Thursday, March 12th was the final day of the 95th Legislative Session. On Monday March 30th we will again return to the Capitol for Veto day. As of March 11th, Governor Noem had signed 78 House Bills and 27 Senate Bills leaving 30 bills on her desk. At this point she has two Gubernatorial vetoes. If there are any bills you would like to review you can go to www. SDLRC.com Each bill has its title, who sponsored it, how it was voted on and where it is in the process now.

This year we accomplished some great legislation for SD. When the Governor gave her budget address in December, she had 0% increase for education, community support providers and state employees. The House and Senate appropriators diligently worked all year to fund these 3 at the highest level possible. One week prior to voting on the final budget, the revenue report came in very favorable. The final budget was approved on Thursday giving K-12 education, community support providers and state employees all a 2% increase. I am excited to be able to deliver to these groups what they have been asking for and much more than was first indicated!

Another appropriation we agreed upon is a one-time bonus which will be given to each employee of community support providers. This bonus will be about $500 to $1000 per employee. We know that these employees are in great need of wage increases and with the 2% increase plus a one-time bonus, we hope that will help those who have long deserved a boost in income for the great work they have been doing.

Another great benefit for Counties was a bill and appropriation to fix bridges developed in the final two days. We had about $10 million available that was being haggled over for several projects. I met with House appropriations early Wednesday AM and suggested we use that $10 million for County roads. Representative Caleb Finck had a bill he had worked on that had a formula in it to appropriate money for county roads, but at the time his bill went through, there was not funding available for his bill so it was killed. We took his original bill and hogged it into another bill, SB144. We used the $10 million and divided it out to counties by a formula weighted according to how many miles of gravel roads are in the county. The Senate leadership and Governor’s office did not like the formula, which was one that has been used in the past. Through negotiation with the Senate leadership, the appropriation for this bill was then dropped to $4,011,837. Representative Finck, along with LRC staff and county officials, continued to work on this and found a grant program that is available for counties to use on bridges, that if the counties put in $5 million the grant will match another $25 million. The counties we talked to are very excited that this money has now been leveraged into $30 million for county bridges! There are over 800 bridges in the state in need of repair. The money will be given in accordance to the highest need. This is an innovative legislation that is a great win for counties which started on Wednesday and finalized on Thursday, the last day of session!

SB 40 authorizes the Board of Regents to contract for the construction of an Allied Health Facility. This bill appropriates $5 million for a Health Science Building at USD. This money will be matched by a private donor up to $4.5 million and adds a bonding authority to get to a final number of $21 million to complete the project. I supported this bill from the beginning because our state is in great need of medical professionals. This building will be used for training and education of professionals in Nursing, Physician Assistants, Occupational Therapy, Physical Therapy, Medical Lab Science, Paramedic, Dental Hygienists, and social programs such as Social Workers, Master of Social Work and Addiction Counseling and Prevention. This will be a great boost for SD work force development for many medical professions. The final form of this bill passed the House 51 to 16 and the Senate 32 to 2 on the final day of session. It will come into law when the Governor signs it.

Industrial Hemp growth and production has been passed by the legislature and appropriations have been approved by the House and Senate. I was the prime sponsor of this bill and was the Chairman of the summer study that worked to get this bill finalized in a form that will best serve our agricultural communities and ag industry. The Governor added an ongoing appropriation to our bill of $3.5 million for the Department of Public Safety, the Department of Health and the Department of Ag. Most of this went for 11 employees and 4 drug dogs for Public Safety and the Department of Health. The startup cost, set by the Governor’s administration, of $742,286 was added to HB 1008 with $500,000 of this going for a machine to test for THC levels in the Hemp grown. SD Ag Labs already has a machine to do this testing which will be up and ready for use by next month. After much discussion and attempted negotiations regarding the appropriations added to this bill, this final bill with all appropriations added passed the House on a vote of 58 to 9 and the Senate on a vote of 30 to 3 on the last day of session. It now awaits a signature by Governor Noem.

South Dakota is looking for the “next big thing” in agricultural processing and we believe bioprocessing is that “next big thing”. HB 1100 gives $1 million for SDSU and the School of Mines and Technology to develop plans for a new facility to house this program. With help from Poet, the nation’s largest ethanol company, and others, this private public partnership is moving forward. Those of us who sponsored and supported this bill feel that SD will be the leading state in this emerging technology and industry. This bill passed the Senate 33 to 0 and the House 50 to 14. The final step will be a signature by the Governor.

I am not a big believer in Concurrent Resolutions but there is one this year that I believe has a lot of merit and I sponsored. SCR 601 supports trade negotiations to remove barriers to Country of Origin Labeling. With the trade agreement we have set up with the United States, Mexico and Canada it is time that we negotiate and execute agreements which will remove trade barriers to COOL. This was passed unanimously in the Senate and with only 3 no votes in the House. This resolution will be hand delivered to all of SD’s Congressional Delegation.

One great honor I received this session was when the SD Farmers Union President Doug Sombke presented to myself and Representative Orin Lesmeister from Parade, SD the South Dakota Farmers Union Outstanding Legislative Leader Award. It is an award that was given on Tuesday February 25th at the Farmers Union legislative day at the Capitol. The award was in recognition of outstanding support and dedication to family farm agriculture. I want to publicly thank the Farmers Union for such a great honor.

I again want to extend my deepest appreciation to you for your support, your ideas, your encouragement, and your prayers. It has been a great honor to serve all of you in District 21 and all across the state. Again, if you would like to contact me, call (605) 207-0406 or email me at Lee.Qualm@sdlegislature.gov

Praying you have a wonderful week! Blessings!

Representative Lee Qualm

House Majority Leader

Chairman State Affairs Committee

Legislative Procedures Committee