Week 5 in the state legislature was pretty fast paced, for the most part. Crossover day is quickly approaching which is the last day for bill to crossover from their chamber of origan . The www.sdlegislature.gov website is a great website to track and search for bills that interest you.

In Transportation Committee we only had one meeting and it consisted of a bill involving the sip-and-cycle bikes that you see in downtown Sioux Falls which passed pretty easily. We heard another bill attempting to require mud flaps on all vehicles, including all non-commercial pickup trucks. I voted to kill the bill, but that tied. Then one person on the committee flipped their vote and voted to pass it, and it passed by a single vote.

In Commerce and Energy heard five bills regarding carbon pipelines. The first two bills were HB 1185 and 1186; these two were the weakest and watered down bills that don’t really do much to protect landowners. Even their own proponents had major issues with them, but they both passed out of committee and were heard on the House floor this week too.

The big problems with 1185 were:

  • That it wouldn’t stop bad actors of the past from being bad actors in the future.
  • The $500 is basically a one-time trespassing fee, meaning that they can just pay a small fee and then they can come onto your land even if you don’t want them there. Also, that it’s a one-time fee they can keep coming back over and over again.
  • Also, the $500 isn’t dependent on the amount of land. That means they only have to pay $500 whether you have 5 acres or 5,000 acres. They could be trapesing across 10 sections of your land and still only owe you $500.
  • The proponents say that right now the landowners don’t get anything. Apparently, the courts look at a money exchange as a settled deal, so if they see a $500 transaction then they see it as settled. Which, some pretty smart lawyers tell me that goes against the taking clause of eminent domain by giving them less than market value.

 

As far as 1186:

  • I thought it would be more fair to the landowner if the $1/foot payment from the start of construction on their land rather than operation of the pipeline since the landowner is being interfered with all throughout the construction process.
  • There was no accounting for price increase for inflation on the $/foot
  • This bill did something that has been repeated over and over like a broken record on this topic – we can’t target a single industry; we can’t target the carbon pipeline. Well, this bill did that did just that, it just so happened targeted to target them more favorably than the land owners.
  • The prime sponsor said he was open to easements shorter than 50 years since this green new deal pipeline tax credit is only good for 16 years, but never seemed to actually make any effort to make those changes to accommodate those concerns.

 

It’s no secret that the prime sponsor of the 1185 & 1186 favors the green new deal carbon pipeline over landowners which is why these bills leaned heavily in favor of that direction. With both of these bills they kept saying they are the strongest landowner bills out there. That’s because they killed the better ones, which were 1190 and 1193. 1193 was one almost identical to one we passed in the House last year, and 1190 was the most thorough, inclusive, and well thought out bills I had seen on the topic yet. And 1203 was the most basic of basic requests for just compensation and putting the best offer first instead of lowballing people. It keeps being said that a lot has been invested by these pipeline companies, well first the carbon capture companies and largely subsidized by big government, so they are not putting forth their own money they are putting forth taxpayer money, but they’re refusing to look at what these family farms have invested in their land over generations and they are up against multi-billion dollar corporation largely owned and backed by foreign interests. That’s another thing about this carbon pipeline it’s largely owned by foreign interests, primarily hostile foreign governments like China. We literally have bills up before us this year, and last year, about prohibiting foreign ownership of land even by voluntary sale, but for the purpose of this green new deal pipeline we’re going to let them take it from people? One of the people going around the Capitol lobbying for this pipeline is literally registered with our federal government as a foreign agent. You can’t really call yourself a conservative if you’re not willing to conserve people’s rights. During the PUC permit hearings the ethanol companies were asked, under oath, if they needed this pipeline to remain viable and they said no, they did not need the pipeline.

Another big bill we had up HB 1198, which is the recycled garbage bill from last year that would have gutted the state Republican Party from the inside and disenfranchised the volunteer base by removing their ability to vote for Constitutional officers at the state convention. I know this is mostly inside baseball about interparty workings, things that many legislators don’t know all that much about. The volunteers are the heart and lifeblood of the party; they are the ones across the state that help setup and cleanup after Lincoln Day dinners, march in parades with the floats, and man the booths at county fairs. They are the ones that do much of the legwork most of us take for granted. If it wasn’t for them there wouldn’t be anyone to help with local fundraising, which gets contributed to the state party for statewide candidates. Being one of these volunteers in my county party is where I started in politics, I never imagined I would end up in the state legislature. This volunteer base voting at conventions is also what keeps the big out of state money out of our state politics and keeps our politics local. The state Republican Party rejected this idea as a rule change in January, the state Republican Party was opposed to this idea. Our state system is modeled after the national system, it’s a republican form of government. Negotiations were attempted last year and all were rejected. That showed that there was no negotiating with those folks, they were dead set on burning it all down, and proved to me that this was a burn it down bill. This was their second attempt at this exact same bill this year which does nothing but create division within the party.

A couple of highlights from the week were that HB 1192 passed the House unanimously. That’s my bill that originally would have allowed for the death penalty for someone that would rape a small child. In Judiciary Committee it was amended down to life in prison. At first I wasn’t happy with the downgrade in penalty, but I figured it was still making progress and moving the needle in the right direction. Next it will be up in Senate Judiciary committee.

The next highlight is an instance where I, admittedly, have to pull out my rookie card. HB 1195 was a bill I had drafted over the summer. What it would do is if someone was convicted of vehicular homicide, which means they were driving under the influence and got into a car accident and took someone’s life, and the person that died had children, then the person convicted would owe child support to those children. It’s become known as Bentley’s Law, and I first heard about it last session and started working on it before last session even ended. However, this is where the rookie card come into play, I got too focused on bill introduction deadline rather than crossover day. Seeing that bill introduction deadline was coming up I didn’t think I’d have enough time to give this bill the due diligence it deserves, and I gave it away to another Representative. What I should have done is introduced it and worked with the chairman of the committee to schedule it a little later. Either way it’s a good bill and I want to see it pass, and I’m still happy that someone was willing to take the bill and is moving it forward. It also passed the House floor unanimously, and will also be moving to Senate Judiciary as well.

With all that being said, we are already halfway through the legislative session. I really like getting feedback and emails from people back home. So, please feel free to contact me with questions, comments, or concerns. My email address is Ben.Krohmer@sdlegislature.gov.

 

Ben Krohmer
State House of Representatives, District 20