SD Legislature wraps up 99th Session with passage of $7.3B budget

On March 7, we closed out the 37th day of the 99th Session of the South Dakota Legislature with the passage of House Bill 1259, which is the budget bill for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2025. And it’s important to note that this is the 135th consecutive year that the State of South Dakota has adopted a balanced budget.

This budget sets out the spending of the roughly $7.3 billion that our appropriators had to allocate during the session. Just a few of what I’ll call the “Big Hitters”: 

• Department of Social Services: $1.8 billion

• Department of Transportation: $1.2 billion

• Department of Education: $1.06 billion

• Department of Human Services: $727.7 million

For those interested, you can look up HB 1259 and get the entire bill with a breakdown. It is 36 pages long, so caffeine is recommended.

I do not envy those legislators that are appointed to serve on our appropriations committees. By far, they put in more hours, listen to more testimony and make some of the most difficult decisions while in committee than those assigned to other committees. We all owe them a debt of gratitude for what they’re able to accomplish in 37 days.

In other news, this year saw a total of 479 bills introduced. From a count I did, just above 48 percent made the full journey to the Governor’s desk and, at the time of this writing, none of those have faced the VETO branding iron. The rest were either withdrawn, tabled, failed in garnering enough votes to pass or were shuffled off to the 41st day. For those that don’t know, we are only able to meet for 40 days, so assignment to the 41st day is a way to kill a bill, unique to South Dakota.

Lastly, I want to touch briefly on what we can refer to as the “pipeline” bills. By my count, there were 10 bills introduced that were related to, either directly or indirectly, the proposed CO2 pipeline. Of those, three survived to make it to the Governor’s desk. Two of those have been signed, HB 1185 and HB 1186, while SB 201 is awaiting a signature.

All of these bills drew in a lot of people, primarily landowners, who lobbied or testified both against and for these various bills. There are legitimate arguments on both sides of this issue and I believe both sides received fair hearings. Now that our session is done, the determination of the whether or not the pipeline project can go forward rightly rests in the hands of the Public Utility Commission for final approval or denial of a permit. 

I believe that we all had a pretty good session. Bills passed and bills failed. Through it all, the business of the legislature was carried out in a mostly professional and civil manner. 

I, along with Representative John Sjaarda and Senator Steve Kolbeck, want to thank you for the opportunity to serve the people of District 2. Hopefully we have the opportunity to return for the 100th Session of the South Dakota Legislature.