Back in February, I noted that Speaker Spencer Gosch (R-23/Glenham) sponsored House Bill 1221, which originally proposed putting state money behind Governor Kristi Noem’s dopey idea of copying the likenesses of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and T. Roosevelt onto the Capitol Dome. When Gosch asked House Appropriations to hoghouse HB 1221 into a plan to bolt a plaque or statue or something to coronavirus fatality and late legislator Bob Glanzer to the new beef barn on the State Fairgrounds, I thought maybe Gosch was tweaking the Governor by slapping a reminder of the toll of her unmanaged pandemic onto another her glitzy spending projects.
But as I review the audio from the original hearing on HB 1221 before House Appropriations on February 9, I hear Speaker Gosch tell the committee that he’d never intended to support three-quarter million dollars for Dome statues; he just needed to rush a hoghouse vehicle int the hopper because he hadn’t figured out the details of the bill he really wanted.
Um… legislators? You have months to prepare for Session. Glanzer died last April. The Governor proposed the beef barn last December. You couldn’t come up with a concrete proposal by January? And you couldn’t even come to House Appropriations with a specific dollar figure and a specific plan for the Glanzer memorial? Good grief: we gave you a really nice raise this year; don’t you think you could earn that pay by coming to Pierre prepared?
Ill-formed as it was, Gosch’s plan did not survive House Appropriations. On February 23, Rep. John Mills (R-4/Volga) praised Bob Glanzer’s piety but said we should spend state money on memorializing him. Mills said that one could pass the hat around the Capitol and around Huron and raise more than enough private donations to put up a memorial to the former State Fair mamanger. Rep. Steven Haugaard agreed and offered to put money in that hat himself… just not state money. The committee agreed and ashcanned HB 1221 on a 9–0 vote.
Doggone it, I was working on a proposal for the four Presidents, the the beef barn and a Glanzer memorial incorporating covid. It would have been a doosey of a sculpture. Oh well, back to the drawing board.
I never did like the idea of presidents busts at the capital, there’s enough about old presidents faces.
Surely something else can be invested in besides those boring busts.