The sufferable session

Dear Voter of District 4, & South Dakota,

The 2025 session of the SD House of Representatives can be summed up in one word: No. Thirty-two members, mostly Republican, voted however they were told by leadership and only wanted to disrupt, block, and grandstand. It was clear those 32 got their orders and didn't think twice. Thankfully, a similar sized group of Traditional Republicans were there to defend South Dakota. We voted our constituents' thoughts, and when those thoughts ended up in a tie, we voted our conscience. We feel this is what leaders do. We listened to the people and tried to help our state.

Unfortunately, we got to witness nine weeks of unapologetic ambition and near zealous drive by the 32 to wrest control from the people of the state. 

This group, along with other special interest groups, managed to whip up pandemonium among the electorate with chants of "no eminent gain for private gain!". Great slogan, simple and easy to remember. Kind of like 1 + 1 = 2! Unfortunately, slogans are easy, and life, along with math, are not. A child can recite either, without any critical thinking or understanding of the topic. How convenient. And how convenient to forget that SB 201 had no mention of eminent domain. SB 201 only addressed and created a tax load for and zoning of the project. Now the math part. Summit Carbon & its partners (every single ethanol plant in SD) developed a plan to capture CO2 (not carbon oxide) and ship it to the Bakken oil field in western North Dakota. The plan seemed strange, but the pipeline wasn't explosive, couldn't be seen, heard or smelled, and the benefit to SD ag would huge. We've got pipelines all over this state, shipping natural gas and crude oil, without anyone even knowing they are there! How do I know the benefit to ag is huge? Again, math: in mid January 2025 a gallon of qualified ethanol was selling for 31¢ a gallon more than the ethanol our plants produce. More math, this equates to 93¢ a bushel on corn. The ethanol plant in Watertown grinds approximately 110,000 bushel a day. The math here indicates that's about $102,300 a day lost to a market that exists. OR, easy math tells us $100,000 a day or $4,000 an hour in lost revenue. Let's not forget about GEVO here either. That was a plan to build a $1,500,000,000.00 ethanol plant near Lake Preston. Roughly speaking, between the two projects, $2 billion in projects were willfully killed. The long range impact on ag producers bottom lines is a nearly immeasurable loss that will be felt by every farmer when he drops off grain and, down the line, our schools, Main Streets, and nursing homes. Furthermore, this sent a shockwave across the nation to big thinkers - AVOID South Dakota, it's closed to big projects and value-added agriculture.

This was followed with a passion to take control away from our most local of organizations, your school board. The most extreme, not by much, was a bill to defund the Huron School district. This bill was written by the vice-chair of the education committee. Nearly 150 more bills were brought by this group. In each bill brought by this group there was an underlying theme, shred local control and attack the students, parents, teachers, and all people affiliated with your local schools. 

We had a chance at creating a prison system that checked all the boxes. It is expensive. Governor Noem and prior legislatures saved all but 20% of the cost of the project. It is a good plan, developed over several years by both private and public groups working together. This year's legislature knows better than all of them, and just said 'No.' That decision will make our state less safe and will cost us more money when the next bid comes in. Another big idea spiked at the feet of these short-sighted radicals.

It seems that all the economic powerhouses in the state have similarities: electricity, roads, pipelines, and airports. In a word, infrastructure. Without infrastructure, which benefits all, we lose. Various bills were introduced with the only goal to kill infrastructure development and jobs for our people. One was to limit economic activity in the Black Hills. One was to defund the Future Fund - something that set up Build Dakota scholarships for tech school students and helped us save Ellsworth Airforce Base. One was to repeal the seat belt law, ensuring all federal highway funds went elsewhere. Bills related to infrastructure that were killed include township funding and airport maintenance funding. It continues now, post session, with members of leadership and additional house members desire to shoot down airplanes because they pollute (I wish I was joking)! 

To you voters, I apologize. I had no idea the blind ambition of these extreme legislative leaders to chase big thinkers away. The willingness and reckless pursuit of some of our own to burn down the state is shocking. The vitriol and strident voices we heard daily shocked and shamed us into reticence. It won't happen again. Traditional Republicans, representing the vast majority of voters in this state, will step up our efforts to bring proposals to protect the state and get South Dakota back on track.