It has been brought to my attention that a small southeastern town city administrator is pushing to get a bill submitted (hasn’t been yet) taking municipal referendum and initiative signature requirements to 20 percent of registered voters from 5 percent. This will eliminate yet another safety net to keep city councils in line. That would change the required signatures in Sioux Falls to jump from around 6k to over 24K. Ironically it would take more signatures in Sioux Falls to get an initiative or referendum on the ballot then the amount of people who typically vote in a municipal election.
I often remind people that 1) we need to make the referendum process easier not harder and 2) and signing a petition doesn’t mean you approve of the initiative just your right to vote on it. For example, I signed the slaughterhouse petition even though I already knew I would vote against it. Direct Democracy is a beautiful thing and any opportunity we have to use it and promote it is good for the public.
That’s because several chairs in the committee room where the votes took place were adorned with holy crosses ahead of the meeting.
And now, the well-intended gesture by Sioux Falls Rep. Sue Peterson and others is drawing the attention of the South Dakota Legislature’s Executive Board, which will consider if action is necessary should the oil substance used to make the markings be unable to be removed.
When are these politicians going to figure out they can’t use taxpayer funded property as if it were their church? But there are other issues besides separation of church and state;
“We were simply praying and blessing the room in which leadership elections were going to be held,” she added (Sue Peterson). “It appears that someone is trying to make a mountain out of a molehill and shame me for my Christian faith.”
Even if you ignore Sue’s little Jesus moment, she also may have damaged taxpayer property, and she could be charged with a crime.
There is nothing wrong with a legislator having faith in a religion, there is also nothing wrong with them praying before a meeting, I actually support an invocation (invented by Ben Franklin, a deist). I wouldn’t even of cared if she passed out New Testaments at the meeting, BUT, you cannot defile or decorate taxpayer owned property with religious symbolism (or any symbolism) BECAUSE WE OWN IT!
I think a fitting punishment would be making Sue lick the crosses off the chairs. Maybe she could bring her son Robert who has been actively licking his wounds after the slaughterhouse ordinance failed.
“Because it would exempt the first $100,000 in valuation from taxing,” Ladner said. “Rather than a proportional cut, South Dakotans with smaller home value will get a bigger percentage tax cut from this mechanism.”
In Sioux Falls that would be about $1,500 a year tax break. Of course, I doubt this even gets out of committee considering towns, schools and counties will push back on it. It would help a lot of first time homebuyers getting into a starter home and the elderly on a fixed income.
Well, we should have seen this coming, a NEW drug war has emerged after right wingers killed IM 27 with a campaign littered with lies;
Lawmakers want to make it more difficult to expand the list of conditions that might qualify a citizen for a medical marijuana card.
Patients who want relief for conditions not explicitly listed in the law ought to ask their elected lawmaker to add the condition for them during the legislative session.
Yeah, that sounds convenient and legitimate! NOT! As I have told people in the past, all Medical Cannabis is, is aspirin that gets you high. It’s a pain reliever, sleep aid and relaxant. It can and should be prescribed for ANY ailment. Isn’t it funny how a group of mostly white male business owners with NO medical, chemistry or biology degrees seem to know so much about reproductive health and chronic pain disorders.
I mean, I knew they were big group of smart fellers (or was it fart smellers?) but they constantly amaze me with all of their genius medical advice and recommendations 🙁
Keeping track of all the noise leading up until Tuesday’s election has been overwhelming, so I am going to just concentrate on the big ones with my predictions.
Some of the issues are easy to predict;
• Slaughterhouse ordinance will pass with 60-70% of the vote (this of course doesn’t really matter since it ultimately will be decided in court).
• Medicare expansion will pass with 55-65% of the vote (I think it is a pretty big no brainer when the Feds are supplying 90% of the funding – a tax pool we pay into – that it makes sense to take them up on the offer.
The next two issues are a little sticky;
• IM 27 will pass with 58% of the STATEWIDE vote. I believe that once again the urban areas will carry the measure. (I have felt for awhile that this race would be a wider margin of victory than originally predicted. With the failure of Amendment C in June it showed me that when it comes to personal freedoms being voted on in the ballot box, South Dakotans will vote to protect them. I think the anger and frustration over Amendment C and the kangaroo court that overturned the original constitutional measure, voters are coming back in full force to show the governor, the supreme court and the legislature that yes, we are adult enough to know what recreational MJ is, and we want it).
• Kristi Noem will be re-elected to another term by at least 55% of the vote. (Trust me, I would love to be wrong, and I encourage everyone to vote for Jamie Smith, but the stars don’t align. Besides name recognition and the lack of funding, Smith needed these 3 things to happen tomorrow to win;
Almost all of SD registered Indies need to vote for Smith, and ALL dems need to vote for him.
Libertarian candidate Tracey Quint needs to garner at least 3-4% of the Republican vote
A large percentage of Republicans need to ‘undervote’ in the governor’s race (not place a vote at all for governor.)
Those stars will probably not align.
I really cannot say much about the local races except in my very own District 10, I encourage you to vote for Erin Healy and send MAGA Sutton and her placeholder husband Tom packing. I also encourage everyone to NOT fill out the judgeship portion of the ballot. There is NO choice, just a confirmation. I left it blank to protest our very broken judicial system in South Dakota.
It is supposed to be 43 degrees tomorrow at 7 AM and 53 degrees at 7 PM with light rain after 11 AM. A perfect day to spend 10 minutes voting.
Not everything that happens in the legislature this year is a total toilet flush. HB1033 which provides $200 Million towards housing passed after being amended to leave the welfare developers hands out of the cookie jar.
Section 6. The executive director of the South Dakota Housing Development Authority shall approve vouchers and the state auditor shall draw warrants to pay expenditures authorized by this Act.
Originally the private contractors and developers wanted a portion of this fund to carte blanche build whatever they wanted whether it was affordable housing or not. Now the SDHDA has the power to make sure the funding goes towards worthy accessible housing projects. The private developers still get a piece of the pie if they are willing to help build affordable housing.
While Republicans in our state and DC want to whine about the Biden administration not doing enough to prevent war in Ukraine they say little about the possibility that some bad actors that could be hiding Russian oligarch money in SD;
Chuck Collins, the author of The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions and the director of the programme on inequality at the Institute for Policy Studies, said the situation with regard to South Dakota was “an embarrassment” for the US.
“We are the weak link. And South Dakota is in a race to the bottom to be the weakest link on trusts,” said Collins. “We have seen the hidden wealth apparatus but it is always considered offshore. The more we understand that it’s onshore, the US is a weak link and we are now the magnet for kleptocratic capital the better for national understanding and the greater the potential for national legislation.”
Our super majority Republican legislature with the help of the governor could dig deep and enact legislation that prevents ANY ties to ANY oligarch from ANY country from hiding money in South Dakota. But while Ukrainians are dying all we get is silence and inaction.
It goes back to what I have often accused Republican lawmakers of (especially in our state), when it comes to THEIR personal wealth and livelihoods they could care less where the money is coming from as long as they can control it, this is why they refuse to take sales tax off of food even though 47 other states have done it successfully.
War, drought, poor healthcare, poverty, gambling, you name it, GREED is the only thing that controls them.
And here we go, throwing more Federal money at the project and it’s an EMERGENCY even though the trains have tooting their horns through SF for over 100 years!
While I don’t oppose creating quiet zones throughout the city (even though we know this is probably for DTSF exclusively) it is pretty obvious we have to do this because we failed to remove the RR tracks from downtown during the negotiations. While it will make DTSF safer with the crossbars, the only noise it eliminates is the sirens from the trains, you will continue to hear them barrel down the track and cause traffic interruptions.
I have NO DOUBT the Feds will probably reimburse the state, but you have to admit since we didn’t successfully remove the tracks from this area to begin with, we are just playing a game of whack a mole and this is the latest.
So far the developer in this area has received millions in improvements to the River Greenway, a significant discount on the land, multiple TIFs (to build condos) and now another $5 million to create quiet zones next to those condos.
Here’s a concept DON’T BUILD CONDOS AND APARTMENTS NEXT TO A RAILROAD TRACK, or better yet work with our Washington delegates to get the tracks torn out. Nope, let’s just keep throwing tax dollars at small bandaids that doesn’t fix the bigger problem TRAINS RUMBLING THROUGH DOWNTOWN FOR NO DAMN GOOD REASON!
It all started with a question from moderator Melanie Bliss (FF to 1:18);
‘Will the legislature outlaw masks and vaccine mandates?’
After one legislator answered, Mark takes a stab at it;
. . . I think we have had great leadership . . . (Referring to Covid and the Governor)
After the very audible laughter from the crowd, you could hear Bliss say ‘Thank You’ to which Mark says fine, and you could tell he was very angry. Bliss coninues, ‘I didn’t say thank you to you I said thank to them because they stopped laughing. Mark then continued about all this great leadership and how the schools and state stayed open.
What I have always found ironic about that statement is that it is false. Many state, education, and City of Sioux Falls employees worked from home for months while the rest of us either trudged through at our private sector jobs or took unemployment because the businesses were closed especially in the hospitality industry.
It is probably why he was laughed at. When you say ridiculous things YOU will get a reaction.
(H/T to a SouthDacola Foot Soldier who sent me this)
I will admit I learned a lot about SD Trusts listening to Terry Prendergast in this podcast. While Terry points out many great things about trusts that the media hasn’t mentioned, he still can’t convince me that they are good for the average South Dakotan.
While they do create jobs, can be held by anybody with wealth or inheritance, are free from state income taxes and help feed the Federal coffers they still leave me with a lingering question, “How does have $500 billion of someone else’s wealth in South Dakota benefit the average South Dakotan?” It doesn’t. And in a round about way, Terry brings it up. He does admit it is a legal tax shelter (not evasion) does benefit the state with bank financing fees, but also admits there is no actual tax dollars coming into the coffers.
While I appreciate him clearing up a lot of questions, even to go so far as saying nothing nefarious is going on (which is true) I have to disagree with him on the benefit of having them here. While SD Trusts are not illegal, and are being ran with the highest standards, at the end of the day I ask why the state legislature is so eager to pass laws beneficial to a select group of people that live out of our state while having very little benefit to South Dakotans?
If the state legislature really wanted to make an impact with legislation, they would focus on its citizens instead of Kings, Drug Traffickers and Dictators (legally) hiding their money in South Dakota (and an occasional farmer).
It's setting up to be another hot day in much of KELOLAND. However, we do have a better chance of scattered rain this afternoon across the east. More on the that story in moment. Highs yesterday reached the mid 90s in many areas from Aberdeen to Sioux Falls, a growing sign of the dry weather […]
