Week Three

We have now completed four weeks of the 97th session of the Legislature, leaving us six weeks to go. Wednesday was the last day to introduce individual bills, and Thursday was the last day a committee could introduce a bill. Now the only way to have any new bill language introduced is to hog house a bill that has been killed or use a vehicle bill. The term hog house means to replace a dead bill's language and replace it with the new language. A vehicle bill is a bill with a title that may have a lot of different meanings, like "An Act to support economic development," which can fit a broad range of subjects, but the new language must be germane to the title in both cases. There have been 218 bills introduced by the Senate and 352 bills introduced by the House.

On Monday's agenda is SJR 502 (Senate Joint Resolution) SJR 502 is proposing and submitting to the voters at the next general election an amendment to the Constitution of the State of South Dakota, providing for wagering on sporting events via mobile or electronic platform. As sports betting stands today in South Dakota, it can be only done in Deadwood, Article III subsection 25 of the State Constitution. If the voters approve SJR 502, it would allow citizens to wager on sporting events if they are located within and outside of the city limits of Deadwood by means of a mobile or electronic platform, so long as the platform is offered by or in partnership with a licensed casino and has its servers located within the city limits of Deadwood. Simply put, SJR 502 will allow you to place a wager on a sporting event on your phone or computer as long as the site/server is in Deadwood. Almost all of the sports betting on our side of the state is done at Grand Falls Casino in Iowa with no benefit to our state. I will be supporting SJR 502. I would prefer for those dollars to stay in South Dakota instead of Iowa.

All Governor appointments are approved or disapproved by the Senate. Last week we approved three new members to the Board of Regents (they oversee the state universities) Jeff Partridge from Rapid City, Tim Rave from Dell Rapids, and Tony Venhuizen from Sioux Falls. We have also approved Jerry Jundt as Secretary of the Department of Transportation, Kevin Robling as Secretary of Game, Fish, and Parks, and appointed to the Board of Technical Education Brad Greenway, Brain Sandvig, Joy Nelson, and Kay Schallenkamp.

We are still hearing Senate bills pertaining to medical cannabis. On Monday, we will hear on the floor SB 6, SB 24, and HB 1056, our first House bill pertaining to medical cannabis. SB 6 is An Act to revise provisions related to prohibited conduct by schools and landlords related to medical cannabis. SB 6 states a cardholder may not be refused enrollment by a school or that a person can be denied a lease by a landlord because they are a cardholder. It also states that a landlord is not prevented from imposing reasonable restrictions on the medical use of cannabis by a cardholder who resides at the landlord's property.

SB 24 is an Act to establish a maximum number of cannabis plants that may be cultivated by a medical cannabis cardholder. This bill, with a pending amendment, would allow a cardholder to cultivate three flowering or mature cannabis plants. SB 24 would change the maximum number of plants from six to three if they are flowering or mature. Basically, that means you can have three plants that are producing cannabis that can be used at the moment and as many non-producing plants as you want. Cannabis plants are useless as marijuana until the buds start to flower or until the bud is mature.

HB 1056 is an Act to revise provisions related to medical cannabis data maintained by the Department of Health. The changes state that data in a registration application is not a public record open to public access. This does not apply to law enforcement if there has been a criminal violation, judicial authority under a grand jury or subpoena, your practitioner, or the South Dakota Board of Medical Examiners if the board believes the practitioner has violated the standard of care. The bills on cannabis/ marijuana are never-ending this year, it seems. Still, most of them are necessary to ensure for the proper use of marijuana and to protect people's right to use medical marijuana.