Yesterday the Legislature sent to the Governor’s desk Senate Bill 3, an extension of the Department of Health’s emergency pandemic-prevention enforcement powers for another year. But compared to its original form, SB 3 could be read as a net reduction of the Department of Health’s ability to corral the reckless Covid Kristis of our communities.
As originally proposed, Senate Bill 3 simply lifted the June 30, 2021, sunset clause from the department’s ability to seek court orders to keep people from spreading coronavirus, just as it has the ability to seek such orders to prevent the spread of tuberculosis, MERS, SARS, smallpox, ebola, or other diseases or conditions declared to constitute public health emergencies. But somehow, even that ongoing precaution for an unforeseeable future was too much for a Legislature determined not to cross the Governor by making even a molehill out of the pandemic mountain. The House rewrote the bill to leave covid-19 on DOH’s enforcement list for just one more year. If you’re feeling positive, take that as a vote of confidence in the Biden/Fauci Administration’s ability to control the pandemic. But it’s puzzling that the Legislature would still plan to remove from DOH’s emergency powers the most damaging and deadly infection to hit this state in a century while leaving on the list of most alarming diseases viruses that broke out several years ago but proved much more easily controlled.
In more concern about the wrong issues, House Health and Human Services included a provision making clear that the DOH can’t use its anti-pandemic power to compel anyone to get a shot, for coronavirus or anything else.
And in a notable kicker going well beyond the question of the immediate pandemic, the House narrowed the field of people against whom the Department of Health may seek court orders to prevent contagion. The current statute, SDCL 34-22-18.1, authorizes DOH to seek court orders against people who are infected with or reasonably suspected of having any of the dread diseases covered. The House-amended SB 3 says DOH may exercise this power only against people with confirmed infections.
So under this new language, DOH can’t take to court the old crank hobbling through the grocery store coughing on his neighbors who refuses to stay away from others and refuses to submit to any medical tests. Even if the Department does contact tracing among confirmed cases and finds the one thing they all have in common is contact with Chronic Cough Calvin, SB 3 takes away the power they have now to ask a judge to make Calvin come in for a test or stay the heck home.
Ultimately, the passage of this watered-down Senate Bill 3 further establishes the Legislature’s refusal to acknowledge the true seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic.
We doggone gone and done it….( thanks Shania and Mutt)
Last updated: February 17, 2021, 13:49 GMT
United States
Coronavirus Cases:
28,382,177
Deaths:
500,000
1707 bodies collected yesterday. Half a million wasted on the way.
Noemnada the queen of denile, revels in punishing the citizens of South Dakota including the intellectually challenged Gubers and Gomers who voted for her.
trumpoholism is the new pandemic.
I propose deferring the entire remaining agenda of the SoDak legislature to the 41st day.
Alaska changed the system, we could do well to do the same
“Take Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). She voted to convict Trump while representing a solidly red state. But she’s still likely to be reelected in 2022 because Alaska’s primary system is a nonpartisan open primary that puts the top four vote-getters from any party on the general election ballot. In the general election, Alaska uses ranked-choice voting, a system that typically rewards candidates who appeal to a broader section of the electorate. Murkowski was free to vote her conscience because Alaska’s electoral rules no longer let extremist voters have a louder voice than everyone else.” Washington Post 2.17.2021
Until it’s changed, we shall continue to have the unhinged corruptible’s making trouble.
What can I say? “You should never say bad things about the dead, you should only say good… Rush Limbaugh is dead.
Good.”
The hate won’t die with Limpaw. Not a chance.
I would piss on limpboughs grave, pardon my political incorrectness please? I think russ was cloned as a toddler and dj trump was the result.
I got the cloning thing turned around, my bad.
I just want my prediction on the record before tomorrows press conference regarding AG Ravnsborg. IF he is charged with anything at all, it will be for something trivial like ‘using a electronic device’
O.K., so no one wants to talk about the Department of Health’s authority to enforce quarantines?
It seems to me that South Dakota has no departments of anything. What we have here is whatever the governor wants to do or wants us to do. I think Nanny state https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanny_state led by granny pants gnome is how we are to be defined.
Mostly, I think that we just assume, Cory, that it’s just another Republican tax-and-silence scheme.
I predict Mr. Steveo7654 is probably righter than right.
Then we can start speculating on how Mr. Ravnsborg will try to pander and beg at the delegates for the conventions.
The spineless SD legislators are wholly incapable of acting as an independent but equal branch of government. The legislators are incapable of exercising restraint or oversight of the out-of-control executive branch led by Gov (SD-Q) noem.
Senate committee tables SB 153 which sought quarter reports of state plane use. (Senators McFly – the plane operators have to complete flight maintenance logs per the FAA so there is no burden to hit quantity “2” on the copy machine.
Senate rejects SB 165 and House rejects HB 1089 to receive minimal information of Gov (SD-Q) noem’s security costs.
Senate approves SB 177 circumventing local control over home schooled brats.
The sad list goes on in this qanon economic utopia.
Last updated: February 18, 2021, 13:59 GMT
United States
Coronavirus Cases:
28,454,533
Deaths:
502,555
2471 moar volunteered bodies on the 17th.