Rhoden Rescinds 151 Old Executive Orders

Governor Larry Rhoden issued a curious little executive order Wednesday, rescinding 151 old executive orders from as far back as 1961. Rhoden touted these rescindments as getting “ensuring government remains efficient and true to the vision of our Founding Fathers.”

I’m not sure what logic the Founding Fathers would see in many of these rescindments. The oldest order rescinded is EO 1961-02, through which Governor Archie Gubbrud ordered $922.12 be spent to repair hail damage to the National Guard Field Maintenance Shop and Armory at the Mitchell Airport. That money has long since been spent and the damage long since repaired. Rescinding Governor Gubbrud’s repair order does nothing to enhance efficiency or visions of freedom from monarchy.

Rhoden’s rescindments appear to lack consistency. The Governor rescinded three executive orders from 2023, out of 14 issued by his predecessor Kristi Noem that year. He rescinded EO 2023-12, an emergency disaster declaration for spring flooding in Edmunds and Spink counties. Yet he left in place emergency disaster declarations for 10 counties and a reservation hit by the same flooding and 16 counties hit by a blizzard. Surely none of these executive orders have continuing effects—the flooding has subsided, the roads are clear, the branches are picked up, so there’s nothing left for any of these three orders to do. If old declarations of long-done disasters matter at all, why rescind just one but leave two others in place?

Rhoden also rescinded EO 2023-13, in which Governor Noem required that state contracts include a clause for signers to acknowledge that they understand and are not violating Article 3 Section 12 of the South Dakota Constitution, the prohibition on legislators having state contracts. The South Dakota Supreme Court reversed long-standing precedent in 2024 and said simply voting on the state budget does not exclude legislators from doing business with the state, so the motivation for Noem’s 2023 order is largely mooted… but disaster response and sunny days also largely mooted the 2023 disaster declarations, one of which Rhoden rescinded but two of which he did not. Article 3 Section 12 does still exist and does still exclude certain contracts with legislators. Maybe Rhoden is saving 0.1 cents worth of ink on every contract and leaving implicit the assumption that contracts follow the constitution.

Puzzlingly, Rhoden did not rescind any of his own executive orders. His EO 2025-01 establishing the prison reset task force is clearly obsolete, now that the new prison has been approved. Why wait for the order’s January 1 termination date? Why not strike that clutter from the EO list now and make South Dakota freer and efficient-er for a couple extra months?

Overall, the time and effort spent reading hundreds to executive orders and distinguishing 151 for rescindment seems to be a lot of effort to produce minimal and inconsistent results.