From the desk of Marty Overweg

We had an exciting week in Pierre swearing in a new Governor and Lt. Governor to lead South Dakota for the next two years. Our new Governor, Larry Rhoden, chose Representative Tony Venhuizen to serve as our next Lt Governor and preside over the Senate. I like our new Lt Governor and have served 4 years with him in the House in which he served as the Vice Chair of Appropriations. I respect him both as a person and as a Legislator. I look forward to serving and working with both of these gentlemen to make sure South Dakota stays strong, safe, and free. We had other guests as well this week, Corsica/Stickney school and Armour school both came to visit us and tour the Capital. Like I’ve told you before this is one of my favorite things that go along with my job. It takes a little work to get them to engage and ask questions but once they do it’s great. You never know what they’ll ask or what’s on their mind. That was proven again this week when one young man asked why I was wearing a pink tie that day, to which I responded because I was married and he’d understand someday. As I mentioned in last week's column, things picked up this week with bills being dropped and Legislators running around like their hair was on fire. On the House floor we had around 30 bills this week and a few of them were kind of interesting, like HB 1052 which prohibits the exercise of eminent domain for a pipeline that carries carbon oxide. As you can imagine there was a lengthy debate on the House floor and after hearing the pros and cons, I voted for the bill because in the end I felt it protected landowner rights and makes everyone play by the rules. Also, on the floor we passed HB 1044 which allows the use of newborn safety devices where a parent who feels that they aren’t able to raise their newborn child are now able to drop the child off at these designated safe places with no questions asked. I’ve received many emails, letters, and post cards about the funding cuts for local libraries and I understand how important our libraries are to our communities. Like I said before when Governor Noem announced theses kind of cuts when she knew she was leaving was in my opinion not right. I think all departments of government need to cut spending across the board, but I am not in favor of gutting one or two of them. Some of these cuts were proposed to make room in the budget for the new prison funding, I also do not think that was a smart approach to governing. I’m talking to other legislators and the Governor’s people to see if there is any room for negotiating on these proposed cuts. I almost forgot to mention that I have my first page sponsor working for us for two weeks. Emmie Huizenga from Platte/Geddes school is working hard and hopefully learning some interesting things. The Page program is great and it’s fun to work with these great kids from communities across the state of South Dakota. We always claim Ag as our number one industry but the kids we raise and turn out to the world are awesome as well. That about does it for this week’s column. Remember if you need to contact me, it's Marty.overweg@sdlegislator.gov or call me at 605-680-0304. Always my honor to serve you, Representative Marty Overweg