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.
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