Governor Rhoden Not Doing Enough on Prison Rehab, Says Unproductive Congressman Johnson

I like Dusty Johnson, and I’d rather he be Governor than boring, trudgerous Larry Rhoden. But Dusty’s attack on Larry for a lack of action on prisoner rehabilitation misses the mark in a couple of ways.

Johnson criticized the lack of major legislative action during a roundtable discussion he organized Tuesday in Rapid City with officials from law enforcement, addiction counseling and other related fields.

“I just can’t believe that after we told everyone that we would have big new rehabilitation and treatment within the walls of the prison — that was a part of the deal of how we got the new prison — that the governor and some members of the Legislature walked away from it,” Johnson said [John Hult and Seth Tupper, “Governor Candidates Clash over Inmate Rehabilitation as State Builds New Prisons,” South Dakota Searchlight, 2026.04.07].

True, the Governor and the Legislature paused their discussion of rehab and recidivism in favor of focusing on taxes this Session. But as Lieutenant Governor Tony Venhuizen noted last month, the task force he chairs on those issues will be working through this year to develop proposals for next year’s Legislature. Rhoden put Venhuizen in charge of that effort immediately after Venhuizen’s successful leadership of the task force that put together the plan to build a new penitentiary. Convincing lawmakers to spend more money to help prisoners may be harder than convincing them to spend money to house them, so the rehab task force may well need this full year to build consensus on effective, comprehensive proposals that can survive House and Senate votes.

Besides, a sitting member of this Congress like Dusty Johnson is in no position to complain about a lack of major Legislative action:

Congress is wrapping up the year in the shadow of the longest government shutdown and with a growing reputation as the least productive in modern history.

“Congress is in a coma. It has a pulse, but not many brainwaves,” said former Rep. Jim Cooper, a Democrat who represented Tennessee for 32 years. “It’s hard to tell that it’s even alive as an institution” [Barbara Sprunt, “‘Congress Is in a Coma.’ Former Lawmakers Sound Alarm on Health of the House,” NPR, 2025.12.21].

I have no doubt that Dusty, unleashed from the paralysis of a U.S. House beholden to the Golden Dictator, will push all sorts of dynamic policy initiatives through the Legislature. But his participation in this uniquely unproductive Congress puts him in a precarious position to criticize the Rhoden Administration’s plodding but proceeding work on prisoner rehabilitation.