Attorney General Marty Jackley’s call for public comment on his draft title and explanation of the first citizen initiative proposed for the 2028 election cycle has drawn little public response, and predictably, what little comment he did get was statutorily irrelevant.
SDCL 12-13-25.1 gave citizens ten days, until August 3, to comment on Attorney General Jackley’s language explaining Brenda Anderson’s proposed deregulation of raw milk and other homemade dairy products. That public comment period, enacted by 2021 Senate Bill 123, calls for citizens to respond not the initiative itself but to assess the clarity, concision, simplicity, and objectivity of the language the Attorney General has proposed to accompany the initiative petition and to appear on the ballot if the initiative goes to the voters.
Like almost every commenter on AG titles and explanations since the enactment of 2021 SB 123 (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and most recently here), the lone respondent to Jackley’s call for comment on his title and explanation failed to comment on his title and explanation. Kendra Paulton of Custer County says not one word about what the Attorney General proposes to say about her neighbor Anderson’s homemade-dairy deregulation; instead, Paulton’s July 28 e-mail to Jackley just expresses her support for the initiative:
That’s nice, but individual support for or opposition to a proposed ballot measure has nothing to do with helping the Attorney General determine whether he has fulfilled his statutory duty to accurately explain the proposed ballot measure.
2021 SB 123 thus continues to offer little if any real benefit to the initiative process. It’s only objective effect is to delay the circulation of most initiative petitions by 20 days—ten days for the A.G. to take mostly irrelevant public comment, then another ten days for the A.G. to consider that comment and produce the final version of his title and explanation. The only way to avoid that delay is for citizens to submit their initiative proposals ridiculously early, as Brenda Anderson, two and a half years before the general election and six months before petitioning can begin.
The public comment period on A.G. titles and explanations is doing far more harm than good for the process. We shouldn’t delay petitioning for legally irrelevant commentary. The 2027 Legislature should repeal this public comment requirement, or at the very least reduce the time the Attorney General gets to publish his draft titles and explanations from 60 days to 40 days, thus eliminating the extra delay caused by this mostly useless statute.