Legislature OKs building new prison in Sioux Falls

After 144 years, South Dakota lawmakers decided Tuesday it’s time for “the Hill” to retire.

The required two-thirds of each legislative chamber voted to endorse a 1,500-bed, $650 million replacement for the state penitentiary building that opened its doors when South Dakota was still Dakota Territory. The new men’s prison will be the most expensive capital project ever funded by the state’s taxpayers.

Lawmakers convened at 9 a.m., and a joint committee of House and Senate members spent part of the morning and afternoon hearing testimony and discussing the prison legislation. There were several hours of afternoon and evening debate in the two chambers.

Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden signed the bill into law at about 8 p.m. Tuesday, about an hour and a half after the House of Representatives voted 51-18 to pass it. That was four more votes than the required two-thirds majority mandated for spending bills by the state constitution.

One House member, Rep. Jeff Bathke, R-Mitchell, was excused while on a military deployment but said last week he supports the project. The Senate approved the plan earlier in the afternoon, with a vote of 24-11 — exactly the two-thirds majority needed.

Rhoden said Tuesday evening it was “a great day,” and that he’d “sleep well.” But he also said the outcome of the vote was not assured Tuesday morning.

Throughout the day, Rhoden was spotted speaking with lawmakers in the Capitol’s hallways, and on the floor of the House of Representatives.

“As we started counting noses, it was closer than I really thought it would be,” Rhoden said. “So we got busy, and we didn’t leave any stone unturned.”

Immediately after signing the bill that authorized the prison’s construction, the governor made good on his promise to sign an executive order creating a Correctional Rehabilitation Task Force. Lt. Gov. Tony Venhuizen will lead the group, which will also include six members of the House of Representatives, five senators, one judge, two representatives from law enforcement, an Indigenous representative, a health care or behavioral health representative and “any other interested representative deemed necessary by the governor.”

The task force will study treatment options, Native American programming needs, faith-based correctional interventions and inmates’ re-entry into society.

Lawmakers back

task force plan

The prison will be built in northeast Sioux Falls, on an undeveloped patch of industrial land near the Sioux Falls Area Humane Society. The location is about 3 miles northeast of the penitentiary, which is nicknamed “the Hill” for its perch overlooking the Big Sioux River.

The votes came during a one-day special session at the Capitol called by Rhoden after a prison construction task force he created via executive order had recommended the prison plan.

A previous men’s prison proposal, with a higher price and a controversial location in rural Lincoln County, was presented in February during the regular legislative session and failed to earn two-thirds support. 

Several of the House lawmakers who said no to the Lincoln County prison said they switched their votes this time because the process addressed questions that had gone unanswered in the run-up to the February vote on what would have been an $825 million prison. 

House Majority Leader Scott Odenbach, R-Spearfish, was among those lawmakers. He served on the task force, and said each of his concerns — price, location, size, guaranteed pricing and space for rehabilitation programming — were addressed along the way.

To the still-skeptical members, Odenbach said, “Friends, if you didn’t like the old prison plan, basically you got everything you wanted. And I would say take the win.”

More questions 

expected in January

Tuesday’s vote answers the most pressing and expensive question posed during a four-year saga on the future of South Dakota’s prison facilities, but leaves open several others on how the new facility will play into future prison policy.

In 2021, then-Gov. Kristi Noem commissioned a study of Department of Corrections properties that concluded the state needed a new women’s prison — which is now under construction in Rapid City at a cost of $87 million — and that the oldest parts of the penitentiary had too many inmates and was unsafe for them and the staff.

Multiple lawmakers called the penitentiary inhumane, worn out and unsuitable for rehabilitation programming on Tuesday. 

House Speaker Pro Tempore Karla Lems, R-Canton, voted against the prison during the special session. She said the state would be “putting the cart before the horse” by building a facility before addressing recidivism and rehabilitation — and before hiring a replacement for Corrections Secretary Kellie Wasko, who is resigning effective next month.

“We’re going forward without a completed plan, and without somebody in place at the Department of Corrections that has a great resume, that has a history of knowing how to reduce recidivism and put some of these policies in place,” Lems said after the vote.

Payment plan both

a selling point and

sticking point

The state plans to pay for the new prison with cash. In 2022, lawmakers voted to begin putting millions in excess revenues, which ballooned thanks in part to federal cash infusions during the COVID-19 pandemic, into an incarceration construction fund that has since grown with further deposits and interest earnings. The next year, they approved the construction of the women’s prison.

Rep. Liz May, R-Kyle, also switched her vote to a “yes” on the men’s prison after voting against the Lincoln County plan in February. May said the House deserves credit for its willingness to take a fiscally conservative stance by saving money for a large project in advance.

Concerns about rehabilitation programming and policy changes are fair, May said, but none of them absolve the state of its responsibility to house inmates. 

“I expect everybody in here to do their job, to watch the money,” May said. “Bring your policy bills next year. You’ll have support.”

The bill passed Tuesday transfers $78.7 million from the state’s budget reserves to the prison construction fund and authorizes the Department of Corrections to spend up to $650 million to build the new facility. Most of the money is already in the fund, but about $42 million of the required funding is expected to come from future interest earnings.

That was an issue for Sen. John Carley, R-Piedmont. He said he doesn’t necessarily trust that the interest income will materialize, and said supporters counting future interest earnings were overselling the amount of money in the incarceration construction fund.

“I get very concerned hearing that we have the cash on hand,” Carley said. “We don’t.”

Between 2024 and Tuesday’s vote, the state put $52 million into a plan to build a 1,500-bed men’s prison — at a price of $825 million, in that case — in southern Lincoln County. Lawmakers rejected that prison pitch in February, an act that spurred the creation of Rhoden’s Project Prison Reset task force. Last week, Rhoden’s office said much of that investment was recaptured by reusing designs on the $650 million version that did earn approval, but $21 million of the money spent on the Lincoln County site is unrecoverable.

The approved prison legislation includes the purchase of the Sioux Falls land and an exchange of the Lincoln County land to the owner of the Sioux Falls site. In that $17 million deal, which is included in the overall $650 million project cost, about $12.5 million will go to the landowner, along with the Lincoln County land, which the state valued at $4.5 million.

The state shaved $175 million off the cost of the Sioux Falls prison plan by shrinking common areas within the facility and designing 300 of the beds as a barracks. Rhoden said the new plan does not reduce rehabilitation or vocational programming space. 

Questions on how to pay for the ongoing operations of the new prison will greet lawmakers when they return in January for their regular session. 

Secretary Wasko, who tendered an Oct. 20 resignation in a letter to Rhoden earlier this month in the face of criticism, told lawmakers earlier this year that it could cost the state up to $20 million more per year to run the new prison.

On Tuesday, Lt. Gov. Venhuizen said the figure is closer to $17 million, and that the state will save money by improving rehabilitation programs and keeping people out of prison in the process. 

“If that is successful, we will save money. Every person who’s not in that prison saves us $40,000 a year,” Venhuizen said.

Two newer units on the grounds of the penitentiary in Sioux Falls will remain in service when the new men’s prison opens. That’s expected to happen in 2029.

John is the senior reporter for South Dakota Searchlight. He has more than 15 years experience covering criminal justice, the environment and public affairs in South Dakota, including more than a decade at the Sioux Falls Argus Leader.

South Dakota Searchlight is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.