Legislative Update with Jay Kruse

​​Governor Noem kicks off legislative session with State of the State address; as of this morning, 138 bills have been introduced with a majority of those focused on cannabis related topics.

Good Morning,

And we’re off! Following tradition, Governor Kristi Noem kicked off the 2022 Legislative Session with her State of the State address in Pierre Tuesday afternoon as legislators and a few special guests joined the governor for what turn out to be an hour-long speech covering a wide variety of priorities for 2022. The Governor detailed the many ways South Dakota is leading the nation and gave the credit not to what the government has done, but “It happened because of what government did NOT do.” She pointed out, “We chose freedom and personal responsibility over mandates and lockdowns.”

In addition to detailing the state’s COVID response, the governor also touched on a few other topics that are important to her and her team this year, including adoption and foster care, expanding healthcare access, supporting small business, and cutting regulations just to name a few. If you weren’t able to tune in to the State of the State address yesterday, I highly recommend you take a few minutes this morning to read through the full transcript of the speech here. It provides a ton of insight as to where the Governor will be focusing her priorities throughout 2022.

Bill, Bills, Bills….
With the start of the new session comes the introduction of bills. As of this morning, 138 bills have been introduced with a majority of those focusing on cannabis related topics. Some looking to expand access to cannabis, such as SB 3 which would legalize the recreational use of marijuana for people 21 years of age and older, and others looking to restrict or prohibit certain activities that are included in the current medical-cannabis system which voters approved in 2020.

We are still in the early stages of session, so we haven’t seen many financial services or credit union related bills just yet, but we anticipate things to ramp up rather quickly.

The deadlines for the introduction of bills are quickly approaching for legislators on Feb 2, and legislative committees the following day, Feb 3rd. The 2022 SD Legislative Session will include 38 legislative days and runs through March 28th.

Don’t forget, you can always follow along with all the bills we are tracking here on our website: https://www.dakcu.org/bill-tracking.html.