State senators and representatives meet in a conference committee with a full audience on March 6, 2024, at the South Dakota Capitol in Pierre. (Photo by Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight)
Contrary to popular belief, the upcoming South Dakota legislative session will be more than just a slugfest over property tax relief. Some of the bills that have already been filed show that in addition to deciding the fate of property taxes, lawmakers will also be revisiting some old topics.
Listening to the sound of silencers
One of those familiar topics will be an attempt to find a new way to embrace the Second Amendment. A pre-filed bill from Sen. Casey Crabtree, a Madison Republican, would ensure that federal regulations on silencers wouldn’t be enforced in South Dakota.
Senate Bill 2 seeks to take silencers off the “controlled weapons” list where it currently exists with the likes of machine guns and sawed-off shotguns. Despite the Second Amendment’s popularity in South Dakota and the Legislature, this may be an uphill fight for Crabtree, because the portrayal of silencers in popular culture isn’t good. We usually see someone in the movies or on TV using a silencer when they’re committing a crime.
It may also be tough for Crabtree to explain why law-abiding citizens need to silence their weapons. Maybe, if you’re trying to pick off wildlife or stray cats and dogs in your backyard, you don’t want to alert authorities with gunshots. If you’re using a weapon to defend your home, maybe you don’t want to wake the neighbors when shots are fired.
Another attempt to add more limits to term limits
Since 1992, when voters in this state decided it was a good idea to limit the terms of legislators, there have been various attempts to limit them even more. Currently a lawmaker can serve no more than four terms or eight consecutive years in one chamber. Candidates got around that restriction by, after four terms, running for office in the other chamber.
Senate Joint Resolution 501 seeks to change that with a vote of the people. SJR 501, sponsored by Aberdeen Republican Michael Rohl, seeks a state constitutional amendment that would limit lawmakers to eight consecutive years in one chamber, then make them sit out two years before they could make a run at a seat in the other chamber, where they could only serve four consecutive terms.
Since 1992 when legislative terms were limited, lawmakers have been flipping and flopping from one chamber to the other every eight years. If approved by voters, Rhol’s resolution would make sure that veteran lawmakers would have to sit on the bench for two years before they could seek a seat in the other chamber. Two years on the sidelines may not appeal to his colleagues. What term limit backers often forget is that voters have the ultimate say on who serves them. No matter what the law says about consecutive terms, voters control term limits.
Yet another attempt to call for a constitutional convention
Rohl is also the sponsor of Senate Joint Resolution 502, which calls for a national constitutional convention. The subject of the convention would be enshrining in the U.S. Constitution a limit on the number of Supreme Court justices.
The current court membership of nine is set by Congress, and Rohl wants to keep it that way. Rohl must be afraid that if Democrats were to somehow gain control of both houses of Congress and the White House, they could change the number to something that benefited them, upping the number of justices on the court who would then be appointed by a Democratic president and would be more likely to favor left-leaning issues.
Just about every year there are resolutions like Rohl’s, though his has the advantage of calling for a unique change in the Constitution. Usually the resolutions are of a more generic nature, calling for a convention that would deal with fiscal restraints or limits to federal power or congressional term limits, or all three.
The bad news for Rohl is that those attempts to call for a constitutional convention rarely succeed in this Legislature. In the past five sessions, the vast majority of resolutions calling for a constitutional convention have been killed in committee or failed in one chamber or the other. With a record of one win and 10 losses in the past five sessions, it’s obvious that a majority of lawmakers recognize those resolutions as a waste of time.
When legislators act, get notified: Sign up for our free newsletter.
