The dust has settled on the 2017 South Dakota legislative session. Now the building process begins on a new effort to curtail corruption.

Feeling that the multiple-bill approach to replace IM 22 was inadequate, Doug Kronaizl of Represent Us South Dakota sees a silver lining as to what took place in Pierre.

“One of the things we saw throughout the legislative session, voters across the state getting very much engaged in the process of contacting legislators and expressing their opposition to what the legislature was doing. It really opened a lot of people’s eyes to the emergency clause loophole that the legislature wields in its ability to prevent referenda.”

With an eye to the future, Kronaizl feels that people will have plenty of opportunity to get involved.

“The main goal is to make it a South Dakota-led effort. If people want to go the route of the ballot, that’s something that we might look at. If it’s organizing, I know (the legislature has) a slew of summer study task forces. I think people are going to be focused on those as well.

Represent Us South Dakota will host Anti-Corruption Forums across South Dakota this weekend starting tonight (March 17) in Pierre, Saturday in Sioux Falls and Sunday in Rapid City. Next week other events are scheduled for Wednesday in Vermillion and Saturday March 25 in Brookings. The list of places and times are listed below.

  • Pierre: 7:00 PM at Pierre Senior Center
  • Sioux Falls: 2:30 PM at Downtown Library
  • Rapid City: 3:00 PM at Central Public Library
  • Vermillion: 6:30 PM at Public Library
  • Brookings: 1:00 PM at Public Library

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