This interview originally aired on "In the Moment" on SDPB Radio.
Our Dakota Political Junkie stops by with his political analysis on what happened this week in the South Dakota Legislature.
He brings a lesson on what crossover day is and why it's significant. And he takes a look at procedural maneuvers that can be used for leverage in the Capitol.
Mike Card, Ph.D., is a political scientist and professor emeritus at the University of South Dakota.
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The following transcript was auto-generated.
Lori Walsh:
Let us jump in for some political analysis with a member of our rotating panel of Dakota Political Junkies. Michael Card is a political scientist and professor emeritus at the University of South Dakota.
He is seated across the table from me in SDPB's Kirby Family Studio in Sioux Falls. Dr. Card, welcome back.
Mike Card:
Thank you for inviting me.
Lori Walsh:
We just heard from two young lawmakers and you spent years teaching the next generation of political scientists and lawyers and teachers and students that came through the University of South Dakota. So let's start with some basics. If you had somebody in your class who said, "I think this state legislature is fascinating, I might want to run for office someday."
What are some of the things that you would want them to be studying and reading as a young college student?
Mike Card:
Well, that's an interesting question, and I guess the first thing I would tell them to do is to think, what do you want to change in the world? When people say there ought to be a law, what would that be for you? And then to begin work on that now and to get involved in talking as both of these individuals said, both Kadyn and Tyler, talk to people, find out what they're thinking, see who else is interested in this and what are the challenges to, there ought to be a law and why is this particular law a good idea? And can you eliminate the bad ideas or the bad consequences? Because we never really know what the long run impact is going to be of a particular law, but we can identify some issues with it. So if we can eliminate the worst things, we can get good laws made.
Lori Walsh:
We had a couple of good examples I think already in this hour of somebody who was married 52 years ago might have a different idea about what marriage is than somebody who's thinking about marriage today. They might be perfectly aligned, but the world does in fact change in some ways. So that diversity of age matters in peer.
If the student was talking to you and said, "Well, okay, how much am I going to get to be idealistic about change and how much should I really be part of a party?"
Where is that party line negotiation, the politics versus the I want to be there for my constituents? What kind of advice or critical thinking skills would you want them to employ?
Mike Card:
Well, I think we have to remember that politics is about who gets to decide. And in that sense, it's really about power and authority. And so you really do have to draw a line between what are the issues that are core to who I am as a human being and what are the things I have to do to be a good member of the political party, which we hope matches what the individual's ideology is. And I think that that set of values and beliefs is more important to a young person right now than they probably have been.
But right now we see they're really bifurcated and they're bifurcated across a number of issues.
But you have to do what you believe is right for you. I have to sleep at night. And so sometimes you decide I'm not going to win on this issue, but it's still worth pursuing. And I'm hoping that the caucus process allows individuals to still pursue their ideas, even though they may lose in the caucus and the caucus may decide to go another direction. And we see that in Congress too.
Lori Walsh:
Sure. Yeah. All right, let's talk about some of the things in the State House crossover day next week. Let's do some procedural talk for the newcomers around the table.
Mike Card:
Okay.
Lori Walsh:
What exactly is crossover day, and why is everybody just a little bit frenetic right now?
Mike Card:
Well, there's a good reason to be frenetic. A legislature is a body of 105 people and in the House of Representatives there's 70 people. So you have to have a set of procedures by which you're going to pursue the action of making laws and resolutions and the like. So a crossover day, given that we have a limit of 40 days and our legislature is scheduled 38 days this year that they're going to run, there has to be a day when a bill passed in one chamber has to be out of that chamber so that the other chamber has time to look at it.
And so that's what crossover day is. It's the day where bills have to cross over from one chamber to the other chamber. And that'll happen for out of the committee of origin on Tuesday and on Wednesday is crossover day of next week. And so if it doesn't cross over to the other house, it's dead.
Lori Walsh:
It's dead. All right. So a few things that'll come up, budget projections are in.
Mike Card:
Yes.
Lori Walsh:
It looks like a $41 million in one-time money for this fiscal year, more than expected. Do I understand that correctly?
Mike Card:
I think that was more than expected.
Lori Walsh:
Okay. Yeah, the revenue projections matter to lawmakers a lot. How come?
Mike Card:
Well, because we have to know how much money we can spend. The general fund is for the operations of state government and its existing institutions, so we would need a special appropriation or special consideration if we're going to add a new program or something. But that's the general appropriations bill only requires a 50% majority out of the appropriations committees. And in each chamber, the legislature to go to the governor for signature. Special appropriations require a two-thirds vote. But the general appropriations bill is for the existing state government and its institutions.
So we're looking at differences of opinion a little slightly between the legislature's budget office and the governor's budget office. But governor's budget office is often called the Bureau of Finance and Management. That's its official title. But the legislature had lower projections, it appears, than what the governor's office had for the sales tax and use tax, which is 62% of the state's general fund budget. But they compromised, they basically took the average of that. But that would be a decrease for next year. Again, if something's 62% of your budget and it decreases a little bit, that may mean some belt tightening here and there.
Lori Walsh:
Okay. So we're going to cover that a lot more in the future. A little procedural thing that happened, and you're seeing a lot of activity on Twitter about a debate that was on the floor and then all of a sudden they were just done talking about it. They voted, called to question, to help us understand maybe how some of these procedural things happen and people leverage the rules to be on the winning side of what they want.
Mike Card:
Well, in studying the U.S. Congress, the person who knows the rules is really the master of the game. And in some senses that applies to the state legislature as well. Those rules are what I spoke of as legislative procedures that are necessary to provide an order and a flow of activity so that they can get their work done. In this case, Rep. Wittman gave her pitch for why this particular bill should be passed and then the next person to be recognized by the speaker of the House asked for the question.
It's a non-debatable question to say, "Let's stop debate and let's just vote on the bill." And that passed by a voice vote. And then the vote for the final disposition of the bill came up and it failed seven to 63, I believe is the number, it might be a little off.
Lori Walsh:
It's done.
Mike Card:
It's done.
Lori Walsh:
And the reason people are upset by that is because the idea that we have, that we should be able to have an open debate about this was a sensitive topic. There was sexual content to the topic. It was a bill to codify stealthing as being against state law, but that debate didn't get aired. And that offends the sensibilities of people who say there should be an open debate, but it's also a rule that was effectively leveraged at that time.
Mike Card:
At that time.
Lori Walsh:
All right. Something else we're still seeing, and it's like a ping pong match sometimes as you try to figure out how these lawmakers are dealing with obscenity on campus, University of South Dakota, you're not speaking for them, but that's a Board of Regents organization. The Board of Regents passed some rules to sort of deal with what lawmakers were asking in the past as far as what kind of performances they can stage. You're getting into freedom of expression and what kind of theatrical performance can be staged. And now we see this anti-obscenity bill that is sort of unspecified, but everybody thinks it's about drag performances. But the people who are bringing it at forth saying, "Well, we didn't say it's about drag."
Mike Card:
There's no language that says it's drag bill.
Lori Walsh:
What's going on?
Mike Card:
Well, I think we have to remember that most of the original 10 amendments to the US Constitution limit what government does. The 14th Amendment passed during reconstruction applied those laws not just to the federal government to which they originally applied. They now apply to the states. So the state can't pass a law that abridges someone's freedom of speech and freedom of speech has been broadly interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court to also include expression. I mean, that brings up a level of conflict. Is this going to pass constitutional muster?
And certainly if it involved the drag bills, that's someone's expression. And whether we like it or not, if that's a student at a state university, the state university can't really prohibit that. They can consider time, manner, and place as to where that expression can take place, but it can't be out-and-out prohibited.
And that's the freedom of speech issue. So I believe what Rep. Karr's bill did was simply say, we can't do this sort of activity in state-owned buildings, which I think is an attempt to make it be consistent with time, manner and place. So can it be done out in the open? I think that would be worse than if it were. But I think the other side is this is a bill, it is prohibiting activity that right now isn't taking place. And I was interviewed by the student newspaper on this topic and I said, "Well, are you guys aware of anything like this happening on our campus?" No, and it's not happening up at state either with their colleagues up at the Collegiate.
So it's a bill and it's a number of social issues that are making their way into our laws where we are trying to prohibit behaviors that we find objectionable.
Lori Walsh:
Does that mean it's having a chilling effect or does that mean it's a solution looking for a problem?
Mike Card:
Well, I think if we're looking at this activity, which is what some of the obscenity bills would be, that might challenge an individual's right to freedom of expression. But again, time, manner and place where that can be exhibited is under the control of the institution of state government.
Lori Walsh:
And we're not saying that drag is inherent— And that's one of the other questions that seems to come up in the debates and we have to wrap up for now, but that whether or not this thing that some people look at and say, "That's lewd, that's obscene, that should not exist." Other people are looking at that and saying, "This is an art form, this is expression, this is not sexual at all. This is a costume." And here is the debate that we're having here.
Mike Card:
Right.
Lori Walsh:
That they're having there. Not you and I, but yeah.
Mike Card:
And it is a matter of opinion and what the standard that on one bill that didn't make it through or that isn't alive anymore dealt with community standards and which is the community here, is it of the student's community? And I would suspect that the student community would be more accepting than the larger community even in Vermillion.
Lori Walsh:
Right. A whole lot of basics laid out. If you're following the session for the first time, ask a college professor how it works. And we thank you for that Dr. Michael Card.
Mike Card:
Thank you for having me.
