Last updated on 2021-07-01
Governor Kristi Noem signs two more executive orders and says we can “learn more about executive orders to fight the COVID-19 pandemic” on the DOH website. But once again, Noem is using her potent pen not to fight coronavirus but just to tear up laws she doesn’t like.
Executive Order 2020-28 suspends Senate Bill 113, a measure enacted to tighten requirements for learners’ driving permits. SB 113 extends the time learners must wait to upgrade their permits to licenses from 180 days to 275 days, or, for kids who have taken drivers ed, from 90 days to 180 days. SB 113 requires learners to put in at least 50 hours of supervised driving time with a parent, guardian, or licensed adult driver, including ten hours in inclement weather and ten hours at night. No log of those fifty hours is required, but the supervising adult “shall attest in writing” that the minor driver has put in the hours.
Most crushingly to young kids’ motoring dreams, SB 113 forbids learners permit holders from carrying any passengers who aren’t members of their immediate family or household members during the first six months of their permitude. After six months, they can carry one non-kin passenger. Those restrictions won’t apply if a parent, guardian, or experienced adult driver from the same household is along for the ride, so hey, kids! You can still take a date to Dairy Queen, as long as you bring Mom.
SB 113 does cut learning drivers some slack. Right now, the only exception to the ban on learners’ driving alone between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. is for kids driving tractors and combines (but remind me again why we think it’s a good idea to have kids operating heavy machinery on public roads at 1 a.m.?). SB 113 allows learners permit holders to drive alone after 10 p.m. if they are coming home from school or school events, church or meetings of religious organizations (worshipping Trump does not count), or work.
Senate Bill 113 passed with some contention last winter, passing the Senate with just one vote to spare. Governor Noem signed it on March 27, but now with then July 1 enactment date coming fast, she’s decided we have to suspend SB 113 until she declares our coronavirus state of emergency to be over. With driver license stations operating by appointment only, the Governor says “[I]t is not possible to effectively communicate with instructional and restricted permit holders to advise of the changes to their driving privileges under their permit, or to ensure appointments are available on an ongoing basis for permit holders.”
Baloney. The state has the learners’ contact information; send them all text messages or e-mails or phone calls or letters (or all four!). Whip up some motherly informational videos in the Governor’s swanky private video studio and post them to Instagram and TikTok and wherever else the kids are hanging out (because that’s what they do now instead of cruising Main like red-blooded American children of the good old days when we suckled early at the teat of Big Oil). Heck, go cheap and just send them all the link to this blog post: “Hey, kids, go read Dakota Free Press, and click the links!”
The requirement to schedule an appointment shouldn’t stand in the way of enacting SB 113, either. Whether the licensing stations operate by appointment or by walk-in, they can still conduct only X number of tests in a day.
Holding off on increasing regulations on young drivers does not one thing to help fight coronavirus. Actually, this executive order might make the pandemic a little bit worse: Governor Noem is denying us the chance to keep kids from congregating in cars, terribly enclosed spaces where anyone with coronavirus is almost sure to spread the disease to everyone else. SB 113 would reduce not only unnecessary crowding in cars but unnecessary gathering at social events.
Governor Noem’s suspension of SB 113 is an unnecessary exercise of executive fiat. Her action is also counterproductive to public health and public safety.
Noem Nothing’s hubby does sell insurance and decreasing restrictions on young drivers sure enough ought to raise insurance prices.
The SD hapless legislature, and public safety entities, ought to seeking enjoining this irrelevant executive order. It has no relation to the “emergency”, is not in the public interest, and apparently unlawfully circumvents the hapless legislature.
Someone needs to get that agency to serve the public, and stop enacting gobbledegook every few years. I’m not sure what their problem is. I thought when they finally redid their statutes back a couple decades ago they would have gotten everything straightened out. The worst part of what they do involves kids. It never makes any sense.
I’m not unaware that kids pose a special hazard on the roads, but I can tell you that when I drove illegally (no license and too young) I was a very careful driver. My brother was, too. He got caught by police driving too slowly on his way up from Sioux Falls to Madison. Once I got my license I had a fender bender in the first month and a speeding ticket soon thereafter.
My daughter was an excellent driver, was smart and never did anything wrong, except miss our curfew by a few minutes a couple times. Or so I thought. Recently, she told me she took “Little Bob” out on the Interstate to see how fast it would go. Over 100. So, I asked her if this was by herself or with others in the car. You know the answer. No matter how good and smart your kids are, they are going to be influenced by the others.
Heh. I love the term “executive fiat.”
Fiats are Eyetalian, Grudzilla. Not Americans.
“Fabbrica Italiana Automobili Torino. Bet they say bad things about Noem Nothing and other wingnut South Dakotans.
Remind me again what Republicans are supposed to think of “executive orders.” Weren’t they the, “You can’t do that,” party? Yah, thought so…
Cory, I am sure your speculation of reasons is right in some areas, but I want to tell you what Noem gives as reasons for her decision might be an honest assessment. First of all, I can’t believe I am defending her; however, if she just didn’t like the bill, she could have vetoed it in March, and it would have been dead. There wouldn’t have been enough votes to override it. But the executive order has a limited timeframe. My daughter is 16 and has had a learner’s permit for about two years. She never did get a restricted permit. As we live only a few blocks from her high school and work, it was never a priority. I was hoping to get her into a driver education class, but with her school activities, she was never able to take one. In the summers, she is not here, so she couldn’t do one then, either. In the past two years, she has been driving a lot with me, her step-mother, her mother and her brother, and she has become a very good driver. When SB113 came about, the state offices shut down, and she couldn’t take the test. But the time it opened, she was up in North Dakota with her mother. I was going to bring her back here and have her test before July 1 in order to beat the deadline, but there were no appointments to be had in any community within 100 miles of where we live. Because of her age, many of the new rules wouldn’t apply to her, but certain restrictions of SB113 apply to anyone getting a license who is under 18. (The not driving with other passengers for six months part.) We did manage to get an appointment with the DMV, but not until July 30, which was the first one available. So maybe one can read a bunch of stuff into this executive order, but I am going to accept Noem’s explanation that she didn’t want to punish younger drivers because COVID 19 closed the state down and made it tough to get appointments when offices re-opened. There may be other things going on that I don’t know, but by my own empiracal example, her reasoning is 100% true. And I really doubt that my daughter is the only person in South Dakota to be affected in this way.
Minnesota is having issues with work that county offices do as well. My DL expired in April but now is not due till July 31. My license tabs expire at the end of August and I can renew them online.
People trying to get first time licenses are backed up A Lot and appointments are made months out. R
Here you be, Loren…..
https://www.rollcall.com/2017/02/06/gop-doesnt-cry-foul-on-trumps-executive-orders/
ask and ye shall receive (in less than one working day where possible) :)
It’s for ag kids and rural areas
If an 11 year old neighbor kid around here will help us move home at 2200 we will take it, they drive better than any of these MN coming thru to fish at river
War story. I loathe the government thinks it has to parent. Yet, the sad fact is many parents won’t. My kids underwent ‘Dad’s driving school’ from Germany so they had to know the SD/US (2 states) and European signs, laws, rules, practices – cold. I created practice tests. It was gruesome. I clipped the latest ‘teen driver killed self and buddies’ for dinner-table talk, often. Park them on an icy hill, uphill, downhill, with a 5-speed and coach them to get out of it. Spins, 180’s, reversals, – it was CONTROL, – control at slow speed on hills, in parking situations – with a 5-speed, and yes, even 120+ on the autobahn. Of course they aced the test. Of course they chewed me out for the anxiety I put them through when the cheapie test was a joke – resulting in their license to kill themselves and their buddies. But their test anxiety was nothing contrast to what their mother & I went through when they drove without us, and they learned how to live – they learned a life-long defensive driving, how to maintain control, and when to opt out. The government would not have to “parent” if our laws, and insurance, held parents accountable. End of epistle.
neom should not circumvent the legislature with her wrongful executive order.
Kruel Kristi’s heavy handedness has been noticed by her eastern neighbors.
Dennis Anderson writes the popular wildlife column for the Strib and tomorrow’s topic is SD pheasants. He is not complimentary regarding the cessation of pheasant counts:
“Unabashedly, it would appear, the commission’s decision to end South Dakota brood surveys also assumes hunters are, well, stupid.”
Mr. Anderson is known for being blunt and he slices and dices Kruel Kristi’s GFP. Minnesota hunters are not going to be impressed with a “Pheasants- We’re On It” advertising campaign.
Good grief, she’s about as inept as Blubbering Bonehead.
is.gd/t74IG Strib paywall
Read Deejay Beejr’s comment. This is what young people have to put with from the politicians. Think about the initiative statutes. This is what citizens have to put up with from the politicians. Where is the commonsense in any of this?
My kid got jerked around by drivers license statutes, just like Deejay’s kid did. My kid’s jerking came around 2000. I complained mightily about how the statutes then were convoluted and contradictory. As a result of my complaining, they took it out on my daughter by making her go through another whole learners permit cycle and then flunking her driving test for no reason after she got 100 percent on the written test. She came back in a week and passed with no mistakes, but it meant another whole afternoon wasted. A year or two later they redid the whole title, correcting some of the inconsistencies and convolutedness, but not doing much to simplify the statutes.
Here’s my main beef. The statutes don’t reflect real life of many kids. There are deadlines that can’t be met by some kids because of court orders regarding child custody. My kid had Girls State, Debate Nationals and debate camps filling her summer. She was simply not available in any of the timelines they had in statute. You might think that having a needlessly complex statute might have flexibility to provide good customer service. Uh, no. There are all sorts of ways the kids get screwed by the system.
I’m convinced, as with the bolloxed initiative statutes, most of the statutes screwing kids on driving should be axed. At minimum, they need to be studied from a kid and family perspective, and much better customer service must be expected. That may mean more FTEs.
Here’s a civics project that the politicians could conduct for high school kids. Let them study and propose better statutes that take into consideration the realities of family life and kids’ schedules. What would they suggest for changes? Have the kids draw it up in bill form and have it introduced in the next session of the Legislature. I tell you, the kids can’t do any worse than the politicians.