Hoghouse Coming!
Senator Reynold Nesiba (D-15/Sioux Falls) had the reasonable idea of increasing campaign finance transparency by requiring ballot question committees to submit mid-year reports in odd-numbered years. His write-up of that idea, Senate Bill 77, wasn’t perfect, but it was a step in the right direction.
SB 77 cruised reasonably smoothly through the Senate (only Senators Jensen and Nelson voted against it). But in House State Affairs yesterday (start at 9:27 in the audio), following a friendly amendment to clarify that ballot question committees need not report donated goods and services, the committee said bonk and 41st-dayed SB 77 on an 8–4 vote.
Rep. Tona Rozum (R-20/Mitchell) asked Senator Nesiba what good it would have done him to know who had been backing the decoy payday lender petition efforts in 2015, when Nesiba was helping with the 36% rate cap petition drive. Senator Nesiba said the benefit was for everyone in South Dakota to know what was going on. Rep. Rozum asked if Senator Nesiba had checked with the Secretary of State to see if that office could handle the increased paperwork. Senator Nesiba said he had checked, gotten help drafting SB 77, and received their assurance that the mid-year reporting requirement would not pose a significant burden to the office.
Speaker G. Mark Mickelson (R-13/Sioux Falls), speaking from his own experience circulating initiative petitions last year, raised my own concern that SB 77’s July 1 reporting date would miss a lot of the money that flows in to support initiative petition drives. Senator Nesiba said he was open to suggestions of a better date.
Speaker Mickelson moved to kill SB 77, saying he supports Nesiba’s objective but fears SB 77 wouldn’t do much in practice. No one added comment, and the Republican majority killed the bill.
But wait! At the end of the hearing, Speaker Mickelson suggested that the amendment the committee approved, to exempt donated goods and services from the ballot question committee reporting requirements, might be acceptable as a bill of its own. Essentially, Mickelson would hoghouse Neisba’s bill, striking the mid-odd-year report and replacing it with the reporting exemption. Representative Spencer Hawley (D-7/Brookings) moved to reconsider SB 77, and everyone present said okee-dokee.
SB 77 will thus come back up for discussion in House State Affairs on Monday… and it may come out looking completely different from what Senator Nesiba intended, making it harder for us to tell who’s helping campaign for or against our ballot measures.
First, the time issue would be mooted by changing deadlines back to what they were in the 1990s. Second, Mickelson is looking to hide donated goods and services which could be everything he and his out-of-state donors provide. He’s a self-interested crook seeking legislation that benefits him financially.