SJR 508: Boot Lieutenant Governor from Senate Presidency

Some members of the Senate aren’t waiting for the Supreme Court to clarify whether the Lieutenant Governor can break ties on votes on final passage of legislation while presiding over the Senate. Five members who voted to nullify Lieutenant Governor Tony Venhuizen’s tie-breaking vote on Senate Bill 25 last month have proposed a constitutional amendment to strip from the state constitution the Lieutenant Governor’s role as presiding officer of the Senate.

Senate Joint Resolution 508 would ask voters this November to approve striking Article 4 Section 5‘s designation of the Lieutenant Governor as Senate President. All that would be left for the L.G. to do would be “the duties and powers that may be delegated to the lieutenant governor by the Governor.” I would assume that the Governor would not be able to delegate to the L.G. the duty of presiding over the Senate, since the constitution doesn’t give the Governor that duty, so it’s not the Governor’s to delegate. SJR 508 would thus leave the choice of presiding officer entirely to the Senate, per Article 3 Section 9 (“Each house… shall choose its own officers… except as otherwise provided in this Constitution”). SDCL 2-5-2 requires that the President Pro Tempore, the officer who presides when the L.G. isn’t present, must be a member of the Senate.

SJR 508 need not leave any provision for tie-breaking votes. Absent the Lieutenant Governor, the Senate President Pro Tempore would regularly cast votes just like the Speaker of the House does across the Rotunda; if ties happen, bills fail, with no outside executive officer to change that outcome.

Keen on keeping the constitution clean, SJR 508 also reaches over to Article 16 on impeachment to strike Section 6, which specifies that the Lieutenant Governor presiding over the Senate does not act as a member of an impeachment court (a clause made relevant only once in South Dakota history, in then-Lieutenant Governor Larry Rhoden’s ably counseled guidance of the Jason Ravnsborg impeachment trial). If the L.G. isn’t Senate President, there’s no need to mention or restrict that officer’s non-existent role in an impeachment trial.

Removing the Lieutenant Governor from the Senate Presidency would not make South Dakota unusual. Lieutenant governors preside over senates in 26 states. If both chambers and November voters approve SJR 508, South Dakota will join 24 other states whose legislatures reject this odd little intrusion of executive power into the legislative branch.

SJR 508 sponsors Kolbeck, Karr, Mehlhaff, Pischke, and Voita span the GOP spectrum, from old-guard mainstreamers to fringe radicals. They all voted aye on annulling President Venhuizen’s January 22 tie-breaking vote. Their willingness to take this floor tussle to a statewide vote signals a strong desire to assert of Legislative independence.

Of course, if these Senate assertionists really want to tweak the Executive Branch’s nose, they could follow the lead of five states—Arizona, Maine, New Hampshire, Oregon, and Wyoming—that don’t have a lieutenant governor. Hoghousing SJR 508 to eliminate the lieutenant governor’s position wouldn’t be hard: they’d just have to amend three more sections of Article 4, and poof! South Dakota cuts one government job and saves $127,189.24 a year. That might rouse more voter interest and approval than SJR 508’s proposed debate over parliamentary management and Legislative independence from the Executive Branch.

Of course, if Kolbeck and friends eliminated the lieutenant governor’s position, the order of succession in SDCL 1-7-4.1 would make the Speaker of the House next in line to become Governor, and Senators might not tolerate putting Jon Hansen or any future Speaker any step closer to running the state.