In today’s Tea Leaves Department, House Bill 1304 hints that (1) some powerful special interests are planning to challenge any remaining initiative petitions that the Secretary of State may certify, and (2) Speaker Mickelson may be threatening to drop his gavel on Secretary Krebs.
Yesterday Speaker G. Mark Mickelson filed his 14th bill of this Session (he’s also prime on four House joint resolutions proposing constitutional amendments and one Senate bill—busy guy!). House Bill 1304 clarifies some language on how to challenge ballot question petitions. Section 2 limits the Attorney General to defending only the actions taken by the Secretary of State in reviewing the petition and requires service of summons and complaint on each petition sponsor to answer any other challenged deficiencies.
Then HB 1304 drops this little bomb in Section 3:
For any challenge of a validated petition under § 2-1-18 that is successful, the person who challenged the petition may recover from the Office of the Secretary of State fifty percent of reasonable and ordinary legal costs incurred during the successful challenge [House Bill 1304, Section 3, as submitted 2018.02.01].
Did you catch that, Secretary Krebs? You validate an initiative or referendum petition that a court later throws out thanks to a challenge, and half of the challengers’ legal costs come out of your office’s budget.
HB 1304 includes an emergency clause, meaning it would become law as soon as Speaker Mickelson can push it through the Legislature and under the Governor’s pen. So Speaker Mickelson must think there’s some urgency to passing this measure.
Whence might cometh that urgency? Well, there are six initiative petitions still awaiting Secretary Krebs’s certification. Mickelson likely hates five of those measures (sure, he gave money to the medical marijuana petitioners, but he was just hiring circulators to save his own petitions, not backing medical marijuana). If Krebs is on the verge of certifying any of those measures, here’s what Mickelson seems to be setting up:
- He ties the A.G.’s hands and forces the sponsors of the petitions he challenges to bring their own lawyers to Pierre to fight his challenge (something current law does not appear to specify).
- If he’s got the goods, he cuts his own legal costs in half by taking money from the Secretary of State’s tight budget. Making the Secretary of State’s Office pay legal fees for even half of any successful challenge seems unwarranted, since petition challenges are likely to succeed on issues of forgery, fraud, and perjury far outside the well-established and very narrow boundaries of the Secretary’s purely ministerial power. Why would G. Mark put that unwarranted liability on Shantel’s office?
- Ah—by putting his crosshairs on the SOS budget, G. Mark says, “Hey, Shantel! You sure you want to validate any of those remaining petitions?” Rather than risk seeing her budget for running the June primary drained by petition challenges, maybe Shantel just puts a red X through all of the remaining petitions (except G. Mark’s tobacco tax for vo-techs, because, hey, who’s in charge here?). Law doesn’t make clear whether sponsors can challenge to reverse an incorrect invalidation. Even if denied sponsors can go to court and prove that the Secretary was wrong, that they do have enough signatures to place their initiatives on the ballot, G. Mark doesn’t treat those harmed sponsors’ legal fees as an emergency. Under HB 1304, the SOS only pays for petitions she validates that a court overturns, not for petitions she nukes that a court declares legit.
If I sound paranoid on behalf of my initiative-sponsoring friends, it’s because Mickelson really is out to get initiative and referendum!
If HB 1304 were just Section 1 and Section 2, I probably wouldn’t have even blogged it. Section 2 would’ve given my spidey-sense one small twingle, but I’d have shaken it off and figured, “Style and form, no big deal.” But Section 3, hanging the Secretary of State by the purse strings for challenges that nine times out of ten will be outside of her authority to avert, plus Section 4 declaring an emergency, plus the confusion over the Legislative effort to extricate the SOS from the Lib/Con lawsuit, says spidey-sense ought to be tingling in more than my blog office. Mickelson’s up to something… possible a Trump-esque extension of his war on our voting rights to a little intimidation thrown at our state’s chief election officer.
Well, first of all, that is an illegal emergency clause. The Constitution is clear about what is an emergency, and that ain’t anywhere in the ball park. Second, those initiatives were started and submitted under rules that applied before this law would go into effect, and Krebs is acting under rules that are in place. It would be an abuse of power of power and unconstitutional to change rules in the middle of the game. Mickelson is setting the state up for some expensive lawsuits. He’s really a clown.
Mickelson is such a leech on liberty.
DRA took a good hard whack at Mickelson’s HB 1196 in Committee today, but we couldn’t take it down. Reps. Lust, Rhoden, Bartling, and Hawley voted against, and Lust called the bill “off the rails,” and other savory things.
Folks concerned about preserving their right to initiate should really consider making the trip to Pierre. I don’t mind going head-to-head with the Speaker, but it was a little lonely for defenders of democracy in House State Affairs this morning. Showing up makes a big difference, and Committee chairs tend to give much more leeway to civilians than lobbyists.
HB 1196 goes to the floor next week; I think it can be killed, but other Reps need to hear a clear message on ALL these bills that, as Mickelson leads the charge to take Initiative & Referendum Hill, they should think twice (and thrice) about following him.
I’m curious. Who owns the speaker? Is he a Koch boy?
Yeah, he’s a Koch boy! And a madman! He’s pushing a laundry list of vicious proposals designed to kill all initiated measures or referred measures! Please, contact any or all legislators that you think might listen! And get involved with every election and any candidate that you possibly can between now and the general election this fall! Our democracy is being threatened like never before! And WE, the people are supposed to actually be the government by electing honest, qualified, fair and impartial candidates!
This Mr. Mickelson fellow is indeed a madman. Insaner than most, and entertaining as all hell. You gotta love the fellow even if he’s from Sioux Falls. He’s not going out on a whimper.
I never knew Gov. George Mickelson personally, though I did listen to him speak and had a couple brief chats with him. He was really a nice and decent man. It’s really a loss for SD that his son has turned out to be such a shameful human being. It’s hard to figure out what happened to Mark. Is his mother still alive? It’s just sad to see what was once a fine family name dragged through the filth like he’s doing. Sigh.
Ms. Debbo, his mommy has been the treasurer for at least one campaign in the recent past and is a fine lady. They say, there in Sioux Falls, she’s a big volunteer person. I do not know the style of hat she adorns these days.
Mickelson is a dangerous roypublican that only wants to enrich himself and stay in power. He is just like the rest of them, themselves over country. “Indeed, White House National Security Council senior director for Asian affairs Matthew Pottinger was reported as saying in a recent closed-door meeting with US experts on Korean Peninsula issues that a limited strike on the North “might help in the midterm elections.”” http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_editorial/830615.html?utm_content=buffer0b588&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer I know that we live here in South Dakota as I know that this is coming from a South Korean paper. Hard to imagine that a powerful country would bomb the hell out of a lesser one to win a point or an election, but these roypublicans all think the same.
Speaker Mickelson’s shenanigans should be shocking. They are appalling, but no longer shocking.
People who inhabit our Capitol these days tell me the Speaker struts the halls in a striking and off-putting manner – certainly not befitting his father’s common man style.
This is what happens when the citizens of this state try to rein in corruption. Simply unbelievable how bad our democracy has become. All this while our press dwell’s on anything but what is important and our deaf, dumb and blind electorate continue to check the R box!
Excellent letter penned by Mary Perpich that was printed today in the Mitchell Daily Republic. It’s available online, too: http://www.mitchellrepublic.com/opinion/letters/4397990-letter-mickelson-making-dangerous-moves
I believe the Republicans have never thought that democracy was anything but a tribal myth.
Hunter S. Thompson
Thanks for that link, Rich! Mary’s letter is great! We need more letters like hers, more people speaking up, to break the deaf/dumb/blindness that Clyde sees giving Mickelson cover to wage war against the checks and balances we can use to rein in his pals’ corruption.
This bill does suggest an potential split among Republicans. Shantel Krebs is doing a poor job of fighting Neal Tapio’s Trumpist bigotry, but maybe she, like Tapio, is also poking the corruption bear. Maybe by speaking up for alternative parties, she’s crossed a line with Mickelson, who’s determined to destroy any nexus of opposition and consolidate power for his rich CAFO-siting friends. Maybe there’s a chance, as Rebecca suggests, that Mickelson’s bare-knuckled crusade, coupled with the pressures of two primary battles, will split the GOP into warring camps.
This bill, HB 1304, is weird and wonky, but if the plot I see in it is real, it could put a spotlight on whatever split may be happening in the GOP.
But is HB 1304 really that plot? Are there any other explanations for the changes Mickelson is proposing to petition challenge law?