PIERRE, S.D. (KELO) — Several hundreds of the women and men who have served in the South Dakota Legislature came together in the state Capitol on Saturday for a ceremony formally commemorating 100 regular sessions.
Among the speakers were South Dakota’s new governor, Larry Rhoden, a Meade County rancher who served 16 years as a state lawmaker. “I walked in today and I saw the group on the stairway and as I walked through the crowds you know it just brought back a thousand memories, and every legislator I met I thought of another story,” he said.
Rhoden has been touring the state the past several weeks as the new governor. As lieutenant governor, he succeeded the previous governor, Kristi Noem, after she was confirmed as the new federal Homeland Security security.
“It’s just brought home to me just how fortunate we are and how much we take for granted in South Dakota,” Rhoden said. “We have a thriving economy, we have the lowest unemployment in the nation, and it’s not because of government, it’s because of the fabric of the people we represent, and the people that we come from. They understand where their values , where their rights, liberties and freedoms come from, and it’s not by government, and they understand that the counter-balance – personal rights, liberties and freedoms – is personal responsibility and we live in a state where the government allows people to exercise those rights and their sense of responsibility.”
Another speaker was Democratic former lawmaker Bernie Hunhoff of Yankton “I think this gathering and the Legislature reflects South Dakota,” he said. The part-time citizen-driven process is different than what’s found in the other 49 states, according to Hunhoff. “It’s a marathon town hall meeting where they hash out how we’re going to live for the next year.”
Vehicle fire at Brandon business
Hunhoff read a commemorative poem, “The One Hundred and Five,” that he wrote for the occasion, noting that he received a lot of help on it from other people including John McCullough, the director of the non-partisan Legislative Research Council that serves as the lawmakers’ full time staff. “I didn’t do it by myself. This is really a group effort,” Hunhoff said.
At one point, the poem says lawmakers must vote aye or nay hundreds of times in a session: “There’s no shelter here for indecision.”
Another former lawmaker, Republican Larry Tidemann of Brookings, spoke about the history of the Legislative Research Council that was established in 1951 as well as the Legislature’s part-time session staffs that have been part of the process since the first session in 1890. Tidemann said they all deserved “heart-felt thanks” for their service and wondered how the Legislature functioned prior to the LRC’s creation.
On stage was artwork by Spearfish artist Dick Termes that was commissioned for the occasion. The ball-shaped Termesphere depicts in shades of tan the House and Senate and the Capitol Rotunda that rises between the two chambers, with lawmakers along the bottom. The work will hang on the Capitol’s fourth floor in the annex where three of the Legislature’s committee meeting rooms are. One scene shows someone throwing a coat over the clock in the Senate as lawmakers kept working past the midnight end on a session’s final day.
“It connects me so much to the state and I really am a South Dakota boy,” Termes, who recently had throat surgery, said in written comments read by his spouse, Markie Scholz.
First Lady Sandy Rhoden and her sister, Debbie Schnell, read a 2001 poem written by Sandy during her husband’s first year in the House. Sandy wrote the poem for another of her sisters, Marletta Eich, who at the time taught fourth-grade students in Madison. Her class annually held a Little Legislators program, and Marletta was recognized three years later as the South Dakota recipient of the Milken Educator Award.
Emcee for the event was Matt Michels of Yankton, a former lieutenant governor who previously served in the House, including being chosen a rare two terms as the chamber’s speaker. In the audience were two of South Dakota’s living governors, U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds of Pierre and Dennis Daugaard of Dell Rapids, who had previously served as state senators.
The final speaker was Lt. Gov. Tony Venhuizen of Sioux Falls, who had been serving in the state House when Gov. Rhoden chose him to join the new administration. Venhuizen chaired the Legislature’s 100th Session Planning Committee and said the committee has also been engaged in improving the online directory of former legislators, producing a new book about historical highlights of the Legislature, helping the South Dakota State Historical Society staff develop displays about the Legislature and commissioning the Termesphere.
Venhuizen, himself an accomplished South Dakota historian, said the Legislature began meeting every other year in 1890 and then annually starting in 1963.
“For that entire time, this institution has remained what it was at the start: A citizen legislature, deliberately part time, close to the people, and rooted in the values of republican self government,” he said.
“Our legislators come here for a few weeks in the winter. They work very hard for a short time. We don’t really have individual staff. We rely on the shared staff that we have with the excellent LRC and from college interns. When the work is done, legislators go home to their normal lives, jobs and families,” he continued.
“Our Legislature remains a place where committee hearings open and public, where anyone can testify on any bill, where every bill receives a final hearing. In South Dakota, you can just walk into the state Capitol, walk up to a legislator, and tell him what you think, without an appointment, without going through any staff. You should never take that for granted. If you think about it, that is very unusual. There are very few places in the country where that can be true. But it is true here, and South Dakota has been well-served by this approach,” he said.
But, Venhuizen noted, the ceremony on Saturday wasn’t really about 100 sessions.
“A hundred is just a number. It’s not about the Capitol building, as proud as we are of it. It’s not even really about those of us that have served, although we appreciate that service,” he said. “The celebration is about the people who we serve. In South Dakota, our motto says, ‘Under God, the people rule.’
“Our part-time citizen Legislature is special because it is close to the people, because it is drawn from the people,” he stated. “They send us here, they watch our work, they participate in our process, and when we go home, they tell us what they think about how we did.
“They count on us,” Venhuizen said, “to do their work.”
A full version of the Saturday event as recorded by South Dakota Public Television can be seen here.
