Update From the SD Capitol From President Pro Tem Senator Chris Karr

Senator Chris Karr, President Pro Tem of the South Dakota Senate, joins Dave Roetman for a quick update from the Capitol during the 2026 session. Karr discusses a bill from Senator Pischke to allow mourning doves to be hunted in the road right-of-way, and his own appropriation for buffer strips and other practices to clean up surface waters, focused on the Big Sioux River. He explains a separation of powers dispute that began when Lieutenant Governor Tony Venhuizen broke a 17-17 tie on a bill; the Senate sided with Karr 24-10 on appeal, and he opposes the governor’s request for a Supreme Court advisory opinion. He also covers property tax bills, his opposition to shifting sales tax to offset owner-occupied property taxes, data center incentives, and his bill to limit student cell phone use in schools.

Topics: road hunting, mourning doves, Big Sioux River, water quality, separation of powers, tie-breaking vote, Supreme Court advisory opinion, property taxes, data centers, cell phones in schools

“You’ve got to look at the spending side of things in order to stop the growth. Lets look at how we assess, how we value, what are we valuing and how we are spending these property tax dollars.” - Senator Chris Karr

SB 115 remove the prohibition pertaining to the shooting of mourning doves located within specific areas.

SB 135 protect residents from increased utility costs and utility shortages caused by data centers and clarify authority to regulate data centers.

SB 198 restrict the use of a cell phone by a student during instructional time.

SB 228 make an appropriation for eligible water, wastewater, storm water, and nonpoint source projects and to declare an emergency.

Full transcript

About this transcript: It was machine-transcribed in-house and then edited for readability. Filler words and false starts are removed, and the meaning is unchanged. Timestamps are approximate.

[00:00]

Dave Roetman: This is the Making Waves podcast. My name is Dave Roetman. We’re here with Chris Karr, President Pro Tem of the Senate. Welcome, Chris.

Chris Karr: Well, Dave, good morning. Thank you for having me.

Dave Roetman: You’re welcome. Thank you for being on. You’ve only got a few minutes here because you’re a busy guy, so let’s get right into it. You have some bills that are coming up in the legislature that are very interesting. One is some hunting bills. Of hunting, could you tell us a little bit about that?

Chris Karr: I appreciate you. Let me give you the update from the Capitol here. 15 minutes or less. Dove hunting was a bill brought by Senator Pischke. Basically, Wanted to allow doves to be shot by hunters in the right-of-way. So that’s the current practice for upland and waterfowl. So your pheasant, your ducks, your geese, all can be shot in the right-of-way. So it’s just treating mourning doves in the same, putting them in the same category.

I think on its face, it makes a lot of sense. There’s just always been a lot of concern about folks. Breaking the law, shooting them off power lines, things like that. I guess the way I think about it is if somebody’s going to break the law, they’re going to break the law no matter what. So we can’t control that. That started here in the... The Senate will see where it goes in the House.

There’s concerns that it’ll bring out more opposition against road hunting, so that concerns me. I’m a proponent of our road hunting. If you do it lawfully and respect private owners and property.

Dave Roetman: That’s a good point to make because road hunting is legal in South Dakota. In this case, you’ll allow a new species to be hunted.

Chris Karr: Yeah, yep, in the right-of-way. In the right-of-way, of course.

Dave Roetman: So you also have a bill about cleaning up the environment a little bit, our waterways.

Chris Karr: Water’s been a passion of mine for several years, and about five years ago I brought a bill, started trying to understand what’s going on And we have some issues as the surface waters, they all get designated certain uses. Are failing at least one of their specific use. So that might be recreating or fishing or something like that. It really gave me pause and I wanted to understand what was happening and what we can do to clean up our surface waters.

I focused on the Big Sioux. It’s the South Dakota’s river, if you will, and it touches something like 20 counties. And, you’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of miles of shoreline. So I am at this point bringing forward an appropriation to put more dollars into some of the best practices that we have in South Dakota and those are buffer strips primarily They also do some livestock containment for smaller livestock operations so smaller than a CAFO I’m looking forward to having several meetings, trying to understand and hear from those folks in the water district world, the ag world, and go, what are the next best practices?

What do we need to do? How do we educate the landowners about protecting the water, just good.

Dave Roetman: Conservation practices right? Conservation is a conservative issue and has been since before Teddy Roosevelt. That’s right. You also have something going before the Supreme Court pretty soon, a separation of powers issue. Could you tell us a little bit about that? Oh yeah.

Chris Karr: Well i think so far that’s probably one of the more interesting things in my from my perspective and is my position as the president pro tem is really looking at this institution and the integrity of it. What happened was early in session we had a bill, and it doesn’t really matter what the bill was, but we had a tied vote on the floor, 17-17. We’re missing a senator The lieutenant governor, as our presiding officer, chose to cast a vote in the affirmative and essentially passing that bill.

I brought a point of order to say that he can’t do that. He overruled me. We each laid out our constitutional arguments. So I appealed his ruling. The body voted, it was 24-10. So the Senate was with me and my argument to say there’s a separation here and you don’t have that ability. In the Constitution it says it needs a majority of members elect. And that presiding officer is not elected, an elected member of the Senate.

And that’s kind of my basis. What’s happened since then, the governor decided to exercise what he thinks is his ability to ask the Supreme Court for an opinion on an advisory opinion on this matter.

[05:00]

We have taken a stance, I’ve taken a stance, that that’s not really appropriate either at this time because The questions that he can ask the Supreme Court in that advisory opinion have to be dealing with the executive branch and executive branch functions. And the question they’re asking is about whether or not the presiding officer in the Senate can cast a tie-breaking vote on final passage. And when that lieutenant governor steps into the presiding officer position he’s no longer representing the executive branch he’s now operating in the legislative branch so i’d say that that question is not appropriate because it’s now the executive branch asking about a legislative function to the supreme court And so I’m opposing them even answering this question at this time.

Dave Roetman: Well, that’s very interesting. These kind of issues have, of course, been coming up since the founding of the Republic and, of course, even during the Roman Republic. It’s very interesting that we’d have these kind of process questions. And just for context for our listeners, the Lieutenant Governor presides over the Senate. And he kind of wields the gavel and is the presiding officer. That’s kind of a tradition, correct?

Chris Karr: Yeah, it’s been a tradition. There’s a lot of states that have, exercised that model, and some of them have changed, and we’ve changed the duties of the Lieutenant Governor as well. So now that’s pretty much the involvement of the Lieutenant Governor in our chamber. The President Pro Tem, that’s my position, does all the committee assignments, the bill assignments and oversees the rest of the functions. Got it. So I got to recognize that the Lieutenant Governor Tony Venhuizen has done a good job.

He’s very respectful. He communicates with leadership and myself. I just have to acknowledge that this isn’t about the man. This is about an institutional question and a separation of powers.

Dave Roetman: Well, it seems all very civil so far. Kudos to both of you. Thank you. Before you go, could you tell us a little about what’s happening with the property taxes? That’s, of course, on everyone’s mind.

Chris Karr: And that’ll continue to be, I’m sure. There’s several bills. I think taxation has like 20 bills right now, Senate taxation. I don’t know how many are in the House. But they’re all touching some facet of property taxes, whether it’s a TIF or dealing with opt-outs. And there’s only a handful of bills that really deal with some revenue and a source of revenue. I think we’ll get some of these bills out that what I’ve been calling kind of the guardrail bills and plugging the holes in the boat.

You got to look at the spending side of things and in order to stop the growth, right? Let’s look at how we assess, how we value, what are we valuing and how we’re spending these property tax dollars. That’s a big part of the equation as well. So that’s what some of these bills are doing. As far as finding real dollars to provide property tax relief, that’s going to of course be the larger hurdle.

I believe we’ll try to push some ideas through. I just don’t know where we’ll coalesce. You got to have the Senate, the House, and the executive branch all agree on something. A big issue like this really should come from top down and you know should start with the executive branch but what we’ve seen so far has just been the growth limit that the governor brought last year. I’ll just say that there’s been a couple ideas on shifting sales tax to be used for property tax and that’s something I’ve come out against, I just don’t think it’s right.

To use everybody who pays sales tax, clothing, food, all of the things to offset a subset of property owners, the owner-occupied. Some folks are proposing that this increase in sales tax will help offset the owner-occupied property tax. And I just don’t think that’s right. It feels very feudalistic to me. That’s a complex subject.

Dave Roetman: Property taxes are a huge part of the local government, so it’s not going to be an easy solve.

Chris Karr: They aren’t but I mean you still got to exercise good tax policy right you know the ends don’t justify the means to take from everybody else to offset a few individuals their property tax you know or their tax burden I just don’t agree with that.

Dave Roetman: Do you have any final thoughts I know you got to go here.

Chris Karr: Final thoughts. Data centers are a big thing right now we’re talking about. The one thing I think everybody agrees on for the most part is we want to protect our utility ratepayers. So our electricity, gas, and water. We want to protect those resources and the rates of those. Stay tuned though. The conversation is really on how much economic incentives we want to be able to offer these data centers to come in and operate in South Dakota.

[10:00]

And the last one here is I’ll sneak in a bill that I got is regarding cell phones and students using them. During the school day at school. And I got a bill that says, no cell phone usage during the day. It would allow some exceptions for medical, educational accommodations and emergencies, et cetera. But it requires each of those school districts to come up with a plan and remove those cell phones. There’s just too much.

Research out there and information and anecdotal information about cell phones in schools, what a distraction they are. I just don’t think it’s healthy either for our young kids to be on screens all the time.

Dave Roetman: Well, I’ll tell you what, I’m distracted by my cell phone and I grew up in a group that didn’t have cell phone in school, so I think they could live without them in school.

Chris Karr: I appreciate that. We’ll see what happens. That’s the update from the Capitol, from President Pro Tem’s office.

Dave Roetman: Well, thank you very much. This has been the Making Waves podcast. My name is Dave Roetman. We’ve been here with President Pro Tem Chris Karr. Thanks, Chris.

Chris Karr: Thanks, Dave. Take care.