Details from District 2: Eminent domain/pipeline bill disappointingly fails

Hello again friends of District 2! There are less than two weeks of session left. We are getting close to the end. We saw a lot happen this past week. 

On Tuesday the 20th, HB1219 – an act to prohibit the exercise of eminent domain for the construction of pipelines carrying CO2, which was smoked out the week before – was up for a vote to get on the calendar. A ‘yes’ vote meant you were willing to have a debate on the House floor about the bill. The vote failed 32-36, which was very disappointing to those of us trying to defend property rights.

Also, on Tuesday, HB 1244 was debated on the floor. This bill allows you to withdraw your own signature from a petition if you were led to believe you were signing something other than what you actually signed. There is a current petition out there to put legalizing abortion up to nine months on the ballot. This bill will help protect citizens from the deceptive practices of this extreme group. The bill passed 59-9.

Wednesday was crossover day, which means all the bills originated in House have to be acted on by the end of that day and the same goes for the Senate. There have been crossover days in the past were there were 30-plus bills to act on yet that day and they had to work until after midnight. This year we only had three bills and we were done in less than an hour, which was a record! 

One more good thing that happened last week was SB13, an act to revise the process for nominating candidates for the offices of Lt. Governor, Attorney General and Secretary of State, was tabled, which means it will no longer be voted on this year. This bill had been killed several times already this year and kept coming back. Our state has a long history of bringing recinct committee people to the Republican state convention to nominate people for these positions. This is a good process for allowing grassroots candidates to get nominated so we want to preserve that.  

This is likely the last time you’ll be hearing from me this year, so I just want to thank you again for electing me to represent you. It’s been a joy visiting with you and serving you in Pierre.