DONE DEAL: South Dakota's $650M prison plan OK'ed with razor thin margin
Gov. Larry Rhoden, Department of Corrections get all clear after earning delayed approval from state legislators
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported the number of no votes cast in the Senate. The Dakota Scout strives for accuracy and regrets the error.
South Dakota’s long-sought replacement of its 144-year-old penitentiary is over following a tenuous, years-long battle that spanned two gubernatorial administrations about where a new men’s prison should be and how much to spend building it.
And it took more than a billion dollars’ worth of proposals, four legislative sessions, three consultants, more than a dozen site options and — in the end — one special legislative session where 24 senators were just enough to give Gov. Larry Rhoden the all clear to use $650 million of taxpayer funds to construct a 1,500-bed corrections complex in northeast Sioux Falls.
“This started four and a half years ago. … This has to be one of the most debated, discussed, analyzed, testified on, studied things in the history of the state legislature,” said Tony Venhuizen, responding to continued calls for more time for deliberation, planning and site vetting from a minority of legislators and their constituents. “The amount of work that has gone in to getting us to this point is incredible.”
Those remarks came during a Tuesday morning meeting of a Joint Select Committee on Prison Legislation, convened by House and Senate leadership. It was the first to consider the recommendation backed by both the governor’s office and the Project Prison Reset Task Force, which spent the summer trying to find consensus on whether a new prison was necessary, how large it should be, and whether more suitable sites were available after the DOC’s first run at a new prison stalled last winter.
Originally, the state had selected a 300-acre site in rural Lincoln County where work on an estimated $825 million prison had already begun, but landowner lawsuits and skepticism about that plan’s price tag and DOC leadership proved too much to overcome.
The task force formed as a result held a series of meetings across the state between April and July before landing on the reduced price of $650 million while maintaining a nearly equal number of inmate beds through a redesigned facility layout, according to backers of the plan.
But the reduced price tag also brought more peril to the governor’s hopes of getting support from the two-thirds of lawmakers necessary to approve a spending proposal at the state Capitol. The lower price tag heightened distrust in DOC leadership among legislators who had advocated for the $825 million plan and who earlier this month joined a chorus of legislators calling for leadership changes before any decision on the proposed prison plan.
They didn’t have to wait long. DOC Secretary Kellie Wasko turned in her resignation the following day, and in the weeks since, Rhoden and his staff waged a full-court public awareness campaign to address lingering concerns lawmakers might have had, including committing to establish a rehabilitation and recidivism task force.
“I was committed to making sure we got to this day without any questions left lingering,” Rhoden said during an address to the Legislature that opened the day’s proceedings at the Capitol. “Today, if any legislator has a question for me, or for my staff, my door will be open. Come on down to the second floor, and let’s talk. Or if you’d prefer, we can just as easily come up here. If you still have any questions, let’s get them answered.”
Still, uncertainty about the level of support the proposal would enjoy in Sioux Falls persisted even through the final votes were cast in both the House and Senate — evident in the governor’s staffers, cabinet members and their allies on the prison project, and Rhoden himself frequenting the steamy halls of the Capitol before final votes in the evening.
But opponents persisted, including two members of the Project Prison Reset Task Force that voted unanimously in July to recommend to the Legislature that a prison be built for no more than $650 million in northeast Sioux Falls — House Speaker Jon Hansen and Speaker Pro Tempore Karla Lems.
“We’re putting the cart before the horse,” said Lems, referring to a still-working legislative panel that’s studying potential paths to reduce the state’s inmate recidivism rate that she says should inform design of any new prison. “They’re not done. … What they decide through that will really show a clearer picture of what needs to be done.”
Hansen, who is a candidate for governor and has chosen Lems to be his running mate for lieutenant governor, said without new leadership in place atop the DOC, it’s premature to move forward.
“We’ve been working toward a better solution and we’ve made great improvements in the plan but what we’re talking about is a four-year build and a 100-year facility,” he said. “I have a responsibility to my constituents to make sure that we have the right plan, the right place and the right price — but most of all, that we rebuild trust in the DOC leadership so we can be confident.”
Hansen and Lems were among 19 representatives in the House to vote against the plan, not enough to prevent it from overcoming the two-thirds threshold. There were 51 who voted yes.
Passage was even narrower in the Senate, where the measure cleared a two-thirds threshold by one vote — the final count was 24-11.
“You can’t let perfect get in the way of good,” Senate President Pro Tempore Chris Karr said, noting that he opposed the initial prison plan but that with the commitment by the Legislature and the governor’s office to address programmatic shortcomings in the prison system, a renewed focus on criminal justice reform and a reduced price tag led him to support a new site and a new budget request.
The construction manager at risk, JE Dunn, assumes the risk of cost overruns that exceed the guaranteed maximum price of $650 million, which the firm and its partner on the project — Henry Carlson Company — committed to last week.
“I am pleased beyond measure that we got to this point,” the governor said at a bill signing ceremony Tuesday evening. “Today was a good day.”
Construction at the site near Benson Road and Bahnson Avenue in Sioux Falls is expected to begin this fall.
You need to fix your Senate vote count.