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S.D. Stockgrowers Assoc. Legislative Update

February 7, 2020

This week the hemp bill passed out of committee.

The bill to ban commercial surrogacy passed the House with a summer study tacked on.



A measure to amend the constitution to permit sports betting passed out of committee today.

The bill introduction deadline was this week so, there will be no new bills introduced. However, there are 16 “carcass” bills introduced which can be used as vehicles for new legislation.



Stockgrowers’ Legislative Issues

The COOL resolution, SCR 601, was passed unanimously by the Senate Agriculture Committee and by the full Senate. It’s picking up co-sponsors from both the House and Senate (This year, with the new electronic system, legislators may add themselves as sponsors up until the time a bill becomes engrossed.).

Representative Chaffee has introduced HB 1270 to identify Class IV soils. However, the text of the bill was erroneously altered in LRC and will be amended to the form requested by the representative.

Today the Senate Taxation Committee took up one of the two bills from the Ag. Land Assessment interim committee – HB 1006. That will broaden the data sources that may be used to determine ag land income value

This week the House Ag & Natural Resources Committee and the full House took up and passed the two bills to improve bonding for oil and gas wells.

Finally, we lost Sen. Maher’s bill (SB 63) to define pore spaces as the property of the surface owner on a 5 to 4 vote in Senate Ag. committee. I want to personally thank David Niemi for making the trip to Pierre to testify on this bill. Committee members, including those who voted “no,” were favorable to the concept but, would like to refine the statutory language granting pore space rights to surface owners.

–South Dakota Stockgrowers Association