PIERRE, S.D. – South Dakota Auditor Rich Sattgast is refusing to turn over state credit card records for Govs. Kristi Noem and Dennis Daugaard, contending it would compromise their personal safety.
Sattgast, responding to a public records request by The Dakota Scout, cited a provision in state law when arguing the records can only be released after they no longer exist.
The request, denied June 20, sought bank statements, invoices and receipts for all purchases made by Noem and Daugaard on their state-issued credit cards. Purchases made on their cards are reimbursed with taxpayer funds.
In denying the request, Sattgast said records are public after 10 years while acknowledging documents are destroyed after seven years.
Governor’s have been called to task in past years for non-disclosure of state credit card spending.
In 2022, American Oversight sued the Office of South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and the state’s Department of Labor and Regulation (DLR) for failing to release public records about expenses related to Noem’s activities while in office.
Under South Dakota’s Sunshine Law, the public has a right to access government records, including “any state … expenditure involving public funds.” While the law contains a narrow exception for sensitive security information, the request submitted by American Oversight specifically excluded records of “costs related to Governor Noem’s security associated with this travel.”
The governor’s office refused to release any expense records at all, claiming that allowing the public to see any details of Noem’s travel spending would create a security risk, without explaining why it wasn’t able to redact only specific information that might reasonably be described as security-related.

 

FULTON, S.D. (John Hult, South Dakota Searchlight) – A Fulton-area farmer will have a chance to argue that a federally designated wetland on his property is actually regular farm ground thanks to a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision.
The case will be one of the first in the nation to be re-examined as a result of Loper Bright Enterprises vs. Raimondo.
The ruling overturned what was known as the Chevron rule, which required courts to defer to federal agencies in their interpretation of ambiguous federal laws and the rules written to enforce them.
The decision could have far-reaching implications for the right of citizens or companies to challenge agency authority and conclusions in court. Many in the farm and ranch community see particularly pointed impacts in South Dakota, as agricultural operations are heavily influenced by federal rules on crop insurance, conservation payments or wetland determinations.
Arlen Foster first attempted to challenge federal authority in 2011.
The Hanson County farmer sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) over its determination that an area of his property was a wetland.
Farmers can’t use drain tile or ditches to make federally designated wetlands more easily farmable without losing access to USDA supports like crop insurance. Wetlands created through human-led development — in other words, land that wasn’t wet until something was done to nearby land to alter drainage patterns — can be drained without losing access to USDA programs.
The NRCS first determined that 0.8 acres on Foster’s property are a wetland in 2004. In 2008, Foster asked for a review, and NRCS again ruled it a wetland in 2011.
At his initial hearing with an administrative law judge, Foster argued that the “puddle” on his property only shows up in very wet years, and only because his father planted a belt of trees to prevent erosion in 1936. It’s the trees and not nature, he argues, that created what NRCS calls a wetland.
“At the time it was developed, the tree belt was a conservation measure encouraged by the then-recently established Soil Conservation Service, which is the Defendant agency now titled the Natural Resources Conservation Service,” Foster’s lawyers would later write in a complaint against the NRCS.
The puddle only appears briefly, Foster argues, and as a direct result of the tree belt’s capture of snow and slowdown of other moisture. In half the years, the disputed spot and the area around it don’t drain quickly enough for planting, taking about two acres on the 44-acre field out of production. That’s why he wants to drain it.
In 2011, an administrative law judge said Foster hadn’t presented proof that the ephemeral wetlands were created by the tree planting and not natural.
Foster hired experts and attempted to get a new determination in 2017 and 2020, hoping to add new information from his experts. But the NRCS declined to review its determination, citing a rule it had written on eligibility for a new determination.
That’s when the conservative-leaning Pacific Legal Foundation took up Foster’s cause. He filed a lawsuit and made it to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, which deferred to NRCS under the Chevron rule.
“He was just trying to get them to look at the evidence, because the first time they told him there wasn’t any,” said Jeffrey McCoy, the lawyer with the Pacific Legal Foundation who represents Foster.
After the Loper Bright decision’s release, the Supreme Court listed Foster’s case as one that would need a new hearing before the appeals court. It’s one of at least nine cases that will reopen as a result of the decision. Foster had filed for a writ of certiorari at the Eighth Circuit, asking for a review of his case in light of the then-pending Loper Bright decision.
McCoy told South Dakota Searchlight that the court could finally decide if Foster is owed a chance at a new wetlands determination.
“It doesn’t necessarily mean he’s going to get his way,” McCoy said.

 

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Allison Winter / States Newsroom) – The stalemate over the current farm bill may be solidifying a new era in farm politics as it joins the last three farm bills in a trend of delays and partisan division — a contrast from the legislation’s history of bipartisanship.
Every five years, Congress is tasked with drafting a new federal farm bill. The omnibus law that began 90 years ago as various kinds of payments to support farmers now has an impact far beyond the farm, with programs to create wildlife habitat, address climate change and provide the nation’s largest federal nutrition program.
The current farm bill process, already nearly a year behind schedule, is at an impasse as Democrats and Republicans clash over how to pay for the bill and whether to place limits on nutrition and climate programs. The previous farm bill expired in September 2023 and has been extended through the end of this September.
Historically, farm bills were completed within a few months of their expiration date. Ten of the 13 farm bills since 1965 were enacted by December 31 in the year of their expirations. But three of the four farm bills since 2008 went beyond that date.
The last three bills – including the 2018 bill, which is the one recent version that passed on time – each had partisan disagreements about spending.
The trend represents a change in how the once-bipartisan legislation is viewed.
“The last two farm bills were the anomaly,” said Jonathan Coppess, a professor of Agricultural Law and Policy at the University of Illinois who has written a history of the farm bill. “Now that it has been three in a row, I’m not sure that holds.”
A recent report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service notes that starting in 2008, farm bills have been subject to delays, vetoes and insufficient votes to pass on the floor.
The report concluded: “Over time, farm bills have tended to become more complicated and politically sensitive. As a result, the timeline for reauthorization has become less certain.”
That uncertainty is true of the current farm bill, as Republicans in the House and Senate push for spending limits that Democrats say are non-starters.
“I don’t think we’re close to getting a farm bill done until the folks who are negotiating the farm bill are realistic about what’s doable within a constrained resource environment,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in an interview on the radio program AgriTalk June 21.
The Republican-led House Agriculture Committee approved its farm bill proposal largely on party lines at the end of May, after hours of debate and complaints from Democrats that the process had not been as bipartisan as in years past.
Four Democrats voted for the bill in committee, but they joined 20 other Democrats on the committee in a “dissenting views” letter expressing “genuine concern over the trajectory of the Majority’s partisan farm bill” – which they predicted would be stuck in delay and dysfunction without significant changes.
The Senate Agriculture Committee has yet to vote. The Republican and Democratic leaders of the committee have each put forward contrasting bills and expressed their frustration.
Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat who is retiring after this term, has called the process the “most frustrating” of her career and said she would not let the Republican approach for the farm bill be her legacy.
“I’ve actually been involved in six farm bills and led on three of them, and this has been the most frustrating time,” said Stabenow in an interview with Michigan Advance at the end of June. “Because it’s so much more partisan than usual and particularly around food assistance.”
Partisan division is not uncommon in today’s Congress but is notable on the farm bill, which had historically brought together lawmakers from both sides of the aisle. Bipartisan support can be necessary for final passage because the size of the $1.5 trillion farm bill means it inevitably loses some votes from fiscal conservatives and others.
“If you don’t have a bipartisan bill, this is not going to happen, and that is no matter who’s in charge. The margins are too close to be able to get this done without bipartisan support,” said Collin Peterson, a former Democratic House member from Minnesota and Agriculture Committee Chairman.
The key dispute for Democrats this year is a funding calculation that would place limits on the “Thrifty Food Plan” formula that calculates benefits for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, SNAP.
Republicans are using the limits to offset other spending in the bill on crop subsidies. The top Republican on the Senate Agriculture Committee, Arkansas Sen. John Boozman, said he wants to put “more farm in the farm bill.”
Peterson, who is now the head of an eponymous consulting firm, said in an interview with States Newsroom that Republicans would likely have to make changes to the nutrition title to get a bill to final passage.
“It is unrealistic to think they are going to get this done without significant changes in that part of the bill,” he said.
The nutrition program that is at the center of the impasse was added to the legislation 50 years ago to help build a coalition of wide-ranging bipartisan support.
Lawmakers added the nutrition title to the farm bill in 1973, a move that widened the vested interest in the bill in the House. Lawmakers who wanted to increase payments for cotton and wheat farmers in their districts were able to bring in support from representatives from districts whose citizens could benefit from food aid.
“That was the first coalition building between the two interests,” Coppess said. “But it was pretty intense. And it was an uneasy alliance from the start.”
Since then, the farm bill in many ways has become a food bill. Three-quarters of the mandatory spending in the bill falls under the nutrition title, which includes SNAP, the largest U.S. program that addresses hunger.
The program, formerly called food stamps, supplements food budgets for low-income households. Anti-hunger groups have joined the outside interests pushing for the bill every five years.
But with such a large funding line, the nutrition program has become a target for Republicans who want to cut it to offset other spending in the bill.
“The dispute is all the pay-fors,” Peterson said. “And that has been the issue for the last three farm bills and issue on this one as well.”
Peterson, who was chairman of the House Agriculture Committee for the 2008 farm bill and was the top Democrat on the committee for the 2013 and 2018 bills, said partisan division on the committee is not unfamiliar at this phase of the process.
The farm bills he worked on also had partisan votes in the House but eventually found support from both sides after conferencing with the Senate.
“At the end of the day, every one of those bills was partisan, until we got through the conference committee, and then at that point it was bipartisan, because the Senate brought some of that to the table,” Peterson said. “So, kind of, what’s going on here went on the last three farm bills.”
The most recent farm bill in 2018 was marked by contentious partisan debate centered on SNAP’s work requirements and other eligibility rules.
The House Agriculture Committee’s bill that year initially failed on the House floor and later squeaked through on a 213-211 vote. Twenty Republicans joined all House Democrats in voting against that bill.
After reconciling with the Senate bill and the removal of some of the contentious changes to SNAP, most Democrats flipped their votes in support and the House agreed to the final conference report in a bipartisan vote of 369-47. The dissenting votes included 44 Republicans and three Democrats.
The partisan division over the nutrition title creates new fault lines for the farm bill.
Historically, farm bill alliances were more regional than partisan. They were built on a common ground of support for shared crops or producers: cotton in the South, corn in the Midwest and wheat in the Western Plains.
“What was our biggest issue back in the four farm bills that I wrote was not Republican versus Democrat. It was usually Midwest against the Southeast or the Northeast or the Southwest from a crop standpoint,” former Senator Saxby Chambliss said in an interview.
Chambliss, a Republican from Georgia, was on the House Agriculture Committee from 1995 to 2002 and the Senate Agriculture Committee 2005 to 2011, which included a stint as chairman and ranking member.
“There’s a different political dynamic that exists in the Senate today that did not exist when I was there,” Chambliss said. “How much of that bleeds into the farm bill? I don’t know the answer to that, but obviously it’s a little more acrimonious than what I ever experienced.”
As partisan politics have become more entrenched in regions of the country, with the South becoming more closely aligned with the Republican Party, it has played out in farm-bill politics.
“You see a staunch realignment around where the regional and the partisan are now very similar,” said Coppess.

 

LINCOLN, NE (Deborah Van Fleet / Nebraska News Connection) – A new report gives Nebraska a positive review for its operation of the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline but identifies shortcomings in two crucial areas.
The mental health advocacy group Inseparable rated all 50 states on the three-part model of response. The 988 call centers address the first part, “someone to talk to.” On parts two and three, “someone to respond” and “a safe place for help,” Nebraska comes up short, according to the report.
Grace Manley, Nebraska area director for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, agreed with the assessment, especially when it comes to rural Nebraska.
“A lot of people out in rural Nebraska have to drive two to five hours — and even more in some places — to get to a hospital that can really serve them in a mental health crisis,” Manley pointed out. “The need is massive.”
Inseparable’s report stated Nebraska needs 18 more mobile response teams and a combination of nearly 200 more short and long-term “beds” for people needing inpatient care. Manley argued the Legislature needs to understand this disproportionately affects rural Nebraska, where “people are at a loss when it comes to resources.”
Angela Kimball, chief advocacy officer for the mental health advocacy organization Inseparable, said too often there are tragic outcomes when people do not get the right help, including the one in five police shootings which involve someone having a mental health crisis. She argued the states implementing mobile crisis response teams and crisis stabilization services have proved the right response works.
“We can avoid the expense, the trauma of emergency departments, of jails, of law enforcement involvement,” Kimball contended. “And really give people help when they need it most.”
Manley emphasized a common misperception is the 988 system uses “geolocation,” which is a capacity the system does not have.
“When someone calls 988, they can stay as anonymous as they would like and they do not have to reveal their location,” Manley stressed. “You do not have to fear police showing up at your door or something like that, like would happen with 911. So feel free to call 988. You are safe to stay anonymous.”
Inseparable said 988 centers should be answering 90% of calls received in-state. In May, Nebraska answered 87% of 2,300 calls, and 988 centers nationwide answered 88% of nearly 388,000 calls.

 

CEDAR RAPIDS, IA (Mark Moran / Iowa News Service) – The U.S. Office for Civil Rights has issued a ruling ensuring that an Iowa man with disabilities is able to live in his home and receive round-the-clock medical care.
Advocates for people with disabilities hope the move sets precedent for other people in Iowa and around the country.
When he was about five, Cedar Rapids resident Garret Frey suffered the same spinal cord injury that Superman star Christopher Reeve did in an equestrian accident.
Reeve lived for about a decade after his accident.
Frey is closing on 40 years, and sued the state, claiming it violated his rights by failing to provide the 24-hour home-based support and services he needs to live at home, where he said people with disabilities want to be.
“It is truly where most of us are happy, healthy,” said Frey, “and it’s most cost-effective.”
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services agreed to raise the provider reimbursement rate for in-home caregivers, allow for respite services, expand the health-care provider base – and help secure overnight, in-home nursing care for Frey.
HHS will monitor Iowa’s progress for a year. Frey said he wants this ruling to set precedent for other people with disabilities in Iowa and across the country.
“It’s one baby step in the right direction,” said Frey, “because there are many other disability-related concerns and issues that are ongoing.”
The ruling requires Iowa Health and Human Services to work with federal officials to ensure Frey’s needs are met during that year, and report on their progress monthly.