From the desk of Marty Overweg

The 100th Legislative session of South Dakota has begun, we are off and running and the first two weeks are in the books. So, let’s do a quick recap of what’s been happening in those two weeks. The first week of Session is always kind of slow with a lot of speeches and meetings along with old friends getting reacquainted and getting committees organized, so you can also imagine this drives me a little crazy. Let’s talk about week two because this is the week where the session really starts as committees are meeting and we start seeing some bills on the floor. I guess first I should let you know what committees I’m on and how I believe they will affect District 21. It was an honor that the Republican Caucus elected me Assistant Majority Leader for the next two years and with that position comes a lot more responsibilities serving the Caucus and its members. I’ve been given the Chair of Ag and Natural Resources again and I’m very happy and excited to be in this position which gives me the opportunity to promote and safeguard one of our states largest industries and I don’t take that job lightly. I also will serve as Vice Chair of State Affairs committee as well as Chair of GOAC ( Government Operations and Audit ) which mainly meets in the summer when we are not in session. Serving on these committees gives me the insight to know and understand what’s going on in our state and what I can do to promote or protect South Dakota. Ok, enough of all that, let’s look at some bills that came our way this week. We had some interesting bills in State Affairs starting with HB 1053 which would require age verification on websites containing material that is harmful to children. This bill has been named the ‘Porn bill’ by most of the media and passed on a Party line of 11-2. Bills like this can be a little confusing because none of us like government telling us what we can and cannot read or view but remember we show ID to buy cigarettes and alcohol to protect children, so I think this made sense. Now the bad news, we voted to put two Constitutional Amendment on the ballot for 2026. I can hear everyone moaning and groaning as I write this, but I felt both were important. I’ll speak to them more in depth later if they clear the Senate, but one has to do with Medicaid and protects us from spending money we don’t have while the other would require a 60 percent margin to amend our States Constitution in the future. Yes, I see the irony of 50% plus one of us can pass a measure that will require 60% plus one in the future, welcome to politics and government that sometimes doesn’t make a lot of sense. Also, we passed HB 1056 which puts a lot more regulation on Kratom products, Kratom is an over the counter product that one can get high from and has been linked to some deaths and it was time for this bill. It was decided we need to be more aggressive on labeling when it pertains to fake meat products that are being developed and grown in labs, so we passed HB 1022 which makes it illegal for those products to be labeled as real meat. Like I said its just getting started so not a lot to report this week, but something tells me next week will be more interesting. By the time you read this we should have a new Governor and Lt Governor serving South Dakota which means yours truly gets to go to another Inauguration Ball, lucky me. Until next week stay warm and as always it’s my honor to serve you all and if you need to reach me my contact information is Marty. overweg@sdlegislature.gov or call me at 605-680-0304.