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The 98th Legislative Session is finished. It was a great session, historical, in the fact that we delivered the largest tax cut in South Dakota history and will keep $104 million dollars in the pockets of our taxpayers by cutting sales tax by 4.5% to 4.2%. I am thankful to have been a part of this and optimistic that this tax cut will help families and businesses going into the future. This tax cut will be felt everywhere that South Dakotans purchase goods – including the grocery aisle.

I also want to point out that we had revenue to increase State Employee wages and School funding by 7%. We will reimburse our Medicaid providers 100% and were able to increase their rate by 5%. We also have fully funded Medicaid expansion for the July 1, 2023, roll out.

We also had one time funding to spend this year. We chose to start planning for our Men’s State Prison by putting away $112 million dollars toward this. We put $60 million towards our Women’s prison funding. We understand that the men’s prison will probably have near a billion-dollar price tag, and we will keep putting money toward this yearly, so we have less of a bond, when the time comes to build. We currently have almost $400 million in this fund. It’s not an exciting way to spend taxpayer money, but it is something we are responsible to do.

It is important to put money toward things that will return investments to South Dakota. For this reason, we put $6.25 million for a Sisseton to Milbank railroad project. We also put $13 million dollars toward expanding the Sanford Underground Research Facility. This research facility is currently studying dark matter and has a huge economic impact for the state. I am excited about what these two projects will bring to our future.

It is also important to keep our citizens healthy and keep our workforce available to South Dakota. We put $2 million dollars towards suicide prevention grants and $2 million towards adult day care grants. We also funded our rural healthcare recruitment assistance program with $1.28 million dollars. We put $15.8 million dollars toward our public health lab and health science centers at Northern and Black Hills State.

We also put a tuition freeze in place for the SD Boards of Regents and we will go forward with 100% tuition reimbursement for those serving in the National Guard. We also will purchase cybersecurity upgrades for the Board of Regents.

It is important to protect our beautiful Black Hills now and into the future. For this reason, $1.5 million was put toward fire suppression efforts in the Black Hills. We put $950 thousand dollars toward a black hills forest plan and will hire 1 FTE to manage this.

Bills Passed This year I was able to pass 10 bills to the Governor’s desk and some are still waiting for signature.

SB 1 was a bill to make a list of debilitating medical conditions for medical marijuana and to put the power of conditions back in the hands of the legislature. This came forward from the medical marijuana oversight committee and was intended to help make our program better in both consistency and legitimacy. With this we also passed SB 134, which was not my bill, but I helped amend it to make sure the oversight committee has the right input to make recommendations to the legislature in future session. HB 1150 passed to waive the fee for those who haven’t had a card for a whole year. This will help health care providers keep track of their patients who have medical marijuana cards and allow for appropriate follow up.

HB 1114 is a bill passed to allow for a partisan recount board with primary election recounts.

HB 1185 is a bill passed to get rid of all healthcare non-competes. We have workforce problems and healthcare is essential.

Constituent Bills Passed I passed three constituent bills that I am very excited about. The first, SB 118, came from constituent who teaches head start and wanted to be included in the K-12 tuition reduction program. I believe this to be important, not only to my constituent, but also to our teacher workforce.

The second, SB 159, came from a constituent who owns a truck dealership and we needed to correct the code so warranty work costs were properly placed on the manufacturer of product, not the dealership. This ended up bringing some clarification to our local car dealerships as well.

The last, SB 4, was to allow DOC access after a juvenile has offended 3 times in a 12-month time frame. This came forward from an attorney in Gregory County and I presented this to the Juvenile Justice Summer Study. This will greatly help our small communities and educational systems to get kids the help they need instead of allowing the to continue to reoffend and get into more trouble.

Next Session – Losses and Lessons Learned I am circling around back with the Ag groups to bring legislation forward next year to protect our Ag land from foreign Ag purchases. We want to create law that will not hinder Ag sales and research but will protect our precious land and citizens. We are in the early planning stages but hope to have continued meetings throughout the offseason.

I am going to continue to look at ways that we could pass eminent domain reform in South Dakota. With all the pressure in the Midwest to build green energy projects and the tax credits that are used by our federal government, we need to establish a proper balance in the world we live in today.

I am putting the pressure on our prolife groups to support abortion life of the mother clarification and health exceptions next year. I am also currently involved in a think tank project to try to defeat the proposed constitutional amendment in 2024 that would allow full term abortion. Any help that we can get to defeat that ballot measure – we need it. Please reach out if you want to help or donate to this project.

I thank you for asking me to serve as your District 21 Senator and I hope that I can continue to make strides toward the people of our rural District. Thank you for your support and encouragement. Reach out any time.

Take care, Senator Tobin