The dilatory period for public comment on the Attorney General’s title and explanation for Senator Brent Hoffman’s term-limits initiative produced a whopping two comments and a whopping one revision from Attorney General Marty Jackley.
As I noted last week, one of the submitted comments was wholly irrelevant and unactionable under the rules of the comment period. The other comment, from sponsor Hoffman, recommended three main changes, of which Jackley ignored two and a half. The only change Jackley adopted was to add one final phrase:
Members of the South Dakota Legislature are limited by the State Constitution to four consecutive terms of service, or eight consecutive years, in either the House of Representatives or the Senate. Currently, a legislator can serve an indefinite number of years in the Legislature if a break in service occurs in either chamber.
The proposed amendment limits legislators to serving a lifetime total of eight years in the State House of Representatives and a total of eight years in the State Senate, or a maximum total of sixteen years [emphasis mine, showing language added to first draft; Attorney General Marty Jackley, final explanation of Hoffman’s term-limits initiative, filed with Secretary of State Monae Johnson 2023.06.14]
The law requiring this public comment period delays petitioning for up to 20 days, all to obtain public comment that is mostly irrelevant or ignored by the Attorney General for a document that 99% of petition signers never read. What a waste!
You are correct. The explanation that goes on the ballot is a different thing. This process ends up in forced government speech during petitioning. It should be eliminated as it is unconstitutional, as well as a waste of time.
I want to clarify something, though. Before the Legislature front-loaded the initiative process with a lot of unnecessary bureaucracy, including the process you discuss above, the AG developed the explanation that went on the ballot after an initiative qualified for the ballot. Some sort of short explanation on the ballot is probably necessary. It is not necessary to front-load that process, however. And it should be the Legislative Research Council that develops the ballot explanation. The AG should be taken out of the process. The LRC should write the draft ballot explanation only if an initiative is certified to the ballot. That is when the public comment period should be.
The public comment period, however, is necessary. There was corruption in the past when the AG wrote the ballot explanation. It was a secretive process where special interest lobbyists would push certain wording into that explanation in order to corrupt the people’s process. We pushed back on one such effort that we uncovered during one of our mining initiatives. A public comment period takes what was a secretive and corrupt practice and at least sanitizes it. Sure, people will misunderstand the purpose of the comment period, but at least you won’t have as corrupt a process as there was previously.
Term limits are bad. Vote No. The people have the right to change their minds every 2 years, meaning, if they want to remove this person today, place them bac in that office 12 years later, that is their right.
Term limits in red states like South Dakota are essential for evolutionary change where there is a too big to jail banking racket, a medical industry triopoly, unregulated prostitution, the Sturgis Rally, policing for profit, sex trafficking, hunting and subsidized grazing and a SDGOP destroying lives, depleting watersheds and smothering habitat under single-party rule.
Mr. Zitterich is blank to the fact that money controls politics.
Every term an incumbent seeks is backed by more donated money and more favors owed for that money.
A Congressperson spends 70% of each day fundraising and socking that dough away.
When that Congressperson makes a call, they get put through to a potential donor faster than their opponent will ever be able to match.
After a few terms it becomes an unfair contest, which the voters deserve better than.
Donald’s suggestion that we move the explanation from the AG to the LRC is interesting. We trust LRC to prepare the fiscal note; why not trust them to write the full explanation of the initiative’s legal effect?
Donald also understands the purpose of the comment period: to allow the public to weigh in on whether the state has simply, clearly, and objectively summarized the initiative’s legal effect. That comment does open the door for folks keenly interested in the ballot language to address problems without going to court… although secretive special interests are working behind the scenes to corrupt the process, the current public-comment law does nothing to require changes to the language, so sponsors or others who see problems with the language may still have to go to court to secure rewrites.
My big problem is the additional 20-day delay in petitioning. Holding off on the title and explanation and public comment thereupon until after the petitions are submitted and the initiative qualifies for the ballot makes that problem go away.
I’d like to think we could make that problem go away by suing the state for compelling speech. Forcing circulators to distribute the AG’s explanation while petitioning could fail a First Amendment challenge.