Last updated on 2022-07-28
On the good side, some legislators want to get serious about their subpoena power.
After consistently resisting efforts to subpoena testimony about the GEAR UP scandal last year, Government Operations and Audit Committee chair Senator Deb Peters (R-9/Hartford) offers Senate Bill 125, which would clarify what I’ve been saying since the good old EB-5 days and what Attorney General Jackley confirmed last month in an official opinion: GOAC can subpoena witnesses! SB 125 inserts language into the statute that already authorizes those subpoenas (SDCL 2-6-4) to say explicitly that GOAC may summon witnesses “by request or by issuing a subpoena” (translation for future grifters: we can do this the easy way or the hard way). SB 125 then adds specific reference to the chapter on enforcing subpoenas under contempt powers—contempt! Now there’s a fun word to hear.
All of us not in “The Club” already recognize GOAC’s subpoena power, but since Republicans will use any excuse they can wheedle from statute to protect their corrupt cronies, we should welcome adding SB 125’s suspenders to existing statute’s suspenders. SB 125 will eventually go to Senate State Affairs; call that committee and tell them Do Pass!
My own Representative Dan Kaiser (R-3/Aberdeen) joins the fun with House Bill 1145, which would add four new sections to the chapter on Legislative committees and investigations. HB 1145 responds to A.G. Jackley’s December opinion that the State-Tribal Relations Committee, as a creature of statute, has no subpoena power, and says, “Now it does!” HB 1145 applies only to statutory committees, meaning GOAC, State-Tribal Relations, Retirement Laws, Joint Bonding Review, Water Development Oversight, and possibly the Initiative and Referendum Task Force, which I don’t think had a formal statutory expiration date. (Reynold! Quick! Subpoena Lisa Furlong and Erin Ageton!)
But Rep. Kaiser, mindful of corrupt Republicans could use this power to drag political enemies away from work and family and incur the great expense of traveling to Pierre, includes a provision requiring the committee to pay the same fees and mileage to any non-state employee or officer that circuit court would pay to a summoned witness. HB 1145 then proceeds to deem failure to respond to a committee subpoena as contempt of the Legislature, referrable to and enforceable by circuit court. What fun! House Judiciary gets first crack at HB 1145—that’s another Do Pass!
Now part of me should tweak Kaiser, Peters, and their co-sponsors—Republicans all, conservatives, surely—for sponsoring measures to increase the power of the state. But in this case, we’re taking about a basic power that GOAC already has and that its committees ought to have to root out out corruption in state government. Go ahead, conservative Republicans (and Democratic colleagues): vote for both SB 125 and HB 1145, and bring on some real toothy Legislative investigations of rampant Republican corruption!
The reason our Republican friends do not understand that they already have subpoena powers as the legislative branch is because they have no understanding of the doctrine of separation of powers which is innately in our state constitution; which in turn, promotes and or anticipates a balance of power amongst the branches, which subpoena powers facilitates. Subpoena power for the legislative branch is analogous to a court order for the judicial, and the public policy discretion given to the executive in its enforcement of the law.
Thus, no wonder they had no problem repealing IM22, which was in the custody of the judicial branch as a “stay” and not a law that should be repealed until its status is defined by a higher court. But if you do not understand the doctrine of the separations of powers nor acknowledge its existence, then I guess you are more likely to usurp the duties and powers of an equal branch. It is amazing how “convenient” ignorance can at times be used to act or not act on matters of great governmental importance.
This power could be the Dems’ “concealed weapon ” in the capitol…. :)