Legislators, assemble!
Governor Dennis Daugaard has called a special session of the South Dakota Legislature on Monday, June 12 (that’s next week!) to discuss who can fish where:
Gov. Dennis Daugaard has called a special legislative session to consider legislation relating to public recreational use of non-meandered waters overlying private property.
After consulting with legislative leaders from both political parties, the Governor is calling the special session for Monday, June 12, 2017, at 10 a.m. CDT, at the State Capitol in Pierre.
“The interim legislative committee considered hours of testimony and struck a good compromise that balanced the rights of landowners with the ability for sportsmen to use public waters for recreation,” said the Governor. “I hope the Legislature can act quickly to resolve this long-standing issue” [Governor Dennis Daugaard, press release, 2017.06.07].
The draft legislation that emerged from committee last week mostly follows the paramaters set by the first draft issued in May, which strongly favors private property rights over the public trust doctrine that makes water the property of all South Dakotans. It also would allow the Legislature to pass most of the hard decisions off to the Department of Game, Fish, and Parks.
Monday’s meeting will be the Legislature’s 25th special session since statehood. Special sessions usually only deal with a handful of bills; however, a mondo-special session in June 1920 heard 132 bills and passed 88, many reforming South Dakota’s education laws.
Article 4 Section 3 of the South Dakota Constitution says that when convened by the Governor, a Legislature in special session may transact only business encompassed in the purposes the Governor states in his proclamation. Thus, unfortunately, any ambitious legislator wanting to deal with more pressing matters (Medicaid expansion, increasingly dangerous highway speeds, rampant anti-refugee bigotry, unusually high rate of sex offenders, still unaccounted millions of taxpayer dollars lost in public corruption) will have to wait.
Update 23:21 CDT: Great Warren Green’s Ghost! Tony Venhuizen hits the history books and lists the purposes of all past special sessions!
The Rapid City Journal hasn’t picked this story up yet and their top 5 “trending now” stories include 2 from 2015. The journalistic media in this world have really gone to heck in Mr. Trump’s hair basket.
Daugaard would not be calling the session unless he know he had the votes —- so we know this will be a landowner fix, and only opening a few lakes where the public already owns the majority of the lake bed. The landowners, property rights groups, and the majority party have the “fix” in place. A member of the committee reported there will be no amendments when being considered by the legislature. The bill fixes nothing. the legislature will not declare that recreation is a “beneficial use” of public water, it has a sunset clause so we will have these same arguments in a few years, it effectively bars the public from access to public water over public land if it is landlocked, and all private land covered by public water. It hands control of fish, wildlife and recreation to private landowners if the water is over their land. Even if the public owns the vast majority of land under a non-meandered lake, the private landowners can post and stop access to public water over their land.
Indeed, Chuck.
SDSlim, who, if anyone, stands to make money o this deal?