#dan lederman

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Regan Jackson - photo by Dan Lederman

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District 16 SD State House Republican Primary: Jensen, Anderson and Shorma

District 16 SD State House Republican Primary: Jensen, Anderson and Shorma

SD Legislative District 16. Screenshot from LRC website. South Dakota legislative District 16 has  a Republican Primary for State House. District 16 is the SE tip of South Dakota and includes the towns of Worthing, Canton, Hudson, Beresford, Alcester, Elk Point, Jefferson, North Sioux City and Dakota Dunes. One of the incubments, Rep Jim Bolin (R, Dist 16), is term limited and seeking the Senate…

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SD Legislator list updated with the recent changes

Now that all of the spring shifting has been completed in the SD Legislature I thought it was time to update my list of Current SD Legislators and do a short(ish) post about the changes. Immediately after the 2015 legislative session there were to resignations in the SD Senate. Since both Senators were in leadership positions that also left caucus elections to be held for these positions.

Lederma…

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Senate State Affairs committee has 1 bill on Fri Mar 6

On Friday, March 6th, at 11:00 AM the SD Senate State Affairs committee will take on 1 bill.

HB 1153 – SoDakLiberty Posts – Expand the definition of teleconference to include certain meetings conducted through electronic text colloquy and to require the retention of certain records of text colloquy meetings for public inspection.

Rep Al Novstrup (R, Dist 3) and Sen Dan Lederman (R, Dist 16) are…

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High dudgeon over Nelson resolution

With a standing-room crowd lobbyists and lawmakers watching in amusement, six South Dakota lawmakers met Wednesday morning to discuss the wording of a nonbinding resolution opposing the federal Affordable Care Act.

It was, longtime lobbyists and staff said, possibly the first time a nonbinding resolution had ever been referred to a conference committee in the history of the South Dakota Legislature.

Outspoken Rep. Stace Nelson, R-Fulton, had originally proposed a resolution urging Congress to "repeal and defund" the Affordable Care Act. But his resolution also accused South Dakota leaders, including Gov. Dennis Daugaard, of being complicit in the enactment of the controversial law despite Daugaard's stated opposition and resistance to an expansion of Medicaid.

"Numerous bills have been defeated that sought to nullify and fight this controversial act, while numerous bills were passed that helped enact it and implement it here in the state of South Dakota," Nelson said Wednesday.

In 2011, Daugaard's administration successfully sought laws updating South Dakota's insurance regulations to comply with changes in the Affordable Care Act. The state has also received federal grants to study potential implementation of the act's health insurance exchanges, which Daugaard ultimately left to the federal government to run instead.

But after the House passed Nelson's resolution, the Senate amended it to remove mentions of where South Dakota had gone along with the act's provisions. When the resolution came back to the House, Nelson requested a conference committee to resolve the differences between the chambers — and to many lawmakers' surprise was granted one.

When the committee met on Wednesday morning, it included a key Nelson ally, Rep. Lance Russell, R-Hot Springs — but also Sen. Dan Lederman, R-Dakota Dunes, who is currently suing Nelson over an alleged election law violation.

In the crowd were lobbyists and legislators, including House Speaker Brian Gosch, Speaker Pro Tempore Dean Wink and Assistant Majority Leader Justin Cronin. Gosch, who has clashed with Nelson, was even eating popcorn as he watched. Also there were Sen. Larry Rhoden, R-Union Center, who is running against Nelson for U.S. Senate, and Rep. Tim Rounds, R-Pierre, whose brother Mike is also in the Senate race.

Sen. Craig Tieszen, R-Rapid City, asked the conference committee to kill Nelson's resolution entirely.

"While our colleagues are in the halls of the Capitol putting the finishing touches on their bills, lobbying for their pet projects or trying to protect the taxpayers in their district... we're in a committee room talking about a resolution with no force of law that is more about scorecards and postcards than about legislating for the people of South Dakota," Tieszen said.

Tieszen said the Senate had made "a mistake" to amend Nelson's resolution.

"I don't think the Senate is prepared to make another mistake," he said.

Sen. Billie Sutton, D-Burke, commended Nelson's "passion" on the subject but said it was time to "move on."

Nelson said public opposition to the Affordable Care Act in South Dakota meant this was an issue worth the Legislature's time.

Conference committee rules require support from at least two of the three members from each chamber. That meant Nelson and Russell blocked Tieszen's motion to kill the resolution. Tieszen, Lederman and the two Democrats on the committee in turn blocked Nelson's amendment restoring most of his original language. Finally, lawmakers agreed to dissolve without agreement. The issue now returns to the House and Senate, who are expected to kill the resolution for good.

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Autism therapy bill defeated, new fight likely coming

A bid from parents and doctors to require more coverage of an expensive autism treatment was defeated Thursday after insurance companies and businesses opposed the mandate's cost.

Over two hours of testimony and debate, a range of supporters told lawmakers that "applied behavioral analysis" therapy, or ABA, was the best way to treat many young children with autism.

"Research tells us that when comprehensive ABA therapy is provided at the prescribed intensity, up to 47 percent of individuals will be able to mainstream into a regular first grade classroom without an aide," said Dr. Daisha Seyfer, a developmental behavioral pediatrician at Sanford Health.

Parents testified about how ABA treatment had made a huge different in their children's behavior. Michelle Powers of Brookings said her daughter's autism made her act "out of control" with daily outbursts. After seven months of prescribed ABA treatment, the outbursts had become less severe and less frequent — once a week instead of daily.

But the same thing about ABA therapy that experts say brings results, its intensive nature, also makes it expensive. A full load of ABA therapy involves up to 40 hours of treatment per week, and can easily cost more than $100,000 per year.

That means few families can afford it, but also that insurance companies don't want to fund it.

Avera is the only health plan in the state to currently cover ABA. Some parents received payment for ABA therapy from Wellmark, but the company says that was a mistake due to imprecise billing. In January, it notified families it would no longer be covering ABA — which brought those families to the Legislature.

Jana Johnson, a doctor and a mother of a child with autism, complained that if autism could be treated with surgery or a pill, insurance companies would cover it in a heartbeat. It's only behavior therapy, Johnson said, that they balk at.

Rep. Scott Munsterman's bill required some health care plans to cover ABA therapy and other autism treatments. Around 60,000 to 90,000 citizens would be affected — primarily those who get their coverage from larger employers, and those with smaller plans that have been grandfathered in under the federal Affordable Care Act. Small business insurance plans and non-grandfathered plans on the individual marketplace would would not be affected.

Munsterman originally proposed to require all plans to cover ABA therapy. But under the Affordable Care Act, states that impose new coverage mandates on insurance companies are required to pay for that cost. To dodge a budget battle and weaken opposition from Gov. Dennis Daugaard, Munsterman narrowed the bill to apply only to those plans the state wouldn't have to pay for.

But insurance plans said they shouldn't have to pay for expensive treatment, which they said would force them to pass costs on to customers in the form of higher premiums.

"Many South Dakotans are increasingly concerned about their ability to afford health insurance," said Darla Pollman Rogers, a lobbyist for Wellmark Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Dakota. "We share that concern and we encourage legislators to carefully scrutinize proposed legislation that might in any way increase costs."

Wellmark previously estimated it might cost as much as $7 per member per year more to cover ABA treatment for everyone, but said the actual figure was probably higher.

Pollman Rogers also argued that ABA therapy was experimental and unproven compared to other, less expensive therapies. Studies show ABA isn't helpful "in all cases," Pollman Rogers said, arguing for more research.

That contradicted Seyfer's testimony, and a list she provided of 26 different scholarly articles she said backed up the effectiveness of ABA therapy.

State Sen. Dan Lederman criticized the bill's supporters for not finding a compromise with insurance companies. He also said he was hesitant to support a measure when the two sides disagreed on the facts and figures.

The Senate Commerce and Energy Committee voted 5-2 to kill the bill, with Sens. Ryan Maher and Angie Buhl O'Donnell opposed.

But supporters aren't giving up. Munsterman is looking at ways to bypass the Senate committee, which could include sticking the autism language into another bill. That showdown will likely come on Monday.

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From Monday: Bill would authorize self-driving cars

In case readers missed it, on Monday, I wrote about a bill being sponsored by Rep. Isaac Latterell and Sen. Dan Lederman dealing with a high-tech subject: self-driving cars.

Here's that story:

Self-driving cars have been the stuff of science fiction — but if some lawmakers get their way, they could soon be heading to South Dakota.

With companies like Google and General Motors developing autonomous vehicles, California, Michigan and other states have passed laws to give the self-driving cars access to the road. Rep. Isaac Latterell, R-Sioux Falls, wants South Dakota to join them.

"I've seen a lot of different states try to encourage driverless car innovation," said Latterell. "We want to be one of the states that's leading in technology. I think this is another way we can attract car manufacturers who are trying to make advances in this area to come to South Dakota."

His measure, Senate Bill 139, would allow autonomous cars onto South Dakota highways — but with plenty of restrictions. They'd be allowed only for research and testing purposes, not recreational use. The cars would have to have an operator capable of taking control of the car at any moment, if the sensors or computerized guidance systems failed. And the company would have to post a $5 million bond in case anything went wrong.

"There's a real tension between fostering innovation... and on the other hand protecting public safety," said Bryant Walker Smith, who teaches and studies the legal aspects of automation at Stanford University. "Thirty thousand people die on U.S. roads every year, largely through human error, but you can imagine the consequences of an errant robot, both in terms of lives and the technologies involved."

Latterell and other enthusiasts, such as Sen. Dan Lederman, R-Dakota Dunes, believe people will grow more comfortable with the idea of a car driving itself as they get more familiar.

"Initially, there are going to be some knee-jerk reactions against the bill, because to think of a car driving itself seems so foreign," said Lederman. "It is a very different idea. But industries have put hundreds of thousands of miles on autonomous cars without any accidents in other states like California."

The self-driving car technology is in a curious state. Commercially available cars can already monitor and control, to varying degrees, a car's speed and direction. But the dream of a car that can function as a chauffeur, going from one place to another while its owner naps in the back, isn't here yet.

"The vision of a fully self-driving car has been 20 years away ever since the 1930s," said Smith. "Now the good news is that it's coming in 10 years."

Though fully automated cars are largely the province of major corporations, some universities and smaller companies are also working on the subject — even here in South Dakota.

"We don't build automobiles. Our research is to apply autonomy to any vehicle," said Jeff McGough, director of the computational sciences and robotics program at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology in Rapid City.

McGough said students and professors are currently working on building robotic vehicles off-roads, partly because of legal issues with taking autonomous cars onto public roads. Instead, they drive their vehicles on private land. But he said he knows students who would love to retrofit cars with self-driving capabilities if it were legal.

"I don't know of any private land that has, say, interstate," McGough said. "Having the laws in place where we could do research, that would be great."

But McGough said Latterell's bill might not help student researchers. The requirement for a $5 million bond, in particular, would probably be too great a barrier for a group of students to overcome.

Latterell and Lederman said they haven't had any conversations with autonomous car manufacturers, but hope they'll be intrigued if South Dakota joins Nevada, California, Florida, Michigan and Washington, D.C. in passing laws governing self-driving cars.

But different states have taken different approaches to autonomous vehicles, and some meet with more support from the car makers than others.

Lederman and Latterell "certainly will hear from some of the industry participants, but it won't necessarily be an enthusiastic embrace of the language," said Smith.

In some states, developers of self-driving vehicles have actually opposed legislation to give them access to the roads with conditions. That's in part because some of the companies don't think they need the laws.

"It's probably already legal for an auto manufacturer to take one of their vehicles, duly licensed in South Dakota... and under the careful supervision of a test driver, operate it on a public road," Smith said.

But "probably legal" doesn't provide the certainty companies are looking for, so they have welcomed legislation specifically legalizing it — except where lawmakers have proposed too many restrictions.

"Some people might view this as a bill that expands the legality of the activity," Smith said of Latterell's bill. "It provides certainty, but it may in fact contract the legality of the activity."

A representative of Google did not respond to a request for comment.

Latterell and others noted that whatever shortcomings self-driving cars have, so do human drivers, who cause plenty of accidents by getting distracted or not paying enough attention.

"The autonomous vehicles never stop paying attention to everything," Latterell said.

Smith echoed that concern.

"People should be much more worried about human drivers than they actually are," he said.

But whatever effect South Dakota's law has, it will likely get people thinking seriously about a technology that could be arriving on the market very soon.

"Starting the discussion is good for the state," Latterell said.

Senate Bill 139 has been assigned to the Senate Transportation Committee but has not yet been scheduled for a hearing.

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Panel approves pay hike for lawmakers

Legislator salaries should rise for the first time in 15 years, top legislative leaders said Monday.

Under the proposal, lawmakers' annual salary would rise from $6,000 per year to $10,000. Newly elected legislators would get the raise next year, while current legislators wouldn't see any increase in their pay until 2017.

Sen. Craig Tieszen said $6,000 was too low, meaning that only wealthy or retired citizens can spend three months each year in the Legislature.

"Does this Legislature reflect the demographics of your district and of the state?" Tieszen asked his colleagues. "The answer is clearly no."

Others agreed. Sen. Ryan Maher, R-Isabel, called the Legislature "one of the most expensive hobbies I've ever had," and said he spends about $15,000 per year of his own money traveling around his huge rural district in north-central South Dakota.

Sen. Dan Lederman, R-Dakota Dunes, said a pay increase would help "keep a citizen legislature alive."

"It is a good step for us to try to get the people involved in the process that don't necessarily have the funds or the time," Lederman said.

The measure now heads to the full Senate after the Senate State Affairs Committee approved it 7-2, with Sen. Larry Rhoden, R-Union Center and Sen. Corey Brown, R-Gettysburg, voting no.