LRC Provides Public Feedback Button on Bills, Requires Health Screening to Enter Capitol Hearing Rooms

The Legislative Research Council has announced arrangements for public participation in today’s Veto-Plus Day of the South Dakota Legislature.

Legislators are mostly staying home and connecting via Microsoft Teams. A few House and Senate members will gather in separate committee rooms on the fourth floor of the Capitol. As they meet as a committee of the whole to discuss and vote on at least twelve emergency bills on top of the Governor’s four vetoes, they are obliged to take public testimony. How do we get input from the public when we can’t have more than nine people in a room? (I’ve been asking the same question, about how we stage a socialist revolution when we can’t assemble the masses into groups of ten or more to storm the Bastille, but we’ll get to that later.)

The LRC has scrambled to add public input buttons. Each draft bill gets an e-mail button: click it, and the system pops up an e-mail window with the draft bill number in the subject line. LRC says it will sort and share that feedback with legislators.

Those buttons are a great addition and should be included with all bills during the regular Session as well. LRC should also treat those comments as public documents and publish them online alongside the bills so we can get the same feel for public sentiment about the bills that our legislators do and make sure they aren’t misreading the public comment.

The LRC is permitting public testimony on site at the Capitol today, but you’ll have to jump through hoops:

Anyone who does come to the Capitol to testify in person to the House or Senate Committee of the Whole will be required to undergo a health screening check before gaining entry to the Capitol, in addition to the regular security screening procedures. Testifiers must then sign up to testify outside the two rooms from which the electronic sessions of the Senate and House of Representatives are being broadcast (Rooms 413 and 414, respectively), and will be invited in to testify one at a time, at the appropriate time, in order to keep the number of people in these rooms under the CDC guideline of no more than nine. While in the Capitol, please remember to stay at least six feet away from anyone who is not a part of your household [LRC, “Special Arrangements and Restrictions for Veto Day,” retrieved 2020.03.20].

These restrictions pose the obvious problem that reporters and the general public cannot be present in the committee rooms to witness the public comment, not to mention legislators’ debate. Reporters will be stuck with the rest of us watching the entire show online via the LRC or South Dakota Public Broadcasting… or maybe peeking in the windows of Carl Perry’s house!

Both the Senate and the House plan to gavel in at 11 a.m. Central today.

Related Reading: If this online Session doesn’t work out, we could do what the Arkansas House did: meet in a big arena and spread everyone out in the stands. Of course, it won’t be safe to hand a microphone around, so we’ll have to shout….