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We passed the halfway point. Committees will be busy next week making sure all bills have their hearings before crossover day. A bill that stuck out to me this week was HB 1105 an act to restrict contracts and declarations that prohibit the use of commercial property for any healthcare service in municipalities and townships with populations of less than three thousand, in medically underserved areas, or in areas with a medically underserved population. This bill is important for our small communities and their future opportunities to provide needed services. If one of our local nursing homes closes this bill would restrict the seller from limiting future uses. While my hope is that no more of our nursing homes will close but if one does, I will hate to see the building sitting empty limiting opportunities. Another highly discussed bill was HB 1209 an act to require employment verification eligibility through the e-verify program and to provide a penalty. We all want employees to be legally working; this bill ensures verification. This session I was excited to sponsor HB 1116 an act to prohibit a video streaming service from transmitting certain advertising during children's programming and provide a penalty therefor. I have 3 kids who spend time on streaming services, and I want nothing more than to protect them from harmful advertising. This would have been the 1st bill passed in the country to limit this type of advertising. We have a saying in Pierre, “it’s not ready for prime time,” unfortunately while I fully support the concept the bill was not ready for prime time, and more work needs to be done on the drafting of the legislation. We are hopeful we can work through the issues and produce a clean bill for next year. I enjoyed welcoming the Hanson and Montrose High Schoolers to the capital this week. I sponsored several of these students to serve as pages, it was great to see them again. Thank you to the district 19 Chiropractors for coming to Pierre to educate me on your practices. Having these services in our communities is vital and I thank you for all you do. In my 1st weekly column, I shared about my father having a stroke 2 days before session, I just wanted to thank you all for the prayers and to let you know he is slowly making progress.