Lt. Gov. Tony Venhuizen talks prisons, property tax, education with Mitchell Lions Club

Yahoo

02-04-2025

Apr. 1—MITCHELL — A native of Armour, Tony Venhuizen is quite familiar with the Mitchell community. As a youth, he'd travel to Mitchell to visit the orthodontist, the optometrist, the movie theater and other businesses that could be found in one of South Dakota's largest cities.
Now serving as lieutenant governor of South Dakota, Venhuizen, 42, made his second stop in the community in as many weeks on Tuesday, April 1, when he visited the most recent meeting of the Mitchell Lions Club, where he talked about recent developments in Pierre and other topics such as the proposed state prison, property taxes and education in South Dakota.
"Mitchell's not my hometown, but it is the big town that we always went to for everything," Venhuizen told members of both the Mitchell Lions Club and other guests of local service organizations gathered at Blarney's Sports Bar and Grill. "I was probably here once a week my whole childhood. So it's fun to be back here."
It's been a busy legislative session in Pierre for Venhuizen, who accepted the offer in January to become lieutenant governor under Gov. Larry Rhoden, himself a former lieutenant governor who succeeded former Gov. Kristi Noem when she departed to become the Secretary of Homeland Security in the Donald Trump administration.
He shared updates and took questions on a variety of topics as part of a 30-minute presentation and question-and-answer session.
As part of his presentation, he offered an overview of the ongoing debate concerning the proposed new state prison, which was at one point designated to be built in Lincoln County. Despite the state owning the land on which the prison would have been built, several local neighbors to the property opposed the location and construction of the prison.
"We have a penitentiary in Sioux Falls that was built in the 1880s by the Dakota Territory. It's older than the state," Venhuizen said. "I think it's pretty universally believed to have reached the end of its useful life."
Venhuizen said state leaders had anticipated updating or replacing the prison as least as far back as when Dennis Daugaard was governor, but funding issues held back progress. When Noem took over as governor, she set aside federal one-time dollars from COVID-19 programs and stimulus funding to potentially use for that issue.
That came out to the tune of $600 million, an impressive windfall that is unprecedented in South Dakota history.
"We have $600 million set aside to give us the ability to pay cash to address the prison issue. And I would tell you, I've written a book about the history of South Dakota governors, and never in the history of the state have we had $600 million set aside to do anything, and it will be another 100 years before we probably do it again. It's very unusual, so it was very wise on (Noem's) part."
The bill to build the prison ended up being short on votes in the South Dakota Legislature, something Venhuizen credited partly to the high turnover of state legislators in 2025. He estimated between two-thirds and three-fourths of legislators in Pierre this year had not been a part of prior discussions or debates on the subject at the state level.
Now a new task force is being assembled to take a fresh look at the subject, Venhuizen said. The taskforce will have 15 legislators, and Venhuizen will be front and center when that task force assembles.
"We're going to (have) the attorney general and the sheriffs and the state's attorneys and the judges and the people with perspective (on this issue). And by the way, I have to chair it," Venhuizen said to laughter from the audience. "So I have quite a week coming up. The next two days I'm chairing that meeting."
The task force will discuss the benefits and drawbacks of the previous prison plan as well as potential location discussions. Meeting locations will include Springfield (April 29), June 3 (Pierre) and Sioux Falls (July 8). If the group agrees on a plan, Venhuizen said a special session of the legislature over the summer for approval is a possibility.
The timeline for the project isn't set hard and fast, but Venhuizen does believe the sooner the issue is addressed, the better.
"One thing that I'm very concerned about is the construction inflation the longer we screw around with this," Venhuizen said. "But hopefully we will be in a position where we can figure something out."
Taxes are always an issue that invites discussion, and a popular discussion in recent months has been the potential for property tax relief for South Dakota homeowners.
Venhuizen also sees the need for relief. As a former representative for District 13, which covers the southeast corner of Sioux Falls, he was aware of the impact property values and the associated taxes can have on a homeowner.
"Practically everyone's assessment last year went up 25% or 30%, and that's a story you hear in other places around the state. Sometimes your levy goes down — so valuation goes up and your levy goes down, so it's not as if your tax bill goes up 25% or 30%," Venhuizen said. "I would say we were actually very fortunate, in my opinion, that this all came to a head at the time that Larry Rhoden was taking over as governor."
Venhuizen said that property taxes were a focal point for Rhoden over the years, and the governor earlier this month signed SB216 into law, which limits the increase in owner-occupied assessments to 3% countywide for the next five tax years. It also sets a 3% cap on the amount taxing districts and school capital outlay budgets can increase as a result of new construction, among other restrictions.
That was an important step to easing the burden on homeowners, Venhuizen said. The governor took another potential step toward relief Monday when he announced a proposal that would allow counties the option to implement a half-percent sales tax to fund property tax reductions for homeowners.
"(On Monday), he announced another idea, which we're going to be advancing to the legislature's summer study on property tax that they're just forming now, which would be basically a county option sales tax," Venhuizen said. "All the money has to go toward property tax relief. It's not money that the county spends, it would go to offset the property tax bill on owner-occupied for the county levy."
That option extends to owner-occupied residences inside municipalities as well, Venhuizen said.
The proposal could have considerable savings for some residents depending on what county they live in. The income could be substantial enough that property tax relief could be extended to ag and commercial properties along with owner-occupied property.
"In some counties, you could actually completely eliminate the county levy for owner-occupied. There'd be enough money in the sales tax to do that. And if that happened, it would say that any excess money has to go to property tax relief for commercial and ag and the other classes" Venhuizen said.
Members of the audience offered up several questions for the lieutenant. Those included one that pressed Venhuizen about the potential impact of the Trump administration's proposal to eliminate the federal Department of Education and "return education to the states."
Venhuizen said there is a lot of talk about that proposal in Washington, D.C., even if exactly what closing the federal department would mean for South Dakota and other states.
"In D.C., they seem to go out of their way to not explain how that would exactly work," Venhuizen said. "But when you hear anybody from the administration talk about that, they make it sound like everything the department does will go away, and that is not really how that's going to happen as we understand it."
The federal Department of Education provides funding for various programs in states like South Dakota, such as programs for special education and school lunches. Some programs, like those associated with special education, are required by federal law and those laws have not been repealed. That means there's a good chance that some of the programs administered by the department would be shifted to other federal agencies. To what agency such programs would be moved and how that would affect the educational experience of students is yet to be determined, Venhuizen said.
If funding were to be cut, however, that would likely shift the funding burden back to the states.
"The Department of Education is the encompassing umbrella that administers it, but if that department goes away, that program just gets moved to Health and Human Services or something, and they'll continue to administer it," Venhuizen said. "Now, if they go into the budget and cut that also, that would put a lot of questions back on us."
The other question Venhuizen is keeping an eye on is that if the Department of Education is eliminated or severely scaled back, what happens to the federal requirements that were associated with such programs? Would the states gain flexibility in how they administer such programs if federal regulations were scaled back?
Fewer strings attached to funds and programs could be a benefit, but it's still too early to know what requirements will be if and when the department is phased out.
"And then there's the question of — a lot of this is based on federal requirements. So are you cutting strings, too? I mean, do we have more flexibility about how we administer it? We have no idea," Venhuizen said. "So that's really the question in my mind — if you get rid of the department, that's fine, but what happens to its component parts? And a lot of that hasn't really been explained."