This interview originally aired on In the Moment on SDPB Radio.
Crossover day is the deadline when all bills must move out of the legislative body they originated in. All bills introduced in the House must move to the Senate, and all bills introduced in the Senate must move to the House.
If a bill doesn't make the move by today, then they're no longer in play.
Mike Card is a political analyst and professor emeritus from the University of South Dakota. He discusses the high-profile bills that passed or didn't pass before crossover day.
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Lori Walsh:
Welcome back to In the Moment on South Dakota Public Broadcasting on this wintry day. I am your host, Lori Walsh. We're going to stick with our Crossover Day theme. Today, we're talking about bills that will and won't survive the day with our Dakota Political Junkies' analysis. Mike Card is a political analyst, thank you very much, and professor emeritus from the University of South Dakota, and he's joining us on the phone today. Dr. Card, welcome. Thanks for being here.
Mike Card:
I'm glad to be here at home. I paid attention to the don't travel unless it's necessary that was offered by the National Weather Service.
Lori Walsh:
Everyone, just tune into your radios and don't go anywhere unless you absolutely, essentially must travel. Mike Card says so, too. And there is a lot to watch from the armchair today when it comes to politics. I want to go back to yesterday, almost a little dramatic, I don't know if you could call it that, but Governor Noem shows up to fight for her food tax and lawmakers say no right in front of her. Tell us exactly what happened and how unusual or mundane this moment actually was. What do you think?
Mike Card:
Well, I'll try not to repeat what Lee Strubinger said at the top of the hour, but essentially, the Governor appeared in front of the appropriations committee and she had one item that she had mentioned the day of her debate and led much of her campaign with, and that was Lee mentioned in the State of the State, together, I want to take us on the challenge of making South Dakota number one in growth tax, climate work ethic and building and supporting strong families. And the grocery tax fit into two of those categories, tax, climate and building and supporting strong families.
She had done some work prior to the committee meeting yesterday, but the end of the story is the committee voted, I believe, 8 to 1 to send her bill to the 41st day. It's sort of like when my mother would reject one of my proposals to do something, she would say that hell happened on the 12th of never. And so the 41st day is a day that doesn't exist just as the 12th of never, never seemed to come about, but this is [inaudible 00:02:43].
And then, they did pass a bill to reduce the overall sales tax and sent that bill to the floor. There was an effort made on the floor to smoke out, which is a legislative procedure dating back quite some time. If a bill doesn't make it out of committee, the entire chamber can vote, and if one-third of the members are willing to support bringing it out of committee, then the entire chamber can vote on the bill as if it had come out of committee, but that failed.
Lori Walsh:
That failed, yeah.
Mike Card:
And so there was not support in the chamber to take up her bill, meaning it died.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Okay, so if you're just tuning into how the state legislature works and you're curious about this, what a banner day, because it's Crossover Day, you know what that is, you know what a smoke out is. How about a hoghouse bill or a vehicle bill, which gets to the question of is this conversation over? The Governor said there's still work to be done on it. Explain to listeners what a hoghouse is and whether or not we could see this come up again during the final round here.
Mike Card:
Well, okay, so a hoghouse dates back to the 1920s and a hoghouse is a colloquial label or an informal label for an amendment to a bill that is somehow related to its title, at least a reasonable relationship to the title that basically deletes everything in the existing bill and substitutes a new bill in place of that original bill. So the motion is something like to delete everything after the enacting clause, which is required in the Constitution, and then inserting the new bill in, and then that motion is voted on and then the bill is considered.
Lori Walsh:
Is this a good candidate for a hoghouse?
Mike Card:
I went through the bills that are still alive and I didn't see tax bills or bills to reduce taxes other than the one that went out of the appropriations committee yesterday. Now that may be just I wasn't thorough enough in looking, but I think there are no what are called vehicle bills, which are bills with generic titles that deal with taxes or reducing taxes to which they could then be hoghoused, if you'll let me make a verb out of a noun.
Lori Walsh:
All right. So we asked this question more than once during our analysis this legislative session, but if this is a political candidate who wants to run for nationwide office and her tax relief bill in South Dakota failed so publicly, does it hurt her long term? Does it help her because the people of South Dakota wanted this and expected this according to her and the polling data that she has released? Or is this not really significant for her national profile? Does it come back to bite her later when another candidate says you couldn't even get this passed in your own super majority Republican state?
Mike Card:
Well, I'm sure that her opponents will bring that up, but I don't think this is over yet. There is still one tax bill out there and given the concern for spending more money than we have with a potentially pending recession, then this one bill, and then the number is escaping me right now, but there is a tax bill out there. And so she might try to convince senators in the committee that it's referred to to replace the contents of the existing bill that would reduce the overall sales tax rate from 4.5 to 4.2 with the content of her grocery tax bill.
Lori Walsh:
Right. But then they still have to get it through the House, right? They got to send it back then.
Mike Card:
They still have to get that one through the House and then-
Lori Walsh:
And there really doesn't look like there was a lot of support in the House at all, 8 to 1, yeah.
Mike Card:
Well, for her bill, no. And I think she had also met with, it's my understanding that Governor Noem met with legislative leadership at the residence and appeared in front of the caucus in addition to appearing in front of the committee. And the caucus was pretty unified and certainly, the caucus was unified by the bill not getting support to be smoked out of committee for the entire House chamber to consider.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah, so we-
Mike Card:
She's got work to do.
Lori Walsh:
She's got to do. Is it because she didn't do the work on the back end of this? Does she not have the relationships that she needed to have to pull lawmakers to her side? Or is this just, hey, it's taxes. It's tough to get through the... I mean, I guess what I'm asking you is what do you make of all this? What does this say about our Governor's relationship with the legislature?
Mike Card:
Well, it would suggest that the hypothesis is that she's not working closely enough with the legislature on this issue. It may be, as an alternative to that, that the legislature would prefer a reduction in the overall tax rate as opposed to reducing the tax on groceries. But if we explore the first possibility first, and that is you need to meet with the leadership and try to build your case, you need to work with individual legislators one on one and have your staff work with them one on one and count the votes that you see first in committee. If it doesn't look like you have the votes to pass, who's on the fence? And you have conversation with those who are on the fence. And if they're still on the fence or undecided, I recall Bill Janklow would then, how shall we say, invite them down to the second floor to have a conversation with the Governor.
Lori Walsh:
Which I mean-
Mike Card:
And sometimes there's some... I'm sorry.
Lori Walsh:
I want two things here. One, don't count Governor Kristi Noem, don't count Kristi Noem out during an election year or during negotiation over legislation and a policy that she wants. On the other hand, this is specifically what she said to voters she could accomplish that Jamie Smith couldn't because her opponent, Democrat Jamie Smith, was also for the food tax. And she said, "But he won't be able to get it done because he can't work with people like I can." So two things to consider there at once. One is don't count her out, but two, she said she could do this and so far she hasn't.
Mike Card:
So far she hasn't.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah.
Mike Card:
That doesn't mean that she won't get it done, but I think most of this will take place in the Senate because it has to get out of the House [inaudible 00:10:47]. The one bill that is still alive that seems to deal with taxes is in front of the House today.
Lori Walsh:
Okay.
Mike Card:
And if it dies in the House, then it'll require two-thirds majority to suspend the rules to introduce a new bill.
Lori Walsh:
Okay.
Mike Card:
And I don't think anybody's going to get two-thirds on a tax bill.
Lori Walsh:
Unlikely. Okay. So then the other option, when she says, "We're still working on this," would be some kind of ballot question brought forward by the voters. Can the voters ask for and put food tax relief on the ballot and pass it? I don't know. That's a big hypothetical that we're spinning forward quite a bit, but there's problems with that, too.
Mike Card:
Well, there's quite a few problems with that. I think the most recent language and the language of the Attorney General's explanation is that it deals with an initiated measure prohibiting taxes on anything sold for human consumption. Well, human consumption isn't defined in the law, so that will have to be an act of the legislature to create or, given the court case that came down from the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals saying that the deadline for an initiated measure is considerably shorter than what the statute currently reads, that was an issue of enabling the people to submit an initiated measure in a shorter timeline than one year prior to the election.
So the wording could be changed, but the current wording in the initiated measure deals with human consumption, and that's more than food and drinks.
Lori Walsh:
Right.
Mike Card:
So it's very likely that a new fiscal note would be necessary, again, noting the $20 million from the master tax settlement from cigarette manufacturers as well as anything that that could be consumed by humans. So that might again include tobacco and it might include anything that humans can consume other than those two items specifically exempted, which would be cigarettes or, yeah, alcohol and prepared food.
Lori Walsh:
Yeah. Okay. So broadly speaking, this Crossover Day, she's lost her signature campaign promise, which is to pass a food tax, not done yet, but not looking good. Her proposal for a committee for Foreign Ag Investment oversight, that failed. Paid family leave for state employees or private employees was not successful. Foster kids and scholarships for those families, not successful. Do you have any idea of what her big wins are at this point in this legislative session?
Mike Card:
Well, she was able to reduce the unemployment insurance tax as a proposal, and that I believe was the first bill signed into law.
Lori Walsh:
Okay. Well, the session is by no means over. Mike Card, today's Dakota Political Junkie. He is a professor emeritus from the University of South Dakota, a political scientist, a political analyst, and our friend. Thanks, Mike. Appreciate it.
Mike Card:
Well, thanks for having me.
