In varmint news, the Legislature’s Rules Review Committee told Governor Kristi Noem she needs to do her homework instead of trying to rule by fiat in her dogged pursuit of raccoons and skunks. Bob Mercer reports that the legislators found a number of the rules Game Fish & Parks was proposing to support Noem’s pheasant habitat initiative were either hasty or illegal:
The South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks Commission doesn’t have authority under state laws to generally give out free entrance passes and free small-game hunting licenses, the Legislature’s Rules Review Committee decided Monday.
The lawmakers also turned down several rules that would have allowed traps to be used longer on public lands and rights of way along improved roads, and would have set a lower penalty for trappers caught lying when they submitted tails of predators for payments.
…One of her suggestions is rewarding people for good ideas on habitat improvement that the department uses by giving to them free park-entrances passes and free small-game hunting licenses.
The legislators voted 4-1 Monday that her crowd-sourcing approach was a no-go because state laws don’t allow it.
“I think this needs to go back and be thought about a lot harder,” Senator Craig Kennedy, a Yankton Democrat, said about the hunting-license piece [Bob Mercer, “South Dakota Lawmakers Refuse GFP Rule Proposals,” KELO-TV, 2019.05.06].
Hmm… now why on earth would Governor Noem want to set a precedent for lowering the penalty for lying and giving away public resources to people she likes?
Noem already violated proper procedure by securing immediate funding for pet project through dubious parliamentary procedure and then ordering the launch of her program before the Game Fish & Parks Commission had taken all public comment on the proposed rules to govern it. Her haste to implement this plan, procedure be darned, makes it look like she’s worried that if folks took time to study it, they’d find it was based on bad science and would waste public money. It’s nice to see one small committee of legislators has tapped the brakes on Noem’s coondoggle and asked for more study.
A polite “guffaw” is in order. For decades (since a failed actor and Bonzo’s bedtime buddy) BS’d that small government governs best, TLSTW (the little state that won’t) has passed law after law trying to limit the power of the state. Few are closer to this fallacy than Gov. Noem. This is what happens, lady. Small government operates in a confined condition where even good things can’t get done. Wise up. Get off the lame, libertarian lumber wagon and promote innovative state partnership with new ideas from every realm.
~ “The group that governs wiser is the group with the most options at it’s disposal.”
A polite “guffaw” is in order. For decades (since a failed actor and Bonzo’s bedtime buddy) BS’d that small government governs best, TLSTW (the little state that won’t) has passed law after law trying to limit the power of the state. Few are closer to this fallacy than Gov. Noem. This is what happens, lady. Small government operates in a confined condition where even good things can’t get done. Wise up. Get off the lame, libertarian lumber wagon and promote innovative state partnership with new ideas from every realm.
~ “The group that governs wiser is the group with the most options at it’s disposal.”
i find our gov.kristy’s concept of protecting the ringneck, ludicrous and frankly stupid, especially when the goofy law includes the badger ,an animal that is welcomed by us who live on treaty land squatted on by my grandfather in about 1880 until homesteading on it in 1886.come on kristy, quit selling us down the river for your monied friends!
The political arm twisting to remedy this farce is going to be even more messy and mendacious. Like Trump, Noem won’t take embarrassment and challenge to her self assigned power laying down. What happens to all the money already spent on bounties, live traps, and appropriations for individual habitat projects? I think we aught to get reimbursed by the people who took advantage of these contorted programs. Particularly those people who hacked the tails off road kills and submitted them for payment……….. That’s fraud………but then so is the program.
The statement about “free licenses” is interesting………. GFP has allowed people to fish for free for decades during free fishing weekends. It’s also questionable how the state is allowed to continue to collect PR and DJ matching funds since the Fish and Wildlife Service has, many times over, declared that a policy of free licensing is not reasonable and responsible and makes the agency ineligible for matching funds.