From the Black Hills to the Big Sioux, the Dakota Town Hall Podcast.
Hosted by Murdoc in the West and Jake in the East, Featuring South Dakota’s governor Larry Rhoden, and lieutenant governor Tony Venhuizen
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Read along with this week’s transcript from Dakota Town Hall
Murdoc: Well, Lieutenant Governor, you’ve done this show a million times, so you kind of know the drill. Headphones, if you want it.
Venhuizen: Never in your studio. I’ve never been to your studio.
Murdoc: Never in person like this.
Jake: We’ve done one live from your basement, though.
Venhuizen: We did one in my basement.
Murdoc: We did one in your house before we did one in our studio.
Venhuizen: We did one in Jake, one or two in your house.
Jake: We did, yeah. All the dog hair, it was great.
Murdoc:Oh, man, you’ve been patient. Not anymore. You’ll never get the Lieutenant Governor over your house.
Jake: I know, right? That was… Yeah, beers around my office in my house is great, yeah.
Murdoc: And happy Friday afternoon. We’re punched in once again to South Dakota’s most listened to political podcast. And we’ve got a very special episode this week, Jake. We’ve never done a show quite like this before. It’s definitely a first. And so we’ll have to be a little less cocky and probably a little less funny this week.
Jake: We’re dressed nicer. Usually we’re in like sweats and a t-shirt from my home. My dog’s sleeping behind me.
Murdoc: Drinking beers, yeah. This is a little different. So we’re trying to professional it up, but from Jake in the East, actually from Jake in the West and Murdoch in the West, this is South Dakota’s most listened to political podcast, Dakota Town Hall, with quite the slate of guests this week.
Jake: Should we introduce them?
Murdoc: Let’s get to it.
Jake: Yeah, so let’s start with our good and new Governor Larry Roden. Governor Roden, thank you for joining us.
Gov Rhoden: Yeah, my pleasure.
Murdoc: Thanks for coming on. So I want to say I’ve been, I think I’ve been what would kindly be called nudging to your staff to try to set this up exactly how I kind of wanted it. And they’ve been incredibly patient. So this is the time I should thank them as well.
Gov Rhoden: They’re good people.
Murdoc: They’re awesome to work with so far.
Jake: And of course we have a returning guest, the most most visited, most visited guest. And highly requested oftentimes for his brains and his smarts. It is our now Lieutenant Governor, Tony Van Venhuizen.
Venhuizen: Good to be back with you.
Jake: Great to have you.
Murdoc: Have we had, we have not, you have not been on since the Lieutenant Governor.
Venhuizen: No.
Jake: He doesn’t care about us anymore. He just kind of, yeah.
Murdoc: That’s how that goes.
Jake: We got a bone to pick with you. You took our best guess.
Murdoc: That makes sense.
Venhuizen: I told Ian I wanted to be back on, but he was, he was slow walking you.
Murdoc: Sure, that happens. I get that. I will say this, my bigger belt buckle than I thought I would meet with Ian. That was impressive.
Jake: I noticed no cowboy boots on Tony yet. You haven’t got him in a cowboy boots?
Gov Rhoden: Well, no, he keeps asking me about him. I just refused to let him wear boots.
Murdoc: Don’t buy work boots. That’s the mistake I did. Don’t buy work boots. Ron Jeffries talked me into it and I ended up getting drunk at the stock show and I bought a nice pair of boots and then I found out nine months later, a real rancher was like, why are you wearing work boots? We’re at a concert. Dang it. I bought the wrong pair.
Venhuizen: What’d you call these shoes? I mean, you were disparaging my shoes with the, when we were in Sioux Falls.
Gov Rhoden: Sioux Falls loafers. Yeah.
Murdoc: That line will come in handy on the 2026 campaign trail probably.
Jake: I did change to a little more like not those before the start. So I wasn’t wearing those when it came in here.
Murdoc: Well let’s do a show guys.
Jake: Yes. Okay. We kind of want to start a conversation a little bit. You’re definitely in a historical role. The first governor to ever move in during session into the role. We kind of want to ask what was that like from your point of view and what was it like to define your governorship?
Gov Rhoden: Well, it was, yeah, it was very interesting and challenging. Like you said, it was the first time in the history of the state that we did a transition during session. That coupled with the fact that we had a huge number of brand new legislators and three weeks into session and then not knowing when that transition would take place, when the governor would resign, the former governor would resign and I would actually fulfill that role.
But it went very well and that was thanks to a lot of people that were working to prepare for the unexpected. And so when it finally did happen, the week Christy was voted on on Saturday and then on Monday, I took the oath of office. Tuesday I did a joint address. Wednesday picked Tony as my running mate. Thursday, which was the last day of that legislative week, they had confirmation hearings and a floor vote and so we had it all wrapped up in four days.
Murdoc: That’s fast.
Jake: You have to pull by the horns there.
Gov Rhoden: I mean, that’s as fast as it gets. Yeah, it was good process. And we had a lot of people working to the legislature typically in those kind of circumstance would no doubt suspend the rules in order to get it all done. But we had the process figured nailed down to where we didn’t even they didn’t have to suspend the rules and went very smoothly. And then of course, Tony got a unanimous vote in his confirmation from both chambers, which I thought was. The cherry on top.
Murdoc: Do you have to wrangle anybody? Do you have to wrangle anybody for a holdout?
Gov Rhoden: Yeah…Well, well, no.
Murdoc: Almost. I almost had a great answer there.
Venhuizen: I really never expected to be unanimous. That was that was very surprising.
Jake: You thought like maybe like Mort would vote no or something.
Venhuizen: Yeah.
Murdoc: Funny, Casey, hold out.
Venhuizen: Matt Ruby told me thought about it because I talked him into running and he got up on the house floor and felt like this was just a huge bait and switch.
Murdoc: I mean, we want to get to the tour, but maybe let’s stick on this a little bit. Do you mind if we ask kind of bluntly like why Tony? Well, I don’t mean to do it while he’s in the room here, but like why? And I don’t mean why Tony?!
Gov Rhoden: You know, well, it doesn’t hurt me to say nice things about him.
Murdoc: There’s a let me ask it this way. Hard not to think there’s not a slew of great candidates who could do that. And totally one of them we agree with on the show. We’re huge fans, but like how do you narrow it down to that one person?
Gov Rhoden: Yeah, it was an it was extremely interesting and very encouraging. There was I think 40 some people that had expressed interest in being my running mate and very, very qualified people, a number of them in there and people that I thought a great deal about kind of had my set of boxes to check as far as what I needed in a lieutenant governor and course those boxes at the top were bigger than the boxes as you went farther down the list.
Jake: And Cowboy Boots was really low on the list apparently.
Murdoc: Sue Falls loafers got a real small little circle at the bottom of the legal pad.
Gov Rhoden: A little footnote. So and then my in one of the, you know, one of the top huge big boxes or a couple of them is first of all, somebody with integrity. Another huge box is is their abilities, their talents, their ability to know the legislative process and be able to fill that role, step into a role where they’re presiding over the Senate. But at the end of the day, I had had the luxury of working with Tony for 20 some years when I was the first new legislator, he was, I think he was an intern at the time. And then for my grounds and then was having to get rid of him student regent and then work for you’re a reason Dennis Dew guard. And then with Christie, he was part of our transition, became chief of staff for a couple years. And through that whole time, my respect for him grew and what he brought to the table. So then the day it was a pretty easy call actually after having a lot of time to ponder.
Jake: So, you know, word kind of floating around a lot. I feel like is reset, with their gun ownership so far, a lot of resetting kind of where we are with its, whether it’s tribal relations or whether it’s the prison or whatever it is. When you kind of got the job and you had a slate of things that, you know, you got Noem’s budget hand down to you. What were kind of your first thoughts? Where were you going to start with your legislation? What were you thinking with that kind of reset idea?
Gov Rhoden: Well, the reset was really, you know, a lot of that was set in motion, you know, in the first few weeks. In fact, in a recent article, I thought was really kind of a distortion of the reset because, you know, that I think it was a week before the state, right after the state of the state address, we met with tribes, Governor Noem and me, she was still governor. And it was there that Kristi yourself talked about resetting with the tribes. And then and then a week later when the tribal chairman that was there repeated that in his state of the tribe address. And then a week after that or two weeks after that, when I did my inaugural address, I repeated what he had repeated from Governor Noem on the reset.
Venhuizen: So, you know, the reset was was not a new to my administration, although it did, you know, it really was appropriate in a lot of areas. You know, we when we talked about resetting with the press and resetting with legislators, we have a new crop of legislators. And then of course, when we couldn’t couldn’t get the prisons across the finish line, I thought, you know, here again, and just because the cards that are dealt with dealt us, we need to reset on that. And we actually,
Venhuizen: You know, I have kind of the unusual experience of having worked in one way or another on Ford moving into total transitions.
Murdoc: Oh, that’s a good point.
Venhuizen: Yeah, I was working for Mike Browns when he was governor elect. I worked for Dennis when he was governor elect. I was the I was on a Kristi’s transition team with Larry. And then now this one, of course, I kind of came in as they were transitioning in. I was in the legislature. But the reset is something that any new governor does. And a lot of it is just about style, really. Yeah, you think about, you know, what major policy change has Governor Rodin made that does a departure from governor at home? I can’t really think of one. Right. I mean, we took on the property tax issue. That was something that was going to have to happen this year either way.
Murdoc: And was going to be a continuing conversation.
Venhuizen: And of course, he has as much experience on property tax as anybody. So maybe his approach was a little different. Who knows? The prison issue was going to be a problem this session, regardless, because the votes just weren’t there.
Murdoc: We actually talked about this to defend your point a little. We talked about this last week on the show was that it’s Governor Noem that actually started the prison conversation.
Venhuizen: Absolutely.
Murdoc: And that wasn’t a new problem. That was a problem for governors and governors.
Venhuizen: You know, I’m chairing this task force and we aren’t even though it’s going to be tricky to figure out a plan that everyone can agree to. We governor Noem was so wise to set all this money aside. You know, almost 600 million. And then this year, you know, a little more.
And so whatever we have a lot more options on the table because we have all this cash set aside for this purpose. So I think the reset, you know, I read, I read that article too. And it was really overstating the case. I thought a lot of this is just about style and personality.
Murdoc: Well, and we had Tupper on last week and he was the author of this article. And I think even he would maybe say that was maybe less, you know, more about what Governor Noem than maybe more about Governor Rhoden, I think, which probably doesn’t help the argument that you guys are trying to make one way or the other. But I think the public sees a different style would be the way to say it, you know, just, you know, style for the time.
Jake: I’m glad you kept the, the veto brand though. I’m glad that got to stick around.
Gov Rhoden: Well, I had to make a new one that Governor took the one that I’d made for her. She took that with her. So I made a smaller, kinder, gentler veto.
Murdoc: Easier to wield.
Venhuizen: Well, the first one was a little.
Murdoc: A little unruly, Its great for the camera.
Venhuizen: Yeah, it was a little bit awkward. I think I watched her do that several times and it was a little bit awkward to actually use because it was so big. This one is, I think, a better size for the purpose.
Gov Rhoden: Yes. I had to, I had to reset with my.
Murdoc: Do you get a fire? Do you get a little fire going in the office? Do you take it outside with a blow torch?
Jake: Is it Ink or? Is it like embers you’re using to stamp it? What are you stamp?
Gov Rhoden: It’s ink.
Jake: Okay, good. That’s a little, you know, a little word. You could burn the cap all that. Like a red ink pad.
Murdoc: Yeah, that’s good. You guys have been on the tour. You’re seeing every inch of South Dakota lately. What’s, uh, I’d like, most importantly, what are the, what have been in the top notch places to eat lately? It’s usually what I want to know when I’m talking to people. Any restaurants around the state and knock you out?
Gov Rhoden: Well, uh, well, we don’t have that many opportunities, you know, once a day. Today we were at Sickies.
Venhuizen: Sickies Garage out by the mall.
Gov Rhoden: That was the first for me, so that was good. But no, we, uh, yeah, we’ve been around.
Murdoc: Suppose you’re there to work. You’re not there to hang, you know, leisurely lunch like on my schedule might be.
Venhuizen: The one that probably made the biggest impression on me. And it wasn’t really lunch, but we went to the steel district in Sioux Falls. Right. Oh yeah. And they have, I think three restaurants open in there already and another one coming, but they’d give us a tour of that whole development. But in each restaurant, then they had kind of sample set out.
Murdoc: Oh, that was cool. Chef and all those setups.
Venhuizen:So we went in the. Yeah. We went in the Mexican place, Dahlia or whatever it is. And, uh, they had these little restaurants and different things. And then the, the steakhouse was our favorite. Yeah.
Jake: Yep. Nice place.
Venhuizen: Well, ribeye, New York strip and the.
Gov Rhoden: Wagyu.
Venhuizen: Wagyu.
Murdoc: Governor of South Dakota eatin Wagyu beef. Can’t, it’s a, it’s a brand new time and day in time. Is it?
Gov Rhoden: Well, I’m, I’m not big on Wagyu.
Venhuizen: No, it’s funny. You say, cause he, he said that to me as we were walking out that he thinks Wagyu is kind of, it’s good marketing oversold. Yeah. Carry marketing.
Jake: So how’s this tour been? You’ve been all over the place. What are you guys been doing?
Gov Rhoden: Well, yeah, this is the second week. Just wrapping up our second week of our, uh, open for opportunities tour. And, uh, we started out in Sioux Falls. We’ve been in Sioux Falls and Aberdeen.
Murdoc: But grudgingly stopped in Watertown.
Gov Rhoden: Watertown yesterday. Uh, before that we were in spearfish and, uh, Belfouche and. Pierre. What, what am I missing? Mitchell. Um, and then Rapid City today. Rapid City.
Murdoc: So do you stop at Manufacturing places. Do you stop at like, what are the types? Of businesses you’re stopping to visit at?
Gov Rhoden: Well, uh, like in Sioux Falls, the first day we stopped at silencer central, uh, uh, up in Watertown, we were at, um, um, Tarex, Tarex. Oh, sure. And, uh, and today we were out at Ellsworth, did a tour of Ellsworth. And then, uh, uh, what’s the, the welding?
Venhuizen: Is it VSR?
Murdoc: Of course. You want to stop at every welder in the state.
Gov Rhoden: Well, yeah, yeah. We went to a lot of plant, uh, a lot of plants and. We’re a little heavy on the, on the welding area.
Venhuizen: Wonder why.
Murdoc: But yeah, you imagine being a welder and you’re there and the governor stops by and he knows a lot about welding and now you got to try to, you know, get your lines right, right in front of you. That’s probably an old nerve wreck.
Venhuizen: I just was VRC.
Murdoc: VRC metal systems.
Gov Rhoden: Oh yeah. They’re great. No, that’s, that’s high tech. It is high tech welding there. So that was very interesting for somebody like me, but it’s been a great opportunity though. I’m blown away every time we go to another, uh, another town and the businesses that I had no idea existed in South Dakota.
And, uh, and then I have the opportunity to visit with the, uh, you know, the management and the employees and, uh, just business and business people from all across the state and their customers. And, uh, the kind of information that you can glean from those conversations and the problems that they’re facing, uh, where, what their hindrances that they see to opportunity in South Dakota, what we can do, uh, to get out of their way as a state government or help provide them some, some help.
Murdoc: Is there a common theme that you see in every, as like, is there one common problem or one common, like it’d be great if this would happen across any business one way or the other?
Gov Rhoden: I’m not, not really. Um, I think there’s a, there’s a common theme that’s been extremely encouraging to me as, uh, the excitement of, especially these people that have moved here in recent years and to see just their, uh, gratitude for a place like South Dakota to move a business to. And that’s extremely encouraging to me. And, uh, I think it should be at all South Dakota. We do a lot of things right in South Dakota. And I think as native South Dakota, sometimes we take a lot of them for granted. And so it’s kind of a,
Murdoc: you see that when you travel other places, you’re like, Oh man, that is, I was in DC for a week and there’s so many things that are the norm there that if you think about it here would be like, I wouldn’t even ask that’s not going to work here.
Venhuizen: Yeah. Well, it’s just fun. I remember governor Daugaard always used to say, you always thought it was fun that when you’re the governor, you can go just about anywhere and tour just about anything and they’re happy to see you.
Murdoc: That’s a good point.
Venhuizen: There’s a lot of these places. Yeah. Why would you ever go in a Tarex or Trail King or, or, you know, this place today? Why would, why would you never go to these places? Why would you, but you get to go in there, you get to see what they’re doing. They show you all the cool stuff they’re doing. It’s a lot of fun.
Murdoc: Yeah. Anything, um, you’ve learned where it’s like, Oh, I couldn’t do that for a living.
Venhuizen: Well, for me, it’s just about everywhere.
Jake: Not with those shoes on.
Venhuizen: I was saying, Larry, we’ve been worried a few times that he was going to apply for a job.
Gov Rhoden: We, uh, well, we lost the governor to VRC metal systems. He’s really excited about a new opportunity. Yeah, that would be. He had to start dusting off his resume a little.
Gov Rhoden: We were, uh, visiting a high tech. Where were we at where they had the robot snow plows.
Venhuizen: Well, that was at Lake area tech. And Tony piped up. He thought that was right up his alley.
Murdoc: I think that’s wonderful.
Venhuizen: We’d seen the treadmill desk earlier. I said, I don’t, not doing that.
Murdoc: Put a robot on theret
Venhuizen: The robot snow blower. Like this is, this is what I need. You’re remote control. You can sit in your.
Murdoc: We went through that treadmill desk phase there for a while. That, then the standing desk that never,
Venhuizen: Never, a lot of people die on treadmill.
Murdoc: Say, we don’t want to ruin the insurance policy.
Venhuizen: No, it’s not going to happen to me.
Murdoc: So how many weeks did we get into the session before you had to veto something?
Gov Rhoden: Well, let’s see. I think we were into session three weeks before I became governor. Is that right?
Venhuizen: That sounds about right. It was the third, yeah, third week.
Gov Rhoden: And so we would have been into the fourth week. If probably.
Venhuizen: Wasn’t that veto the eighth week maybe? Yeah, I would guess.
Murdoc: So made it a while past crossover.
Jake: You got a month.
Murdoc: You got a month under your belt.
Gov Rhoden: Yeah, for a while. I was thinking maybe it’d be another year when we didn’t have a veto
Jake: because I know this veto the the call to daycare child care veto. That one surprised me. I didn’t see it coming. So what were your what was your thought process and where did you come down? So you know what? I’m going to veto this bill.
Gov Rhoden: Yeah. Well, you know, there was a couple of things to consider. First of all, that program was, you know, there’s a finite amount of money in the program that we’re talking about to give assistance for, for, for people for child care. And it was to low income. And what the bill did quite simply was, was take money away from the low income and give it to higher income South Dakotans with that, with that program.
Murdoc: That’s the jump the line argument that I hear.
Gov Rhoden: Yeah. Yeah. And from that perspective, and I think that coupled with the fact that we have done a great deal in the state to, to address that problem and will continue to work on addressing the child care shortage. And so I, you know, I just thought that that was, was a ill conceived idea, whether you’re not adding to, to that pool of money and diluting the ability of the people that really need the assistance to get it.
Murdoc: With, as with any veto, you know, there’s, there’s people that are on the side of it and people that would, you know, I’m sure going to, they start writing their opinion pieces. The second, the veto brand, you know, it comes out, the common group I saw around the state, and this could be to either of you is the economic development groups around the state seem to be the ones that were really trying to lead the charge. And oftentimes you don’t see that group connected on a thing. You know, they’re trying to, they’re trying to get businesses in their own areas and they likely see each other as competition of sorts when they’re trying to get here. But this seemed to be one thing they were all on the same page on.
Venhuizen: You know, I think those, and we met with, and talked to some of those guys, they see this as a, as a challenge for, you know, it’s a workforce challenge that you have a child care issue. Yeah. And, and we know that. It seemed to me like there was a desire on their part to try to do something. And this bill was the something. And so this was the horse they were writing and they want, and they wanted to be able to say they did something.
And I, I appreciate that. But as the governor said, it was a little bit ill conceived. If they’re in that there wasn’t funding for this new group of recipients. And so now it’s a zero sum game with the people getting it now.
Murdoc: On a budget year. Yeah.
Jake: Tight budget year.
Murdoc: Is there a natural go forward now that, now that we’re through a session and summer studies have been planned on this issue specifically, is there a, is there a, here’s what we think 2026, 2028 could look like.
Venhuizen: On child care?
Murdoc: Yeah.
Venhuizen: You know, of all the issues, of all the issues that came up a lot, since I’ve been a legislator. Uh, this is maybe the one where they, the answer is the least obvious to me. And you just have the problem of, you don’t have enough child care slots. You don’t have enough people working. You can set up more places, but then you don’t have workforce.
Jake: It’s a pure bodies thing, basically.
Venhuizen: Yeah. And you say, well, pay more. Well, if you pay more, then you’re driving the cost up to the point where the people who need it can’t afford it. I’m not aware of any state in the country that’s figured this out. The tri-pay. And we haven’t, and we haven’t either. I don’t know if it’s really something that state government can solve. It’s a frustrating issue. I don’t have an answer for it.
Gov Rhoden: You know, what, what I think, you know, it’s typical of government. We’re always looking for solutions from the government. I think, I think maybe the big picture solution is to grow our economy. And that’s what we’ve done in South Dakota and keep government out of the way. You know, the business community of thriving business community will figure out the child care. There’s a big, but if we can grow our economy at the same time in South Dakota, we’ve invested in the last five years, we’ve invested over a half a billion dollars in rural broadband. We think about that and what that means to our economy and our potential for future growth. If we, if you can create a business in, you know, back in your living room in Riva, South Dakota, or in Pukwana. That’s what we could do, Riva. And you could provide an opportunity for a second income and, and have one of the parents stay at home and, and eliminate the need for child care.
Those are the type of things that, you know, government can focus on and really make a, a difference.
Murdoc: You see some plans like the try plan or try share. There’s a couple of different names for them where, you know, the private business and, and maybe the economic development group of the community, Elevate had one of these that I’ve noticed they’ve been working on some pilot programs where if the company and the Elevate and then maybe take some of that federal funding that’s available and try to make that stretch further, but I don’t think I’ve seen any one community really land at home.
Venhuizen: No, you know, when we were in, in Watertown the other day, up at the Harmony Hill development up there, they’re, they’re actually opening a child care center there. And that was an example of, I think they said there was a large provider that was going to be shutting down and they set up a new nonprofit and got a board together and raised a couple million bucks in the community and, and they’re getting it rolling. And there are partnerships like that that you see happen in these towns when the, when people get together and pull on it. But
Murdoc: Yeah, I think so too.
Jake: Murdoch, you had a question about solar panels.
Murdoc: A little, but it’s tied to the, to the, I mean, it’s all, there was the, is it Walworth County? Is that where Akaska is? South of Molebridge there? I might, I want to make sure I have the county right, but the county commissioners of sorts. Um, there’s a, there’s a landowner there that wanted to put solar panels on and the Walworth County commissioners kind of shut it down. And, and without getting into that specific argument at all, it reminded me of every large scale funding project we have on the state, be it pipelines, be it prison, we need a, we need a move forward mechanism. And to your point of the government might not be the solution of it, but it’s unfortunately stuck in so many conversations about pipelines and energies and prisons.
How do you, like in the same instance of how does a county commission tell a private rancher where and where cannot go on a project that might be good for all of the county? Where, where, where are the next steps on these large funding projects?
Jake: We’ll see what data centers too, for example.
Murdoc: Data centers is a goofy example of it, right? Like how do, how do we get together on something like the prison?
Venhuizen: And, and or. My first comment is, if, if we have a county commission that’s just turning away development, I sure hope they don’t come to the Capitol and complain about their property taxes.
Murdoc: That’s an interest, it’s an interest pivot.
Venhuizen: Honestly, all these counties just say they don’t have enough money, well then don’t chase away development. And it’s not all the counties are doing this, but some of them are. Some of them are. And what’s very frustrating to me is counties are supposed to have a zoning plan. And they have a plan and they have rules and you’re supposed to know going in what the rules are and what’s acceptable. And then sometimes it’ll happen that they just don’t follow it. Somebody comes in and is ready to go and has a site and then the commission gets pressure from the neighbors or whatever and they don’t follow it. And that happens too much and you start to get a reputation and people don’t look to you anymore because when they sell South Dakota it’s too hard to develop there.
Jake: Because there’s certainly an undertone of kind of that, not in my backyard. Say NIMBY is what they call it, not in my backyard. Right. How do you beat that out a little bit and say, how to beat it out? Say, hey, we want to develop these areas and reduce proper taxes.
Gov Rhoden: Well, I was trying to, what was it, three years ago we had Bill on
Venhuizen: on citing egg projects,
Gov Rhoden: citing egg projects. And we had some we got those past that standardized some of the language statewide to prohibit some of the some of these projects from that from frivolous lawsuits and and gave a standard more standard blueprint of what the counties would make the decisions on and then it’s just check the boxes if you want to develop your land. And I think that moved the needle quite a ways in the right direction. But we continue to see some of those those issues popping up.
Venhuizen: Well, it’s just interesting because you have property rights. Every you know, you have a certain group who’s very focused on property rights. But then now they want the county to be able to tell you what you can and can’t do with your own property.
Murdoc: That is I think the same in the same up. Let me let’s put a prison spin on it. I think the whole state’s looking to you guys on on on prison on what next possible steps that are tangible and could be. So we’re not talking about this again in 2032.
Jake: So what are those next steps? I mean, you have the prison reset. Is that project prison reset? Is that correct? What’s that going to look like? And what are you hoping to get out of that?
Venhuizen: Well, what I told the task force was the governor’s direction to me was all the cards are on the table. We’re taking a fresh look at this. You know, we spent four years putting a plan together. I think it was a good plan. We had the money to pay for it. We have a site that makes sense. Yeah, there’s some of the neighbors who don’t like it. That’ll happen everywhere. I would think it no matter where you go. Yeah. And so this isn’t to discount the plan that we have, other than to say we don’t have the votes to pass it.
So okay, that’s fair. We have a lot of new legislators. We have a lot of people who came into this process partway through. Let’s just start back at square one. So we’re doing an entirely new report with a different consultant. We’re going to do an RFI for locations if anybody, I’ve had a couple of communities tell me
Murdoc: RF?
Venhuizen: Request for information. Okay. Just basically asking for people to submit if they if they’d like to be considered as a site. I’ve had some community leaders in different places tell me they’re thinking about submitting for that. We will consider the Lincoln County site. In fact, the, you know, it was on the task force agenda to go tour that site.
But we’re going to do a fresh look at what are our needs and what’s the condition of these facilities and and we’ll see where it leads us. I hope where it leads us is to a plan that the people on that group can support at least almost all of them. Maybe it won’t be a unanimous vote, but I don’t want to do something that’s a 12 to 10 vote either. Right. That’s where we that’s where we’re stuck a little
Venhuizen: because then we’ve got 15 legislators on there and they basically split down the middle and if they were for it or against it, one or two or a little bit back and forth, maybe if the seven or so who opposed the old plan also opposed whatever new plan we come up with, then we’re not going to have the votes to pass that either. So that’s what we’re trying to do here.
Gov Rhoden: Well, and you have to keep in mind it requires a two thirds majority vote to make it happen.
Jake: Why is that? What part of this makes it two thirds?
Gov Rhoden: Well, the appropriation because we have even though we have the money or most of the money, 600 million plus, that was the initial vote would have been in order to appropriate that money and start spending it on the prison. That is an appropriation requires two thirds majority.
Jake: Well, I think you and Governor Noem, those are about credit too. I mean, this prison wasn’t built last century, it was built century before that and for like 50 years we needed a new prison. So and like, and it’s like the least popular thing to do is build a prison.
Murdoc: It’s not funny. It’s so funny because it’s so true it is.
Jake: Because no one runs for office going, I want to build a new prison. Like that’s not. And so credit to you guys really for that’s a big lift to take on.
Venhuizen: When I was working for Governor Dugard, we talked about the fact that we’d eventually have to do this. We never even had 10% of the money we would have needed to do this. Kristi was so smart to take that huge and you could have done a lot of things that would have been a lot more fun and more popular with 600 million dollars.
He was very smart to set this amount of money aside. So if you ever find, we’ve never had that amount of money in the history of the state and I don’t know if we ever will again.
Murdoc: I’m just saying, even if you find another 600 million dollars and you’re looking for fun things we can do with that, I wouldn’t mind an email.
Jake: We can have a little fun. Hey, that that sculpture park out near mount rushmore.
Murdoc: There we go.
Jake: I think it’s perfect. I think it’s exciting.
Gov Rhoden: I want to chime in though, just to bring this back to the reality where we’re at. And the fact that we have this opportunity because, and it was kind of ironic because the legislators made a lot of flap about the Department of Corrections changing their name to Department of Correction and rehabilitation. It about tipped me over because they were also raising a fuss about the amount of money we’re spending on the new prison and that it was going to cost more per year to run it. And I’m trying to hold their face in my hands and say, yeah, that’s because we’re going to have classrooms and rehabilitation classes in this revolving door of people being warehouse incarcerated instead of rehabilitated and then the revolving door coming back in. So we’re this close to getting this done and now we had to push the reset button. But I think it’s important for people to step back and remember just how important it is, especially for the humanity of the people represented in those prisons.
Murdoc: I think it ties into the open for opportunity to where you’re on. And it’s no one, you know, you think about the people that are housed in that prison. There’s just South Dakotins. Full stop, right? It needs to be a part of the system.
Gov Rhoden: They’re human beings.
Murdoc: They’re human beings. And if they’re retrained and if there’s rehabilitations, they get jobs, they pay taxes, they buy houses, they don’t, you know, it’s an investment. But it’s a harder pitch to make to people when it’s a prison, you know.
Jake: Right, because they become your neighbors or your friends’ neighbors and you want that person next, you have a good job and to be part of our economy and our society. So it’s difficult. I don’t envy you guys.
Murdoc: Hey, make your Sturgis Rally tax joke with the Mead County governor in the room, would you?
Jake: I can finally pitch this. Yeah, you go ahead and pitch it away. All right. Okay. So property taxes. I don’t know if you’ve heard. A lot of people, I don’t like how high they are. I don’t know if you’ve heard that. If for two weeks in August, we take, we draw a circle around Sturgis, tax about 100% problem solved.
Gov Rhoden: Okay. Yeah. Well, there’s actually, I won’t get into it, but there’s actually laws on the books that allow some of that.
Murdoc: Come on now. No, no, you’re supposed to, you know, we’re gonna get on the highway and rev our motorcycles up.
Jake: That’s a green light right there.
Murdoc: It’s green light. All right. We were talking, you had two kind of major vetoes that made the news, Governor Rodin and the second one was, how would we, we were trying to find an easy way to like describe it as what the topic is. Would it be constitutional processes?
Jake: Citizen initiative?
Murdoc: Citizen initiative. Yeah. We haven’t,
Gov Rhoden: initiative reform.
Murdoc: There we go. There’s an easy way of saying it. You vetoed initiative reform. Proponents would say they’re trying to make it a more fair representation of every, a more accurate snapshot of the citizens of South Dakota. I think that’s what the proponents would say. But you vetoed that.
Gov Rhoden: I did. Yeah. And with good reason, I mean, I understand the motivation and I agree. I think it should be more difficult to change our constitution and there’s ways to do that. I’ve said in my veto message that I favor a piece of initiated measure that’s on the ballot. It was house joint resolution 5003 that requires a 60% vote on a constitutional amendment. But there are a number of things wrong with 1169 and why vetoed it.
Four main issues. First of all, when I took my oath of office, it was two sentences. I swore to uphold the constitution in the United States and I swore to uphold the constitution of the state of South Dakota. I think first two reasons that I think this bill is flawed, I think it stands in violation of both the U.S. Constitution
Murdoc: Just as it’s written.
Gov Rhoden: Just as it’s written. In the Eighth Circuit federal court, which includes South Dakota, they’ve taken a very strict view on on messing with you know, petitions to make it extremely difficult to carry petitions. And on that on that line alone, I think they’ll find this in violation of that in the state constitution. It spells out that in order to change the constitution to take to put something on the ballot, it takes 10% of the voters from the previous election period. So it spells it out in the Constitution. What 1169 is trying to do is amend the Constitution in statute.
It’s very, I mean, I’m not a lawyer, but it seems very unlikely that the Supreme Court in the state of South Dakota would agree that it’s appropriate to try and dink with the language in the Constitution by amending statute. And so that’s two of the reasons. Another reason, and I just just from a practical standpoint, I got a call from a very, very conservative person, not say her name, but was urging a veto because she’s carried petitions.
And she understands just from a practical standpoint. And what I told my team when I was talking about it, this will, if you have to have 35 petitions, because you have to have one for each Senate district. And, and, and here’s another from a practical standpoint, you walk out in the street and you ask 10 people what district they live in. How many of them do you think will tell you? So now you have 35 petitions you’re carrying, and you get, get somebody wants to sign your petition, you say, well, what district? Well, I don’t know. So first they have to find out what district, then he has to sort through his 35 petitions and, and get him to sign the right one. You don’t think that’s over.
Murdoc: Then you got to find enough of those people to stand everywhere in the state now. And there’s not a deep bench of the, you know, everybody’s talked to the person who’s asked him to sign a petition in the last 18 months, there’s not 24 more of those people.
Jake: And it’s very, it makes it very, very, very expensive.
Murdoc: That’s what it is.
Gov Rhoden: And so, so what I’ve said on a practical side, if you’re not a state dark money billionaire group, you just write a bigger check. And it’s still possible for you to hire, have the kind of resources to do it. If you’re a grassroots in state organizations, it’s impossible. So we’re, we’re, you know, throwing the baby out with the bathwater, cutting our own throats on a deal like this. Also, one other thing, if you think about it now, one senatorial district would have veto power over the other 34. And is that really a system that we want?
Murdoc: It’s Liz May’s dream. Sorry, I said, I wasn’t gonna make any jokes. It’s that’s what that, it would, or, you know, if you think about a Sioux Falls senator that has no grasp on West River, you know, water rights, ranching rights, hay rights, whatever it is, right? Like, who knows if that makes a constitution, but it’s a two-way street.
Gov Rhoden: Other than that, I have no opinion.
Jake: I think it’s a very good veto. I think, I think that was a good use of your brand.
Venhuizen: Well, you know, we were disappointed because I don’t know if the governor was disappointed. I was disappointed because there was this bill that was going to move the brand board away from the governor’s authority. Remember this? And I thought that was a great candidate for the first veto.
Murdoc: For Governor Rodin, they’ve got the branding iron. We were all ready to go and then it was killed in the Senate.
Jake: Tony had the ink out. He was ready to go.
Gov Rhoden: Yeah, I had mixed emotions about that too. I thought that would have been pretty apropos.
Jake: Okay. So, how are you guys feeling about the property tax reform we saw after the session? It was, there was a lot of different options. We came down to basically capping it for five years. Is that correct? At 3%? Am I wiring down a little much or is that because that’s pretty accurate?
Gov Rhoden: That was the main thrust of Senate Bill 216. It also capped growth. The county’s growth to, as a result of new construction, to 3%. We had it down to 2% and the compromise we made at the end of the day with the House to raise it to 3%. And it also raised the limits on their discount or their assessment freeze program, the wage requirement, total wage requirement, and the value of the House. So, it did a number of things and to cap that growth.
Beyond that, that was the only, the only legislation I think out of 15 bills that actually made it to the finish line. But beyond that, we’re going to here shortly hand over an idea for more, more appropriate, more aggressive tax cuts potential for, for individual counties. And we’re still trying to, trying to kind of nail down, you know, just a basic concept to turn over to that legislative task force for them then to massage and put their fingerprints on and, and, and do the due diligence as far as looking into models and, and testing it out.
Jake: So, I guess are you, are you feeling, I mean, we’ve had, I don’t know, what four or less five years we’ve had summer studies on property taxes. Are you feeling more confident in this go around that we have a solution that’s going to work for people?
Gov Rhoden: Well, yeah, you know, a lot of times, if you think build it and they’ll come, I mean, have a summer study and you’ll think of something. And, and too often, I’ve, I’ve said a few times that, I think it’s like quoting the good book, according to Larry, where it says, for God’s love the world, that he didn’t send a summer study. But a lot of times they’re kind of, they’re kind of notorious for not producing anything. But in this case, I think they’ve got some good people on that committee. And if you can present them some concepts for, for things that can really present a viable option, I think it might be valuable.
Murdoc: I think the same applies for the, the, this ever moving, ever hard to solve eminent domain issue, right? Like it eventually, because you can’t stop having summer studies, even though everyone wants to drag on the summer studies, you, someone’s got to think of something eventually. And these are the leaders and these are the, you know what I mean? So I don’t know, I’m a believer in the summer studies. I think people are too hard on them.
Jake: You bring up the point of eminent domain. I want to touch it really briefly. I think you should be commended for signing that bill actually, the bill that kind of ended eminent, eminent domain, I can’t say words for the carbon, carbon pipelines. I think the reality is the book on that is closed or the war on that’s over and you close the book. I think that’s a very important thing for the Republican party too, to get over this issue and come back together on a lot of things.
So I, I, some people give you a lot of grief for that. I think at the end of the day, it was a good decision and it’ll be good for South Dakota as a whole.
Gov Rhoden: Yeah, it was, it’s, it’s a tough discussion and I hated it from day one because there was, it clouded, there was so much involved, whether, you know, from, you know, the eminent domain, the discussions got so uh, uh, murked up with the different, the different subjects it contained.
Jake: And he did inpersonal
Gov Rhoden: and he did inpersonal and I had, I remember a guy screaming me on the phone that if, and he was a good friend of mine and uh, and telling me when I was trying to explain him a year ago, what Senate bill 201 did because it had nothing to do with eminent domain, not, not one and it was, it truly was a lot of land order bill of rights.
But that aside, when I was trying to explain it to him, they were so, so convinced that this was all about climate change. Entrenched. Yeah. And uh, he says, I don’t care if you, if you sported 201 year or nothing but a Biden, Lovin, liberal, Green New Deal, uh, liberal.
Venhuizen: Larry does get called that very often.
Gov Rhoden: And he doesn’t like it very much.
Jake: Well, I, I just, I think it’s important. We saw a statewide, uh, voter led initiative to take down 201, which made voters made their voice very loud. So I think closing the book was important. I think at that point it’s good to move on from this issue.
Murdoc: Yeah. Or I, I, I don’t know if it resets it to be able to ask this question, meaning they’re not, I don’t think they’re that tied together, but they’re a little connected. So like, what’s the best way to grow? What’s the biggest barrier to growth in South Dakota right now? Easy question. I don’t know if it’s that, right? I don’t know if it is that.
Venhuizen: I think it is. It’s still probably workforce.
Gov Rhoden: Absolutely. We have 1.9% unemployment, lowest in the nation, lowest in the history of the nation. You know, we set a new record, I think, uh, about a year ago. Uh, but we’re, we’re still the lowest and we have like 20,000 open jobs. Uh, so workforce, I think is obviously the right answer.
Venhuizen: And we had, we were just visiting with a guy the other day. We have 20,000 or so open jobs. And then we have jobs that aren’t even, I mean, there are places that would expand if they thought they could hire. So they’re kind of on ice, but there could be another 10,000 jobs above that if the people were there.
Gov Rhoden: Yeah. That’s right. He was using a, I, because I question him on it. He said, he was using a 30,000 number, but it was, they were factoring in the businesses that would, would take on more employees if, if they were available.
Jake: Well, governor, earlier in the show, we were asking you why you picked Tony as a governor and you referred to him as your running mate. When he said that, that makes a guy think, that makes a guy think about 2026 a little bit.
Gov Rhoden: I didn’t catch that. I guess
Murdoc: We had, Marty was on our KBHB station a couple of weeks back and, you know, he was pretty bold about it. He’s, he’s, he said a couple of things I thought were interesting. First, he was like, you know, Dusty’s running. People are openly running for this.
It doesn’t need to be that much of a secret. I might be, I’m leaning on his words a little, I’m sure. But the other thing that he made that I thought was insightful is, is you guys largely have similar camps and, and you’re both, what would be West River candidates or that beta case. And, and it would make sense for that camp to be in the same camp. But he also was the first one to say right now, I work for Larry. I’m Larry’s lawyer, you know, so it was an interesting, not quite set up to what 2026 is going to be, but almost a set up.
Gov Rhoden: Well, keep talking. I’m, I’m garnering information here.
Murdoc: I’ll ask it in the sense of this way. You can’t, obviously, you know, one’s going to say, well, you bet I’m running and here’s my announcement. But what are the factors that would weigh on you on whether you would run or not run, if I can ask it that way?
Gov Rhoden: Yeah, that’s fair question. You know, I think in my years, you know, I always, I, I think I run if I feel like I’m, if I truly feel I’m called to run. And there’s a lot of ways to determine that. And every, every decision I’ve been made, I’ve done it with the consultation of obviously my wife and my family. And I remember an old guy told me once and it might sound kind of corny, but I kind of, I kind of hung on to it that the office should seek the man.
And, and I don’t even know for sure what that means. But I kind of think, you know, when I, I get a lot of people that’ll come up unsolicited and are encouraging me and, and asking me about it and offering support. And that, that means a great deal to me as far as influencing that. So my wife and I are very much very strongly considering. I know we have to make that decision very shortly. And, and we’re, we’re still talking to our family, praying about it. And, but I think it will make a decision here within the next few weeks.
Murdoc: Okay. Well, I’d be sooner than I think we would, if we were putting bets on it, which we do all the time when you guys aren’t in the room, I would be sooner than we would prognosticate probably. You mentioned your wife, I’ve actually got to know Sandy, you know, she’s always doing events and stuff. Your wife’s a wonderful campaign wife is, I always get to sit in the back with the wives and make jokes a little bit. She’s always fun to sit in the back with. How’s the transition been for her?
Jake: Yeah, she liking the job?
Gov Rhoden: Oh, yeah, I think so. In fact, she isn’t with me today. She just got back from Oklahoma last night. I talked to her, just went to bed and they had a First Ladies conference in Oklahoma City. And she went down there for a couple of days and she is, I really, I really think Sandy’s going to be a great First Lady just because of, you know, she’s been so active in the community and in an organizer, been part of a number of different groups and Federation Republican women. She really helped kind of bring it back years ago from where it was.
Murdoc: Right now, if it wasn’t for the South Dakota Republican women, the Republican Party wouldn’t have a mechanism to get together and have Jell-O Salad once. Not once. You couldn’t get seven people together if they weren’t there doing their thing.
Gov Rhoden: Yeah, she’s, I know she’s having a great time and she’s going to do a great job for me.
Jake: How’s the mansion? Moving to the mansion? How was that?
Gov Rhoden: Oh, really, I really do enjoy it. Very comfortable there. And so it’s been.
Murdoc: Did you bring in some welding stuff.
Gov Rhoden: You know, it’s your fun, that’s funny because I was considering that for a while.
Murdoc:You kicked that media center out, put a shop in the back.
Gov Rhoden: Well, the former governor had an exercise room and I think it’s been more appropriate as a shot.
Murdoc: Lieutenant Governor, my question to you, our favorite Venhuizen is Henry. He has been for a number of years. Do you get like, you know, he knows so much of this. Do you get notes from him? Do you get any advice?
Venhuizen: Yes. Yes. From all the kids. Oh, I have a lot of stories I could tell you.
Jake: I bet they’re just soaking it up, aren’t they?
Venhuizen: Well, Sarah was telling me one night, this is while I was in Pierre and I think, I think you had just asked me about to be Lieutenant Governor, but we hadn’t announced it yet and we hadn’t told the kids yet, because we knew the second we told, you know, that the secret was out. Right. So Sarah told me I was in Pierre. So they were having dinner at home and they were talking about this and Henry says, well, I don’t think dad is the pick because I asked him if Larry had talked to him about it and he told me that he hadn’t. And if he was going to be the pick, Larry would have talked to him. And then Elizabeth says, well, maybe Larry did talk to him and he just didn’t tell us because Madeline is such a blabbermouth.
Murdoc: Leaks from everywhere.
Venhuizen: Well, he should have been. Paul Tenhay can visited Madeline’s class around that time and he let each kid ask one question. And her question, this is like the first or second week of session, her question to the mayor was, and he knows who she is. And then he said, mayor, who do you think the lieutenant governor is going to be? And Paul just kind of looked at her and said, I don’t know, Madeline, who do you think the lieutenant governor is going to be? And her guess was Russ Olsen
Murdoc: I was, that was our guess.
Venhuizen: Yeah. She did not, she did not pick me. That was the real vote of confidence.
Murdoc: Tony’s kids sound just like us, but it’s at recess, right? Like, ah, it’ll never be Westrua. It’ll never be Luke. You know, that’s funny.
Jake: There is also a funny scene in my head of Tony editing his book and adding his name in there like, oh, there’s me. Like, in your book.
Murdoc: Do you have to bring in a ghostwriter to write about yourself?
Venhuizen: No, because It’s really just a list. There’s nothing really, it’s just who the lieutenant governor is. There’s not a lot of content.
Jake: A little bit more this time around, right?
Venhuizen: I did have to write a new chapter about Larry, so we do have a new edition available.
Murdoc: We do. And we have to eventually do an episode.
Gov Rhoden: Right. Yeah. You guys, you remember, you know, early on in the process when, I don’t know who was interviewing Tony and I read the article the next day and this was, you know, on the very start front end of the process and Tony was describing to whoever the reporter was.
Venhuizen: It was Lori Walsh.
Gov Rhoden: Okay. He was describing to Lori what he thought I would be looking for in a lieutenant governor. So I was very interested in it. And as I kind of, I started smiling about it.
Murdoc: I think he should be from Sioux Falls. I think he should have a kid named Henry.
Gov Rhoden: I read through his description. I said, well, it sounds like he’s describing himself.
Venhuizen: Guess, I was right.
Murdoc: Well, I appreciate you guys making the time for and both and to come across from Sioux Falls so we could do this together in person. It means quite a lot to both of us and and the staff here at Homeslice. Thanks a lot for coming on guys.
Venhuizen: This is fun.
Murdoc: Anything we’re missing?
Jake:I think it’s about it.
Murdoc: No, that’s not true. It’s Larry’s first time on the show. Who’s got the best burger in South Dakota? Everybody who comes on the show gets asked.
Gov Rhoden: How about the best steak?
Murdoc: Well, take it. Yeah.
Jake: That’s fine.
Gov Rhoden: Mad Mary’s in Pierre.
Jake: Okay. Yeah. Makes sense. You had plenty of those I assume.
Murdoc: Yep. Now that now the next steakhouse you’re at, they’re gonna, they’re gonna, they’re gonna be a little heated.
Jake: Yeah. You should endorse the steak.
Murdoc: Why he is, he’s governor Larry Roten and great episode. Thanks for being honest with your answers and candid with your time.
Gov Rhoden: Thank you. It’s been my pleasure.
