Voted for building new prison

Greetings again.
So, what happened in Pierre during Special Session Sept. 23? I thought you’d never ask! We in the House went into caucus at 8 a.m. on the 23rd and I walked out of the capitol at 7:25 p.m. with a new prison approved and paid for!
The bill, Senate Bill 2 (SB2), was started in the Senate and then, once passed, came over to the House. Most of us in the House sat in the Senate gallery listening to the debate. SB2 has an emergency clause, meaning it goes into effect right away, instead of waiting until the start of the new state fiscal year which doesn’t happen until July 1. Also, it involves an expenditure, so that also requires a two-thirds approval from each body.
After a very heated debate, the Senate passed SB2 on to the House with a 24 yea, 11 nay vote. That  was the exact number needed for the two-thirds vote in the Senate. You can look up under sdlegislature.gov to see how your senator voted.
In the House, we definitely had a heated debate. I scratch my head at those members who said their constituents were against the new prison. This is a classic case of the vocal minority attempting to get their way. I got eight emails and three texts saying not to vote for the new prison. None of them stated why.
What happens is, a legislator gets a handful of anti- emails, calls or texts and they think all the citizens in their district are against the bill. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is perhaps a better gauge: All the sheriffs in the sheriff’s association were for a new state prison, as were all the police chiefs and state attorneys from each county. To top that off, our all-star attorney general Marty Jackley was in favor of the new prison and he was a member of the summer study task force. Aren’t these organizations solid constituents?
I would have to think long and hard about voting against all of the above on a security issue. Not to mention, our current prison, “The Hill,” was constructed in 1881. Yep, that’s 18, not 1981. To add yet another reason for a yea vote, we had the money in a prison trust fund which earned over $60 million in interest since its inception. So, no additional cost or taxes for the taxpayer. We are paying cash—no bond, no loans—just cold hard cash. So, with this information, I ask each of you how would you vote regarding a new state prison?
Yep, it was in my mind the absolute right thing to do and I proudly cast my yea vote along with 50 other House members.
The vote in the House was 51-18. That adds up to 69. Rep. Jeff Badke is a command sergeant major in the U.S. Army Reserve. He is deployed for a year to the Middle East and obviously was absent. He has expressed approval for the new facility in a letter to all of us.
He will still be deployed for the 2026 session and I inquired about Gov. Rhoden temporarily appointing someone else. I guess our laws don’t allow that, so I’m going to introduce a bill the first day to allow for a temporary replacement until a deployed soldier who is a legislator is back from deployment.
Now what? The passed $650 million is capped at that price, meaning no cost overruns are authorized. The completion date is three to four years from now. Really? We can’t get a completion date nailed down to sooner than a year? How about completed within three years, or there would be liquidated damages for every day it’s over three years? Maybe $50,000 per day for each day over?
Also, Gov. Rhoden has agreed to a task force relegated to lowering the recidivism rate. We are the highest in the nation. This could include drug and alcohol treatment, so if an inmate comes in with an addiction problem, he can get therapy before returning to the outside. Also, job training and placement so inmates can get a job and become productive members of society.
That’s all for now.