Joshua Haiar/South Dakota Searchlight – Teacher pay, tax relief, election processes, and tweaks to medical marijuana laws are among the topics of bills filed ahead of the annual legislative session.
More than 100 bills have been introduced so far. More than 500 bills were filed during the 40-day session last year.
The 99th South Dakota legislative session kicks off Tuesday with Gov. Kristi Noem’s State of the State address. The State of the Judiciary and the State of the Tribes speeches will be delivered Wednesday.
South Dakota Searchlight combed through bills filed as of Friday and selected some of the most notable legislation and trends.
Teachers & education
Education is set to be one of the major themes of the 2024 session, including teacher pay and a potential fourth tuition freeze for public universities.
More than 10 education-related bills have been filed ahead of session.
The focus on teacher pay comes after Gov. Kristi Noem drew attention to the issue in her December budget address.
Landmark 2016 legislation aimed to boost teacher pay and increase competitiveness with surrounding states’ average teacher salaries, by raising the state sales tax rate for the first time in decades. The legislation created an accountability board to track teacher salaries and compensation among South Dakota public school districts.
New legislation introduced at the request of the state Department of Education would update the accountability formula, which currently states that any school district with an average teacher salary higher than it was in 2017 is in compliance with the law. Education experts have called the standard “outdated.”
The department’s legislation would establish a “benchmark teacher salary,” directly influenced by the percent adjustment to educational aid adopted by the Legislature each session. By 2028, school districts would be expected to reach that benchmark salary or be subjected to an accreditation review.
Another bill introduced by Rep. Tony Venhuizen, R-Sioux Falls, would require high school juniors to take the ACT instead of the state assessment test, and require school districts to pay the registration fees with reimbursement from the state Department of Education.
South Dakota students’ average ACT score was down for the third consecutive year in 2023, but it remains higher than the national average. About 59% of 2023 high school graduates took the exam, earning an average composite score of 21.1 out of 36.
ACT participation rates vary among South Dakota students. During the 2022-2023 school year, 77% of white students took the ACT, 7% of Native American students took it and 5% of Hispanic students took it.
Other bills addressing education include:
- Funding Noem’s $6 million literacy program, which would provide professional development for teachers on phonics-based teaching methods.
- Providing reimbursements for free or reduced school lunches for children.
- Expanding reduced college tuition to certain school district employees and Head Start employees.
Taxation
The first bill filed for the 2024 legislative session is an effort to repeal the sunset clause on last year’s tax cut. Rep. Chris Karr, R-Sioux Falls, is the sponsor of the bill.
Discussions around taxes — sales tax, food sales tax and property taxes — dominated the 2023 session and ended with a $100 million sales tax cut that’s set to end in 2027.
That conversation will continue with Karr’s bill, and another bill capping property valuation increases, which figure into the formula for calculating property taxes. The legislation would reset the assessed values of owner-occupied, single-family homes back to 2020 amounts and limit annual valuation increases to 3% for property owners who acquired their homes before or during fiscal year 2020.
The bill, introduced by Rep. Trish Ladner, R-Rapid City, and Sen. Jack Kolbeck. R-Brandon, has already seen pushback. The Pennington County director of equalization told the Rapid City Journal that the legislation would adversely affect South Dakotans purchasing a new home and will shift the tax burden onto agricultural, commercial and residential rental properties.
Other taxation bills introduced include:
- Adding lithium as a taxable precious metal. Precious metals extracted from South Dakota are taxed at 10% of net profits from sale.
- Extending the length of time for a tax agreement between a tribe and the state from five to 10 years.
Law enforcement and crime
More than 15 bills have been introduced ahead of session regarding law enforcement and crime in the state, including:
- Criminalizing artificial intelligence-created child pornography.
- Extending the time a person is on the sex offender registry list before they can be removed.
- Mandating that a school district must have a school resource officer or school sentinel at every school building in a district.
- Classifying xylazine, an animal tranquilizer increasingly used in street drugs, as a controlled substance. South Dakota reported its first case in 2023.
- Penalizing a person if they expose a law enforcement officer to a controlled substance.
Medical marijuana
The Medical Marijuana Oversight Committee met multiple times in 2023 to discuss issues surrounding the state’s medical cannabis program and changes to it.
One bill, introduced by Sen. Erin Tobin, R-Winner, would require that a patient’s primary or referring practitioner be notified when a patient is certified for medical cannabis from a practitioner who isn’t the patient’s normal provider.
Seven bills have been introduced regarding medical cannabis so far, including:
- Restricting medical cannabis use for certain jobs.
- Restricting a practitioner from referring patients to a medical cannabis clinic the provider is financially connected to.
Elections
Only one bill introduced so far concerning elections is not being introduced at the request of the Secretary of State’s Office.
That bill aims to revise the nomination process for lieutenant governor candidates. Currently, political party convention delegates nominate candidates for lieutenant governor.
This bill would have governor candidates nominate their own running mates.
Gov. Kristi Noem almost had former Sioux Falls lawmaker Steve Haugaard as her running mate, instead of Lt. Gov. Larry Rhoden, in 2022 due to the current process. Haugaard unsuccessfully challenged Noem in the gubernatorial primary and then gained support from some convention delegates to be placed on the ticket with her.
Lawmakers last session attempted to overhaul the party nomination process for multiple positions, but the effort failed in the House.
The secretary of state’s election bills include:
- Modifying residency requirements for voter registration by specifying that the state’s 30-day residency requirement before voter registration must be achieved within one year before registering. KELO-TV asked the secretary of state’s office whether the bill is an attempt to disqualify people who live full-time in recreational vehicles and register in the state, but the office declined to answer the question.
- Allowing the secretary of state to make the cast vote record and ballot images collected from a tabulator public record. Ballot images are digital copies of every paper ballot tabulated in an election, and cast vote records are electronic records of how the marks on a ballot are tabulated. While other jurisdictions post such information publicly, there is a risk to voter privacy, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.
- Making it a crime for threatening or intimidating election officials or election workers.
Medicaid work requirements, daylight savings time
Other notable bills filed ahead of session include another attempt to put Medicaid work requirements on the ballot, which failed in committee after passing the House last year. If the resolution passes this year, it’ll head to the November 2024 ballot for voters to decide whether to authorize work requirements.
A bill filed by Rep. Ben Krohmer, R-Mitchell, aims to get rid of the twice-a-year time adjustment, instead sticking to “summer hours year-round.” A 2022 bill would have established permanent daylight saving time for South Dakota once federally permissible, but it quickly died in a committee.