CANTON, S.D. – 30-year old Justin Rackley made his first appearance in court on Monday in Lincoln County.  He is facing three counts of first degree murder in the shooting deaths of three people early Saturday morning.  During that court appearance it was learned that Rackley is from Texas and moved to South Dakota in 2020.

Sioux Falls Police Lieutenant Aaron Nyberg says the incident happened at 58th and Drexel Drive shortly before three Saturday morning and identified the victims as Daniel Carl Kemnitz, 43, Kellie Elizabeth Reaves, 43, and Michael Andrew Thompson, 34, all three died as a result of gunshot wounds.

The chaotic scene required officers to remain at the location well into the evening hours to process evidence. Additionally, two other individuals were injured.

A handgun was recovered at the scene, and police are still determining the number of shots fired as well as a motive.

The shooting occurred during a gathering, but police do not believe drugs were involved, though alcohol consumption was noted.

Two other people were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries.

Rackley is being held in the Minnehaha County jail, his bond was set at $3 million.

The only crime on his South Dakota record is a simple assault charge in 2020. Prosecutors say he also has a criminal record in Texas.

 

CEDAR RAPIDS, IA – The Linn County Sheriff’s Office reports Brent Brown, the fourth victim of an attack that killed three others last Wednesday in rural Linn County, has died from his injuries.

Johnson County Medical Examiner pronounced Brown dead on Friday. He was 34 years old.

Luke Truesdell is now charged with four counts of first-degree murder. Officials said the attack happened on Wednesday, where police found three people – Romondus Cooper, Keonna Ryan and Amanda Parker – dead in an out building at the 3600 block of East Otter Road in northern Linn County.

Investigators said Truesdell admitted to beating four people with a metal pipe. Truesell was expected to make an appearance in court on Monday on that new, fourth charge of first-degree murder.

Brown’s body will be transported to the State Medical Examiner’s Office in Ankeny for autopsy. The investigation into this incident continues.

 

PIERRE, S.D. (Stu Whiney, South Dakota News Watch) – Two-thirds of South Dakotans support an initiated measure that would prohibit the state from collecting sales tax on “anything sold for human consumption, except alcoholic beverages and prepared food,” according to a scientific poll co-sponsored by News Watch.

The statewide survey of 500 registered voters, also sponsored by the Chiesman Center for Democracy at the University of South Dakota, showed that 66% of respondents are for the 2024 ballot measure, with 26% opposed and 7% undecided.

That means public support for Initiated Measure 28, which would eliminate the state’s 4.2% sales tax on groceries, has increased since a November 2023 poll that showed 61% of registered voters in favor of it.

Supporters call the measure a long-overdue effort to take the tax burden off low-income families and individuals. South Dakota is one of just two states, along with Mississippi, that fully taxes food without offering credits or rebates.

Opponents criticize the wording of the measure as broader than just groceries. They said it could cause a budget crunch by preventing the state from collecting sales tax on “consumable” items such as tobacco, toothpaste and toilet paper.

“This is not a food tax repeal – it’s a consumables tax repeal,” said Nathan Sanderson, executive director of the South Dakota Retailers Association, which publicly opposes the measure.

Rick Weiland of Dakotans for Health, the petition group that sponsored IM 28, noted that Gov. Kristi Noem pushed for repealing the grocery tax during her 2022 re-election effort. In announcing the campaign pledge, Noem said the tax cut would “put hundreds of dollars in the pockets of the average South Dakota family.”

“This affects people of modest means who are just trying to put food on the table,” Weiland told News Watch. “It should have been done 20 years ago, which is why you’re seeing a super-majority of South Dakota voters in support of it.”

Mason-Dixon Polling and Strategy conducted the poll May 10-13. Those interviewed were selected randomly from a telephone-matched state voter registration list that included both landline and cellphone numbers. Quotas were assigned to reflect voter registration by county. The margin of error is plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

Concerns about budgetary impact are more pronounced since state legislators voted to lower the general sales tax rate from 4.5% to 4.2% during the 2024 legislative session. It sunsets, or expires, in 2027.

Sanderson echoed concerns raised by Attorney General Marty Jackley in his ballot explanation that IM 28, by interrupting collection of sales tax for certain items, could “affect the state’s obligations under the tobacco master settlement agreement and the streamlined sales tax agreement.”

Not taxing “consumables” and losing those revenue streams could result in an annual state budget downturn of at least $176 million, according to Sanderson, on top of the $104 million estimated annual revenue loss from the general sales tax cut.

Sales taxes are the largest source of state government revenue in South Dakota, one of seven states without a state income tax.

“I believe this measure was drafted the way it was for one of two reasons,” said Sanderson, who served as a policy adviser to former Gov. Dennis Daugaard. “Either it was designed to force South Dakota to implement a state income tax to replace the lost revenue or it was drafted incorrectly. Either way, it’s highly problematic.”

Weiland pushed back strongly on those assertions, calling them “fear tactics and misinformation” and noting that the Legislative Research Council played a role in changing the measure’s language.

As for the notion that Dakotans for Health is surreptitiously trying to trigger a state income tax, Weiland called the theory “ridiculous.”

“Mr. Sanderson needs to do his homework before he makes such wild allegations about our secret intentions,” said Weiland, a former South Dakota Democratic Party candidate for U.S. House and U.S. Senate. “With 94 Republican and 11 Democratic legislators in Pierre, (Republicans) can do anything they want. I don’t think passing a state income tax will ever be part of their legislative agenda.”

Supporters of IM 28 call it a long-overdue effort to take the tax burden off low-income families and individuals. South Dakota is one of just two states, along with Mississippi, that fully taxes food without offering credits or rebates. (Photo: Scott Warman/ Unsplash)

It’s been an eventful petition process for Dakotans for Health, which had to re-submit language for the measure in November 2022 after then-Attorney General Mark Vargo issued a ballot explanation saying the measure would impact the ability of municipalities, and not just the state, to collect sales tax on groceries.

That interpretation differed from that of then-Legislative Research Council director Reed Holwegner, who noted in a 2022 fiscal summary that “municipalities could continue to tax anything sold for eating or drinking.”

Most municipalities collect 2% on groceries on top of the state tax rate. Weiland’s group added specific language to the measure after Vargo’s explanation to maintain that they could continue to do so.

But opponents cite a state law that states cities and towns can charge a sales tax if the tax “conforms in all respects to the state tax … with the exception of the rate,” which would not be the case if the state food tax is repealed.

“Cities and towns can only tax the same items as the state,” said Sanderson. “So despite the language in IM 28, if the state cannot charge a tax on ‘anything for human consumption,’ neither can a municipality.”

Jackley’s current ballot explanation notes that “judicial or legislative clarification of the measure will be necessary.” Since it’s an initiative measure and not a constitutional amendment, it’s reasonable to assume that state legislators will address it during the 2025 legislative session if it passes.

Beyond disagreements about municipalities, there were early discussions between Dakotans for Health and the LRC about how to best characterize which items were included in the repeal.

Hollweger, who resigned as LRC director during a meeting of the Legislature’s executive board in October 2023, addressed the potential for differing interpretations of “anything sold for human consumption” in an updated fiscal summary in January 2023.

“For purposes of this fiscal note,” he wrote, “the LRC assumes the phrase only includes food items because of the modifying language ‘except alcoholic beverages and prepared food’ and does not include personal tangible property and services, both of which can also be sold for human consumption. Other assumptions as to the meaning of this phrase may be just as reasonable, if not more so.”

With that qualification, the fiscal note said that the state could see a reduction in sales tax revenue of $123.9 million annually, much lower than Sanderson’s estimate. It also reiterated that municipalities “could continue to tax anything sold for human consumption.”

In his ballot explanation, Jackley asserted that human consumption “is not defined by state law, but its common definition includes more than just food and drinks.”

“We worked with various state offices on the grocery tax repeal as we do with all ballot measures we get involved with,” said Dakotans for Health co-founder Rick Weiland, shown at an event for the group’s abortion amendment at the downtown Sioux Falls, S.D., library on May 1, 2024. (Photo: Stu Whitney/ South Dakota News Watch)

Weiland points out that IM 28’s original draft, which used the phrase “anything sold for eating or drinking by humans,” was flagged by the LRC as being too imprecise.

In a letter to Dakotans for Heath in December 2022, Holwegner said that the wording “may be overly vague, inviting various interpretations in determining its meaning.”

Holwegner added that “the statutory definition of food uses the terms ‘ingestion,’ ‘chewing’ and ‘consumed.’ These terms seem to be more precise than ‘eating or drinking,’ as they may better capture the various elements of food and beverage consumption.”

Following that guidance, Dakotans for Health re-submitted the language as “anything sold for human consumption” and collected signatures for both a constitutional amendment and initiated measure.

Weiland and his team ended up prioritizing the IM effort, and it was certified for the 2024 ballot on May 13 by the Secretary of State’s office with 22,315 valid signatures.

In an interview with News Watch, Weiland expressed frustration that concerns about inexact wording and unintended consequences seem to persist regardless of the language put forth in the measure.

“We worked closely with various state offices on the grocery tax repeal measure as we do with all the ballot measures we get involved with,” Weiland said. “Repealing this tax is simply the right thing to do.”

South Dakota’s grocery tax has been a target of legislative reform for decades, mostly by Democrats.

In 2004, the South Dakota Democratic Party gathered enough signatures to put a state food tax repeal on the ballot after legislative attempts to eliminate the tax fell short.

Opponents of the effort, including then-Gov. Mike Rounds, warned that passing the repeal would likely reduce the amount of state aid available for schools and health care.

Voters responded to that message and rejected the measure by a margin of 68% to 32%. Later attempts by state legislators to lower the tax on food or exempt groceries from the general sales tax rate also failed.

Noem shifted the dynamic in September 2022, six weeks before being reelected with 62% of the vote and mindful of Weiland’s plans for a petition drive.

At an event in Rapid City, she unveiled her plan to repeal the grocery tax for the “largest tax cut in South Dakota history.” She vouched for its affordability because of double-digit increases in sales tax revenue in 2021 and 2022, a budget surplus in 2022 of $115 million and $423 million in reserves.

“That changed things,” Weiland told News Watch.

“The Republicans’ big argument has always been, ‘Oh, we don’t have the money to repeal the food tax. It will come on the backs of firefighters and teachers, or we’ll have to do a state income tax’ – all this crap they kept contending so the issue never got any legs in the Legislature or on the ballot. Well, the governor took all those arguments and threw them in the trash. They don’t exist.”

But Jim Terwilliger, the governor’s budget chief, stressed that the basis of Initiated Measure 28 differs from the bill that Noem and her team brought unsuccessfully during the 2023 legislative session.

Noem’s bill, which was killed in committee, would have reduced the state’s sales tax on groceries to zero percent rather than eliminating it entirely. The reason was to avoid disrupting South Dakota’s participation in the Streamlined Sales Tax Project, a cooperative effort of states, local governments and the business community that standardizes collection of sales tax.

“As drafted, the ballot measure would bring us out of compliance with the agreement,” Terwilliger told News Watch in May 2023.

Terwilliger also said that the measure would “prevent the state from taxing tobacco or medical marijuana,” a concern also noted by Jackley in his ballot explanation. Not taxing tobacco could impact revenue the state receives from a master settlement agreement reached in 1998 between 46 states and major cigarette manufacturers as part of litigation for health-care costs and deceptive trade practices.

Jackley said South Dakota receives about $20 million annually from the settlement, which Sanderson factored into his estimated annual loss of state revenue of $176 million.

Weiland disputes those legal interpretations, which could end up being debated during the 2025 legislative session or resolved in a court of law.

He also notes that the South Dakota tax system is rife with sales tax exemptions totaling more than $1 billion a year that primarily benefit the state’s largest industries such as agriculture, medical care and insurance, as previously reported by News Watch.

“There’s a whole list of things that these companies are allowed exemptions for to maintain their business in South Dakota,” said Weiland. “But we’re not going to get rid of a regressive tax on food, something people need to survive? What does that say about our priorities?”

The News Watch/Chiesman poll showed that repealing the grocery tax has bipartisan appeal, with 78% of Independents, 74% of Democrats and 56% of Republicans saying that they support the initiated measure.

Young voters were the most supportive, with 73% of respondents ages 18-34 saying they are for the measure, compared to 21% against.

 

WASHINGTON, D.C. (Jacob Fischler/States Newsroom) – Nearly three weeks after the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration proposed loosening a federal prohibition on marijuana, the next phases of policy fights over the drug’s status are starting to take shape.

Public comments, which the DEA is accepting on the proposal until mid-July, will likely include an analysis of the economic impact of more lenient federal rules.

Administrative law hearings, a venue for opponents to challenge executive branch decisions, will likely follow, with marijuana’s potential for abuse a possible issue.

Congress, meanwhile, could act on multiple related issues, including banking access for state-legal marijuana businesses and proposals to help communities harmed by the decades of federal prohibition.

U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, a Democrat from Oregon and longtime advocate for legalizing marijuana who’s retiring at the end of the year, is encouraging his colleagues to build on the administration’s action by taking up bills on those related issues.

The politics of the issue should favor action, even in the face of an upcoming campaign season that typically slows legislative action, Blumenauer said in a May 17 interview, noting the popularity of a more permissive approach to the drug.

“Congress may not do a lot between now and November, but they should,” the 14-term House member said. “Because it’s an election year, there’s no downside to being more aggressive.”

In a proposed rule published in the Federal Register last month, the DEA specifically asked commenters to weigh in on the economic impacts of moving the drug from Schedule I to the less-restrictive Schedule III list under the federal Controlled Substances Act.

That will likely mean the agency will consider the impact of allowing state-legal marijuana businesses to deduct business expenses from their federal taxes, Mason Tvert, a partner at Denver-based cannabis policy and public affairs firm Strategies 64, said in an interview. Under current law, no deductions are allowed.

That issue is seen by advocates, including Blumenauer and fellow Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden, who chairs the tax-writing U.S. Senate Finance Committee, as paramount for the industry.

Thousands of state-legal businesses struggle to earn a profit or operate at a loss under the current system, Blumenauer said.

The DEA typically looks at three factors when assessing how strictly to regulate a drug: its medicinal value, potential for abuse relative to other drugs and ability to cause physical addiction.

A 2023 analysis by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that looked at data from states where medicinal marijuana is legal showed that “there exists some credible scientific support for the medical use of marijuana.”

That finding could lead DEA to look at other factors, Tvert said.

“The battleground that we’ll see will be around how we define potential for abuse,” he said.

But the DEA proposed rule revealed a divided view among government agencies about the drug’s potential harms, Paul Armentano, the deputy director for the longtime leading advocacy group National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, told States Newsroom.

The text of the proposed rule shows “a lack of consensus” among HHS, the Attorney General’s Office and the Drug Enforcement Administration, he said.

“There are several points in the DEA’s proposed rule where they express a desire to see additional evidence specific to concerns that the agency has about the potential effects of cannabis, particularly as they pertain to abuse potential and potential harms,” Armentano said.

“The HHS addresses those issues, but the DEA essentially says, ‘We’d like to see more information on it.’”

Kevin Sabat, the president and CEO of the anti-legalization group Smart Approaches to Marijuana, agreed that the DEA did not appear to agree with the HHS conclusion that medical uses exist.

The proposed rule “just brings up all these issues with the HHS’s determination and it basically invites comment on all those issues,” he said.

Sabat’s group will also be petitioning for a DEA administrative hearing, he said. An administrative law judge could rule that the proposal should not go through or that it should be amended to remain stricter than the initial proposal described.

“We’re going to highlight the fact that, first of all, this does not have approved or accepted medical use,” he said.

Tvert said the accepted medical value question is likely not to be a major factor in an administrative law hearing. Several medical organizations and states that allow medicinal use have already endorsed its medicinal value, he said.

Instead, the focus will turn to the drug’s potential for abuse, he said.

“What will be critical is looking at cannabis relative to other substances that are currently II or III or not on the schedule, and determining whether cannabis should be on Schedule I when alcohol is not even on the schedules and ketamine is Schedule III.”

As of June 6, nearly 12,000 people had commented on the proposal in the 18 days since its publication.

While opinion polls show that most Americans favor liberalizing cannabis laws — a Pew Research Center survey in March found 57% of U.S. adults favor full legalization while only 11% say it should be entirely illegal — the public comments so far represent a full spectrum of views on the topic.

“This rule is a horrible idea, this should remain in Schedule I,” one comment read. “Marijuana is a gateway drug and ruins lives.”

“There are no negative side effects to its use,” another commenter, who favored “fully” legalizing the substance, wrote. “Its not harmful. The only harm is what the government has done to me and America. Shame on the people that continue to oppose this. Seriously shame on anyone that would stand in the way of this change.”

Blumenauer authored a memo last month on “the path forward” for reform as the rescheduling process plays out.

He listed four bills for Congress to consider this year.

One, sponsored by House Democrats, would remove cannabis from the Controlled Substance Act schedule entirely and expunge prior offenses.

A bipartisan bill would make changes to the banking laws to allow state-legal businesses greater access to loans and other financial services.

Another, cosponsored with Florida Republican Brian Mast, would allow Veterans Administration health providers to discuss state-legal medicinal marijuana with veteran patients.

Blumenauer has also co-written language for appropriations bills that would prevent the Department of Justice from prosecuting marijuana businesses that are legal under state or tribal law.

“All of these things are overwhelmingly popular, they’re important, we have legislative vehicles and supporters,” he said.

Still, there may be disagreements about what to pursue next.

Recent years have seen disagreements among Democratic supporters of legalization over whether to prioritize banking or criminal justice reforms.

A banking overhaul has much greater bipartisan support, and advocates on all sides of the issue agree it’s the most likely to see congressional action.

But some who support changes to banking laws in principle object to focusing on improving the business environment without first addressing the harms they say prohibition has caused to largely non-white and disadvantaged communities.

As recently as 2021, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer described banking reform legislation as too narrow. Sen. Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, called it a “common-sense policy” but said that he favored a more comprehensive approach.

“I’ve gone around with Cory on that,” Blumenauer said. “More than anybody in Congress, I’m in favor of the major reforms, and we’ve been fighting for racial justice and equity … but (racial justice and banking reforms) are not mutually exclusive.”

In September, Booker agreed to co-sponsor the banking reform bill after winning a promise from Schumer that a separate bill to help expunge criminal records would also receive a vote. Neither measure has actually received a floor vote.

In a statement following the administration’s announcement on rescheduling, Booker praised the move, but called for further action from Congress.

That includes passing a bill he’s sponsored that would decriminalize the drug at the federal level, expunge the records of people convicted of federal marijuana crimes and direct federal funding to communities “most harmed by the failed War on Drugs,” according to a summary from Booker’s office.

“We still have a long way to go,” Booker said in the statement on rescheduling. “Thousands of people remain in prisons around the country for marijuana-related crimes. They continue to bear the devastating consequences that come with a criminal history.”

Blumenauer said Congress should act on the proposals that have widespread support from voters.

“This not low-hanging fruit, this is having them pick it up off the ground,” he said. “There is no other controversial issue that has as much bipartisan support that’s awaiting action.”