BY REP BEN KROHMER
Week 5 in the state legislature was just as fast paced as the weeks before. The deadline date for bill introduction has passed and there are about 500 bills and resolutions have been introduced. The www.sdlegislature.gov website is a great website to track and search for bills that interest you. This week in Transportation Committee we heard a bill about banning counterfeit airbags, and the joke going around the Capitol was that if it passes then we would have to disband the legislature.
In Commerce and Energy we approved a study looking into if nuclear energy is something in South Dakota. I also introduced my first bill. It was a simple cleanup bill moving the budget for the 811 One-Call board from the Public Utility Commission for informational budget purposes. It wasn’t much, but everyone has to carry their first bill some time. It passed the committee and also passed the full House chamber. We also heard a big bill on Pharmacy Benefit Managers or PBM’s for short. We heard from pharmacists across the state and an organization representing PBM’s. It was made clear that PBM’s played an important role in keeping prices down. However, pharmacies were forced into contracts that might even violate state law, but they had to sign to do business. Also, the PBM’s would be able to change prices of transactions that already took place and take money out of the pharmacy’s account through a process referred to as claw-backs. This bill was a bit of an underdog story with the pharmacies vs the big pharma companies. This bill didn’t crack down on the PBM’s, but it did offer some oversight to them, which given the testimony we heard, the committee felt was appropriate, and voted to pass this bill where it now goes to the House floor.
On the House floor this week we heard a bill related to juror compensation that would have required counties to pay jurors more. While it sounds good in theory since juror compensation rates are so low, it puts an unfunded mandate on the counties. It requires the counties to spend more money without reimbursement from the state. This bill was defeated, but it was brought back and passed the second time. I voted against it both times. There was talk of an amendment that might be brought that wouldn’t have required the counties to raise the reimbursement rates, but it would have allowed them to raise it. In other words, the amendment would have changed the required reimbursement amount to the minimum. I would have voted against the bill both times due to the unfunded mandate on the counties but would have voted for it if it would have been amended.
We also heard another bill preventing popup clinics for medical marijuana. Voters voted on medical marijuana, and we have to figure out practical laws to make it work. However, I don’t think these popup clinics were what was intended. The popup clinics were locations where medical personal were flown into the state and would popup a clinic in strip clubs, back rooms at bars, motel rooms, etc where people would be given a medical card for medical marijuana. When medical marijuana passed this is what I was afraid would happen. I voted to prohibit the popup clinics.
There was also a bill I voted against because it was inching towards banning and/or eliminating road hunting.
Then there was the big one this week, a true David vs Goliath bill. HB 1133 would have defined a commodity for the purpose of qualifying as a common carrier and prevent the use of eminent domain for things that are not commodities. This bill is in response to a C02 pipeline threatening farmers and landowners with taking their land by the use of eminent domain. Nay-sayers of this bill will try and say that carbon is a commodity because there are places it is used in the market, but if this pipeline was used for commodity purposes, then this bill wouldn’t affect them. The reason they are opposed to it is because the company wanting to build this pipeline has admitted that the carbon going through this pipeline is a waste product, and they have openly admitted that fact. The carbon going through the proposed pipeline is not being used for the purposes of being bought and sold as a commodity; for instance, it’s not being used to bottle Coca Cola. They admit it’s a byproduct, a waste product. As an example, a chair is a commodity, it can be bought and sold in the market. However, if you toss a chair in the garbage and it goes to the landfill then it’s not a commodity, it’s garbage. No different than taking a bushel of corn and burying fifty feet deep in a hole. Also, according to these companies 40% of the landowners have not signed on and don’t want to sell; that’s not a few small holdouts, that’s close to half. You might be told this pipeline will help ethanol, but ethanol does just fine without a C02 pipeline, and has never needed one before. You might also hear that it’s better for farmers, but farmers are the ones opposing the carbon pipeline and supporting this bill. Also worth noting, the companies have said if it wasn’t for the federal tax credits they wouldn’t even think about this project. You might also hear terms like carbon footprint and carbon capture by people pushing the C02 pipeline and opposing this bill. Those are buzzwords used by far left extremists like Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or AOC, and supporters of their Green New Deal that want to eliminate C02 from going into the atmosphere, contrary to how the environment and ecosystem work. They believe that if you pay more taxes to government then government will be a weather changing machine with methods like trying to capture carbon. This concept itself is an attack on the ethanol industry by saying it’s ruining the environment. Something major to keep in mind about eminent domain is that it goes against the free market, where people decide to voluntarily engage in commerce by buying and selling goods and services to each other. On the other hand, eminent domain forces people into commerce by forcing them to sell something they don’t want to sell. I voted in favor of this bill, and thankfully it passed the House chamber in support of farmers, ranchers, and landowners. My relatives are farmers, they supported this bill, and my email inbox was flooded with farmers urging me to support this bill by a factor of 100 to 1. Something that bugged me after this vote was when I heard a fellow representative say, “I guess the farmers won this round, but we’ll kill it in the Senate. Ethanol pays better.” I thought that was a horrible way to think of your own constituents, and also in lies the problem of the bill that was proposed last week about doubling campaign donation limits; where large industries could bankroll entire campaigns and shut out the little guy.
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.