Seems to me the good senator doesn't want our tax dollars.

I have no issue moving to Texas and using Escapee's there. South Dakota was originally more convenient for us, but we'll see how this shakes out.

With the Presidential elections coming up in a few months, if we were still domiciled in SD, I'd be changing to Texas (Florida would never have been an option for us) right NOW. I wouldn't take a chance that this bill would become law before November, and I wouldn't be able to vote!

I don't think we should move from South Dakota because of this Senator, we make him leave his office because he talking about depriving citizens of their vote.

Has the SD newspapers seen this yet?

  On 2/11/2016 at 4:33 AM, Mark & Dale Bruss said:

I don't think we should move from South Dakota because of this Senator, we make him leave his office because he talking about depriving citizens of their vote.

 

Has the SD newspapers seen this yet?

I don't know if the newspapers have seen this. I did send it to our mail forward company, and asked them for their opinion. What I don't know is how often a stunt like this is pulled and then voted down. What the congressman doesn't realize is that most of us probably don't care about the local elections, just the national level- US senate and Congress and Presidency.

Hi all. I just spoke with the General Manager of my SD mail forwarder, Dakota Post. According to him, this whole thing came about because the owner of another mail forwarding company sent out flyers that talked up the political opponent of the sponsor of Senate Bill 164. Obviously, the Bill's sponsor didn't like it, and decided that he would put the industry out of business, by specifically targeting the voting rights of fulltimers registered in SD.

(Gotta LOVE a politician, right?!?)

Anyway, as of now, the Bill is still in Committee. DPost's General Mgr. believes that it will die in Committee because other than this one Senator, there's no real support for it in the Senate. He also said that between 2002 and 2015, SD fulltimers have contributed over $12 million in taxes to the SD economy. He seriously doubts that SD will turn its nose up to that kind of money,

Dakota Post will be sending a newsletter to its subscribers in the next week or so, and will address the status of this Bill.

I know there's nothing certain at this time, but I felt a little better after our conversation.

-- Connie C., #41879

From our mail service, this Senator was ticked about the Wheel Tax in Rapid City and decided to take it out on us.

Again, any elected official who think they can take the vote away from citizens, should not be allowed to finish his term.

Yes, this all started over the recent fight over implementing a wheel tax in Pennington County. There was a special election a few months back to vote on the wheel tax. There was lots of press coverage at that time. The major mail forwarding company in Pennington County (Americas Mailbox) was very vocal in lobbying against the wheel tax. This senator took offense to their position and the idea that outsiders (fulltimers using mail forwarding for domicile) could possibly swing the vote. It was during that fight, that he made the threat to propose new rules to keep mail forwarding based residents from voting. In the end, the few number of fulltimers actually casting votes had no impact on the results, The wheel tax lost by about 2000 votes and only 400 votes came from PMB residents.

here is one of the news articles written back then, http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/local/predicted-rver-election-impact-fizzles/article_1871c14e-cdbf-5d1d-adaa-773523c0a9a9.html

Also worth noting, the Pennington County Commissioners had actually passed & approved the wheel tax and were preparing to implement it 1/1/16. However some locals passed around a petition and got enough signatures to force the issue onto a special election ballot.

Now he's following through on his threat. He just doesn't believe we're "residents" and doesn't care if the state allows us to get drivers licenses and vehicle plates, but he doesn't want us voting.

Thankfully he is in the minority and according to Don & Barb, the owners of Americas Mailbox, this bill is not going anywhere. But I'd certainly like to repay this senator the next time he comes up for election. The sad fact is, of the approx. 10,000 residents at Americas Mailbox, only 1/3rd of them even register to vote, and in this local election only 1/10th of those voted. I'm sure the statistics would be higher in a national election, but like the rest of the country, less than half of us actually exercise our right to vote.

PS: for those not familiar with the SD wheel tax issue. SD has always allowed for any SD county to implement a wheel tax. In the past it was purely voluntary & optional, a few counties had it, most did not. In preparing for the 2016 SD state wide budget, there was a major short fall in funding SD roads & bridges. To avoid a massive increase in one source, they spread the increase over 4 separate items: they raised the sales/use tax from 3 to 4% (the 1st increase in 20 yrs), they raised the state portion of fuel taxes slightly, they raised the vehicle registration/renewal fees, and they required each and every county in SD to implement a wheel tax. The penalty for not implementing a wheel tax is loss of all state funding for local roads/bridges, which in Pennington County would be a loss of about $2.5 million. That's why this is a sensitive issue for the politicians, if the wheel tax doesn't pass, they have to come up with $2.5 mil from other local sources. The state senators who passed this agreement, including the wheel tax penalty, assured all the county commissioners that there was no way the voters in any county would defeat the wheel tax if they knew it was going to cost them. Now they're finding out differently and the state senators who pushed this deal, including Mr Tieszen are taking some heat.

Edited February 11, 2016 by Jim2

I sure wouldn't want to let a guy like this force me to move to retain my voting privilige. I would be interested in at least one local election in the upcoming years. In his case it is just sour grapes it sounds like but it in not uncommon for anyone moving into a small town or rural area to be considered and outsider for more than a generation.

Jim2 did a very good job of explaining the current situation. I posted results of my discussion with a Hansen County mail forwarder in the Sharing the Fulltime forum (by mistake). Hansen County already had a wheel tax (a whole $2 per wheel, I think). Representatives in that area of the state confirmed what Jim2 has reported here and apparently added their opinion that this bill will not move forward into law if they have any say. I sure hope not. All my paperwork to support SD domicile is ready to be mailed. I'm delaying for a while to see which way the wind blows, but need to make the change soon as all my NJ registrations come due in about six weeks. Hopefully, we will get some sort of Escapees Advocacy update before then.

It's all about the money... 99.99% of the time. The 0.01% is simply the cases where they haven't figured out a way to get more money.