The Joint Legislative Procedure Committee approved yesterday a full 40-day calendar for the 2019 Session:
This calendar has some logic to it:
- Nine weeks have four work days, allowing legislators at least three days to get home, communicate directly with constituents, take care of family and business, enjoy some decent home-cooking, and sleep in their own beds.
- The first seven weeks alternate, giving legislators four-day weekends, meaning more time for crackerbarrels!
- The deadline for bills and resolutions to pass both chambers falls neatly on the last workday of the ninth week, March 7.
- The final three-day week, March 11–13, focuses solely on conference committees and the budget. The three-day weekend intervening between final bill day and the wrap-up week allows more time for conferees and citizens to review bills passed in the final rush and consider how best to reconcile House/Senate differences.
Bumping out that final three-day week to the second full week of March pushes Veto Day from the traditional last Monday of March to the last Friday, March 29. That move is required by the South Dakota Constitution, Article 4, Section 4, which gives the Governor fifteen days after the Legislature’s penultimate break to consider any bills sent to his desk during the last five regular working days of the Legislature.
For a legislator with a regular job, it might be more fun to go to Pierre for Veto Day on a Friday and then enjoy the weekend rather than truck out to Pierre on a Monday and have to go back to regular work the next day.
However, the final-Friday Veto Day could pose one small problem in an election year. Veto Day on the last Monday allows legislators running for reëlection to submit their nominating petitions in person to the Secretary of State the day before the deadline, the last Tuesday in March. That’s not a problem in 2019, but in 2020, expect a little stronger opposition to making room for a full 40-day Session by delaying Veto Day past the petition submission deadline.
The fat bossturds are glomming for more money and wasting more taxpayer dollars by sending hundreds more meaningless resolutions and law bills down the tubes, and they want a long vacation at the taxpayers’ dime. This is a fait accompli by the bars and eateries in Pierre. The fat bossturds who cry for more money now have more time to enjoy the slush funds that Mr. Nelson can’t stop from leaking into the gutters of state government due to his ineptitude in the legislatures.
This slows down the hectic pace of the legislative session and allows the news media and the public a bit more time to follow the session and react to any hi-jinks that might ensue.
That’s a good thing, Nick! I’d like to think we could get even more of that advantage—slower, more deliberate review of all bills, with more public input—by spreading out the Session even more: two three-day weekends each month from January through May, then two straight weeks in June, with Veto Day on June 30.