Letter to the Honorable G. Mark Mickelson, Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Members of the State House of Representatives - Veto of HB 1268

Letter

Dear Mr. Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives,

I respectfully return to you House Bill 1268, with my VETO. House Bill 1268 is An Act to provide for revised dates to prefile legislation.

This bill's sponsors seek to give legislators more time to work on legislation, and to increase the opportunity for public input into proposed legislation. I do not believe this bill effectively achieves either purpose.

Nothing currently prevents a legislator, at any time, from working with Legislative Research Council staff to prepare draft legislation. A legislator is free to circulate a draft, post it on a website, talk about it in the news media, or share it with interested parties to seek input. Interim legislative committees routinely post draft legislation that has not been prefiled.

In fact, prefiling a bill inhibits the ability to subsequently react to public feedback. Once a bill is prefiled, the sponsor can no longer revise its text. The sponsor's only recourse is to prefile yet another bill, thereby clogging the bill list with multiple drafts; or to wait until the legislative session to amend the bill, which undermines the goal of prefiling.

The only other reason I can see for this bill is to give a legislator the ability, throughout the year, to seek media attention by "filing a bill" to deal with any newsworthy topic. That is a grandstanding tactic that is all too common in Washington, DC, and those bills rarely even receive a committee hearing.

South Dakotans are proud that ours is a part-time, citizen legislature, and we should not move toward a year-round process for legislation. I ask that you sustain my veto.

Respectfully submitted,

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