glove winner and five-time All-Star died in 2008.

There are blog operators, such as Pat Powers at Dakota War College, who police their sites and take down borderline comments which make allegations of a serious nature but aren’t factually supported. There are other blog operators who leave up comments even after they’ve been told by the targets or others that the allegations aren’t true.

Rep. Noel Hamiel humbly asked the state House of Representatives today (Thursday) to suspend the rules and introduce two pieces of legislation he failed to submit by the noon deadline Wednesday for bill filing. Hamiel, R-Mitchell, said the House members had every right to expect someone who had made his livelihood meeting newspaper deadlines should be able to meet a legislative deadline. House members voted 64-0 and 63-0 to suspend the rules in each case. The measures, House Bill 1277 and House Bill 1278, take two different approaches to addressing libel and slander involving comments, photos, video or other material posted on Internet sites by anonymous or unknown persons or by someone using a pseudonym. Hamiel said he had the bills on his House desk and forgot he needed to get them to the Legislative Research Council office for processing by noon Wednesday. He remembered when he arrived back at his desk after the 12:20 p.m. adjournment of the House Judiciary Committee meeting which he was attending as a committee member.

1277 would allow the operator of the site to be named as a defendant for the purposes  of identifying the person who did the posting. It also would protect the operator from damages or costs if a verdict was obtained against the poster, unless the operator also was the poster. 1278 would require Internet site operators to keep logs adequate to provide identification and location of unknown, anonymous or pseudonymous posters. A court order would required to obtain the logs, and standards are in the legislation for the situations rising to the level of a court order.

Hamiel’s interest is in part to give people a defense against libel and slander committed over the Internet and to put Internet sites on the same level as newspapers, broadcasters and other publications regarding slander and libel. The lead Senate sponsor of the two bills is Sen. Nancy Turbak Berry, D-Watertown. So far at least three of South Dakota’s prominent bloggers have protested strongly against where they think Hamiel and Turbak Berry are headed. What’s additonally interesting is that Hamiel during his decades as a newspaper reporter, editor and publisher was a strong advocate of the First Amendment, while Turbak Berry was the originator of the sweeping changes made by the Legislature in opening public records last year. My informal observation is that many legislators will support the bills on first blush because they don’t like how they’ve been hacked on by anonymous blog commenters, regardless whether the legislator is Democratic or Republican.

The state Labor Department issued an announcement today explaining the purposes of Senate Bill 186. Here is the news release verbatim:

Legislation Proposed to Change the Unemployment Insurance Tax System

PIERRE, S.D. – The South Dakota Department of Labor has worked with the business community, state legislators and other interest groups in developing legislation to modify the Unemployment Insurance (UI) tax system and reduce the employer surcharge payable this year.

SB186 will reduce the surcharge amount for 2010 and 2011, increase the wage base and create a new tax-rate table with higher rates for employers with negative account balances.

“We understand that a recession is the worst possible time for employers to pay a surcharge,” said State Labor Secretary Pam Roberts.  “The bill will reduce the surcharge amount due this year and next.”

An employer surcharge was triggered in the fourth quarter of 2009 and is expected to continue through 2010 and into 2011 if the Trust Fund balance remains below $16.5 million.  Under current law, employers will pay a 1.5 percent surcharge rate on base wages, with a maximum payment of $142.50 per employee this year and $150 per employee in both 2010 and 2011.

“SB186 proposes to cap the surcharge rate at one percent, or $100 maximum per employee in 2010, and 0.75 percent, or $82.50 per employee in 2011,” Secretary Roberts explained. 

Like other states, South Dakota has an automatic trigger mechanism when the state Trust Fund is in danger of becoming insolvent.  The current surcharge system has been in South Dakota law since 1939.

SB186 will also increase the wage base by $1,000 per year through 2015. South Dakota’s current $10,000 wage base is one of the lowest in the region. 

The legislation also ends the current tax-rate table, as of 2009.  The new table will increase the maximum tax rate from 8.5 percent to 9.5 percent, with higher rates for employers with negative account balances.  In addition, employers will need higher balances in their unemployment accounts for the various tax rates.

“The zero percent tax rate will still remain available to employers,” Secretary Roberts said.

To receive a zero percent tax rate under the bill, employers must have $675 per worker in their accounts in 2010.  Currently, that amount is set at $432.

The proposed legislative changes are projected to provide $74.4 million for the Trust Fund, bringing the balance to $1.8 million at the end of 2010.

“The same amount of revenue is necessary for the Trust Fund to become solvent,” Secretary Roberts said.  “All of the changes in this bill are revenue neutral for 2010.”

The Trust Fund continues to pay benefits at an all-time high.  For the last week in January, $1.68 million was paid in state benefits to 6,944 claimants –  more than double the amount compared to the same week two years ago. 

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The 2009 year-end finance report for the gubernatorial campaign of Senate Republican leader Dave Knudson is now available on the Secretary of State website (www.sdsos.gov). Knudson reports receiving $18,345 in unitemized contributions and $375,278 in itemized contributions from individuals. South Dakota-based political action committees gave him a total of $126,850, including $10,000 apiece from two PACs funded solely by Sen. Stan Adelstein, R-Rapid City; $50,000 from the GPS PAC funded solely by credit-card banker T. Denny Sanford; $40,000 from the Jobs For South Dakota PAC funded solely by Albert Heygi from Dakota Dunes and Harry Christianson; and $11,000 from TED (Team for Economic Development) PAC based in Sioux Falls. He also reports $3,250 from federal-level PACs including $750 from Advance America, Cash Advance Centers. He received in-kind contributions valued at $28,703. Overall he received $527,614 in money and spent $273,123. He gave his campaign $35,000. He began 2009 with $168,472 cash on hand and finished the year with $457,963 cash on hand.

Knudson used the PAC loophole in South Dakota’s campaign-finance laws more aggressively than any other candidate for governor in 2009. State law allows a person to give an unlimited amount to a South Dakota-based PAC and also allows those PACs to give unlimited amounts to governor candidates, while the maximum direct contribution from an individual to a governor candidate is $4,000 per year. Adelstein, Sanford, and Heygi/Christianson routed $121,000 to Knudson through four PACs in 2009, in addition to any individual contributions they made. By comparison, other Republican candidates for governor received relatively little or nothing from such self-funded PACs in 2009. For example, Lt. Gov. Dennis Daugaard took in $7,500 last year from South Dakota PACs, none of them of the self-funded variety. Ken Knuppe took no money from PACs. Scott Munsterman didn’t either. As for Sen. Gordon Howie, he didn’t start his campaign until this year and took no money for it in 2009. Among the Democratic candidates, Ron Volesky took no money at all in 2009, while Senate Democratic leader Scott Heidepriem accepted $23,575 from South Dakota-based PACs, including three self-funded PACs set up in the closing days of 2009 that sent $20,850 from his campaign chairman, Mark Graham, to Heidepriem’s campaign committee.

And for what it’s worth, Daugaard received $1,750 from the Advance America PAC, which was more than double what that PAC gave to Knudson.

The GPS political action committee operated by Sioux Falls credit-card banker T. Denny Sanford gave $50,000 in 2009 to the gubernatorial campaign of Senate Republican leader Dave Knudson, according to the year-end report for the PAC. The GPS PAC gave $10,000 apiece in 2008 to the campaigns of Lt. Gov. Dennis Daugaard and Knudson. In 2007 the GPS PAC gave $10,000 to Daugaard’s gubernatorial campaign and $10,000 to Knudson’s state Senate re-election campaign, prior to Knudson getting in the race for governor.

Evidently Sanford stopped hedging his bets last year in the battle for the Republican nomination and put the big bet down on Knudson over Daugaard. Altogether Sanford through his PAC has now given Knudson $70,000 and Daugaard $20,000. Sanford put $200,000 into the PAC on June 27, 2007, according to the year-end report for the PAC. He hasn’t put money in it since then. No one else has contributed to the PAC since its creation in the summer of 2007.

The nearly $21,000 which Sioux Falls businessman Mark Graham sent via three brand-new political action committees to Senate Democratic leader Scott Heidepriem for his gubernatorial campaign isn’t isolated. While we await the official 2009 year-end report for Senate Republican leader Dave Knudson, we can see that Sen. Stan Adelstein used two of his PACs to route $20,000 to Knudson’s gubernatorial campaign. Adelstein, R-Rapid City, deposited $10,000 apiece into his All South Dakota and his A Better South Dakota PACS. Those PACS in turn gave $10,000 apiece to the Knudson campaign. That information shows up in 2009 year-end reports filed for those two PACs.

Secretary of State Chris Nelson runs the official and very useful web site that shows campaign finance reports for state candidates and office-holder. But it can be updated only so fast by his efficient staff as they can sift through the hundreds of year-end reports filed in recent days. Reports for six of the seven Republican and Democratic candidates for governor are up on the site (www.sdsos.gov) and it looks like the one remaining, for Senate Republican leader Dave Knudson, is coming soon.

Different people perform different duties in the SOS office, so don’t get worked up about the delay, and keep your cool if you find a link for Knudson’s report but you get a dead end when you click on the link. All that means is the person who sets up the link is ahead of the person who’s scanning the paper report to make a digital image. That’s where the situation stands a few minutes before 7 tonight.