2 task force members say prison, site must fit needs
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — Several members of a prison task force said a new men's prison and its site need to fit the needs of staff and offenders.
Task force member Republican Sen. Jim Mehlhaff said he doesn't want the state to pursue a project that fits only a few years with a need to address additional issues. 'If we do that, we've failed,' Mehlhaff said.
A prison project is something the state wants to do every 50 to 100 years, he said.
The task force is reviewing a study of the prison and recommendations to replace the existing men's prison in Sioux Falls. Consultant Arrington Watkins has done the study and one its recommendations is to build a 1,500 to 1,700 bed facility as soon as possible. The task force will also evaluate potential sites, narrow down those sites and the consultant will develop a plan based on those potential sites. The potential site includes a location in Lincoln County between Harrisburg and Canton that has received strong opposition.
'The existing prison is a horrible place for staff and inmates,' task force member Minnehaha County Sheriff Mike Milstead said.
Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken and Sioux Falls Police Chief Jon Thum both said in a letter obtained by KELOLAND News Wednesday that they did not support possible sites in Sioux Falls. They did support the original site in Lincoln County and another possible site near Worthing.
'The one thing I'd say about sites, clearly, there is strong objection to the Lincoln County site,' Milstead said.
Milstead described it as Not In My Backyard or NIMBY. He understands that those who are opposed may be living in lifetime rural homes or have had farms passed down through generations. And that they were surprised to learn a prison could be built in the area.
Yet, 'If you looked at the sites in Sioux Falls, there are hundreds of not thousands who live in the general area,' Milstead said. He's heard 'significant strong' opposition to several sites in Sioux Falls from neighboring residents and businesses, Milstead said.
Mehlhaff said some of the proposed sites will be easier to eliminate such as in Grant County near Big Stone City. 'That proposal is getting robust push back,' he said. Even so, the site is too far away, Mehlhaff said. For example, it's impractical and too far if inmates are transported from Pennington County, he said. He's also concerned about available workforce and medical services.
Mehlhaff was asked specifically about the former Citibank site in Sioux Falls. Lawmaker and task force member Republican Sen. Chris Karr recently told South Dakota Searchlight that the Citibank property was 'almost turn-key.'
'In my mind there are a lot of hurdles before that becomes a viable option,' Mehlhaff said of the Citibank property.
The property could provide for some prison needs but does not believe the buildings could be used for inmate housing, Mehlhaff said. '…it would not take care of all of our needs,' he said.
The Arrington Watkins report also cited a 2023 law which requires offenders of certain violent crimes to serve 100% of their sentences and others to serve 85% of their sentences as a major factor in increasing the prison population. The report recommended the state build a second 1,700 project because of the expected increase in the prison population because of longer mandatory sentences.
Milstead said it's too soon to estimate the impact of the 2023 law Senate Bill 246 called Truth in Sentencing. Before the 2023 law, judges may have sentenced an offender to 15 years and the offender may have only served two. Because of the 2023 judges may decide to sentence the offender to five years knowing they'd serve the full five or to two years knowing the offender would serve the full two years, Milstead said. Those scenarios would not necessarily increase the prison population, he said.
Still, he said, the law's impact will need to be monitored, Milstead said. But, the task force is not responsible for recommending program changes or additions or to weigh in on policy, he said.
The task force's role is to deal with the need for a prison, select a project and site to recommend to the Legislature, Milstead said.
In a Tuesday KELOLAND News story, task force members Democrat Sen. Jamie Smith and Democrat Rep. Erin Healy said prison policies including the 2023 Senate Bill 246 law need to be studied. A prison may be needed but the state must also find ways to better prevent crime and improve chances at an offender's reentry in to the community, they said. A summer study is planned for prison policies and sentencing.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Hamilton Spectator
31 minutes ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Trump's big bill also seeks to undo the big bills of Biden and Obama
WASHINGTON (AP) — Chiseling away at President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act . Rolling back the green energy tax breaks from President Joe Biden's Inflation Reduction Act . At its core, the Republican 'big, beautiful bill' is more than just an extension of tax breaks approved during President Donald Trump's first term at the White House. The package is an attempt by Republicans to undo, little by little, the signature domestic achievements of the past two Democratic presidents. 'We're going to do what we said we were going to do,' Speaker Mike Johnson said after House passage last month. While the aim of the sprawling 1,000-page plus bill is to preserve an estimated $4.5 trillion in tax cuts that would otherwise expire at year's end if Congress fails to act — and add some new ones, including no taxes on tips — the spending cuts pointed at the Democratic-led programs are causing the most political turmoil. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said this week that 10.9 million fewer people would have health insurance under the GOP bill, including 1.4 million immigrants in the U.S. without legal status who are in state-funded programs. At the same time, lawmakers are being hounded by businesses in states across the nation who rely on the green energy tax breaks for their projects. As the package moves from the House to the Senate, the simmering unrest over curbing the Obama and Biden policies shows just how politically difficult it can be to slash government programs once they become part of civic life. 'When he asked me, what do you think the prospects are for passage in the Senate? I said, good — if we don't cut Medicaid,' said Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., recounting his conversation last week with Trump. 'And he said, I'm 100% supportive of that.' Health care worries Not a single Republican in Congress voted for the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, in 2010, or Biden's inflation act in 2022. Both were approved using the same budget reconciliation process now being employed by Republicans to steamroll Trump's bill past the opposition. Even still, sizable coalitions of GOP lawmakers are forming to protect aspects of both of those programs as they ripple into the lives of millions of Americans. Hawley, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and others are wary of changes to Medicaid and other provisions in the bill that would result in fewer people being able to access health care programs. At the same time, crossover groupings of House and Senate Republicans have launched an aggressive campaign to preserve, at least for some time, the green energy tax breaks that business interests in their states are relying on to develop solar, wind and other types of energy production. Murkowski said one area she's 'worried about' is the House bill's provision that any project not under construction within 60 days of the bill becoming law may no longer be eligible for those credits. 'These are some of the things we're working on,' she said. The concerns are running in sometimes opposite directions and complicating the work of GOP leaders who have almost no votes to spare in the House and Senate as they try to hoist the package over Democratic opposition and onto the president's desk by the Fourth of July. While some Republicans are working to preserve the programs from cuts, the budget hawks want steeper reductions to stem the nation's debt load. The CBO said the package would add $2.4 trillion to deficits over the decade. After a robust private meeting with Trump at the White House this week, Republican senators said they were working to keep the bill on track as they amend it for their own priorities. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said the president 'made the pitch and the argument for why we need to get the bill done.' The disconnect is reminiscent of Trump's first term, when Republicans promised to repeal and replace Obamacare, only to see their effort collapse in dramatic fashion when the late Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz, voted thumbs down for the bill on the House floor. Battle over Medicaid In the 15 years since Obamacare became law, access to health care has grown substantially. Some 80 million people are now enrolled in Medicaid, and the Kaiser Family Foundation reports 41 states have opted to expand their coverage. The Affordable Care Act expanded Medicaid to all adults with incomes up to about $21,500 for an individual, or almost $29,000 for a two-person household. While Republicans no longer campaign on ending Obamacare , advocates warn that the changes proposed in the big bill will trim back at access to health care. The bill proposes new 80 hours of monthly work or community service requirements for able-bodied Medicaid recipients, age 18 to 64, with some exceptions. It also imposes twice-a-year eligibility verification checks and other changes. Republicans argue that they want to right-size Medicaid to root out waste, fraud and abuse and ensure it's there for those who need it most, often citing women and children. 'Medicaid was built to be a temporary safety net for people who genuinely need it — young, pregnant women, single mothers, the disabled, the elderly,' Johnson told The Associated Press. 'But when when they expanded under Obamacare, it not only thwarted the purpose of the program, it started draining resources.' Initially, the House bill proposed starting the work requirements in January 2029, as Trump's term in the White House would be coming to a close. But conservatives from the House Freedom Caucus negotiated for a quicker start date, in December 2026, to start the spending reductions sooner. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has said the changes are an Obamacare rollback by another name. 'It decimates our health care system, decimates our clean energy system,' Schumer of New York said in an interview with the AP. The green energy tax breaks involve not only those used by buyers of electric vehicles, like Elon Musk's Tesla line, but also the production and investment tax credits for developers of renewables and other energy sources. The House bill had initially proposed a phaseout of those credits over the next several years. But again the conservative Freedom Caucus engineered the faster wind-down — within 60 days of the bill's passage. 'Not a single Republican voted for the Green New Scam subsidies,' wrote Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, on social media. 'Not a single Republican should vote to keep them.' 'REPEAL THE GREEN NEW SCAM!' reposted Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, a Freedom Caucus leader. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
Hamilton Spectator
an hour ago
- Hamilton Spectator
As a generation of gay and lesbian people ages, memories of worse - and better
WASHINGTON (AP) — David Perry recalls being young and gay in 1980s Washington D.C. and having 'an absolute blast.' He was fresh out of college, raised in Richmond, Virginia, and had long viewed the nation's capital as 'the big city' where he could finally embrace his true self. He came out of the closet here, got a job at the National Endowment for the Arts where his boss was a gay Republican, and 'lost my virginity in D.C. on August 27, 1980,' he says, chuckling. The bars and clubs were packed with gay men and women — Republican and Democrat — and almost all of them deep in the closet. 'There were a lot of gay men in D.C., and they all seemed to work for the White House or members of Congress. It was kind of a joke. This was pre-Internet, pre-Facebook, pre-all of that. So people could be kind of on the down-low. You would run into congresspeople at the bar,' Perry says. 'The closet was pretty transparent. It's just that no one talked about it.' He also remembers a billboard near the Dupont Circle Metro station with a counter ticking off the total number of of AIDS deaths in the District of Columbia. 'I remember when the number was three,' says Perry, 63. Now Perry, a public relations professional in San Francisco, is part of a generation that can find itself overshadowed amidst the after-parties and DJ sets of World Pride, which wraps up this weekend with a two-day block party on Pennsylvania Avenue. Advocates warn of a quiet crisis among retirement-age LGBTQ+ people and a community at risk of becoming marginalized inside their own community. 'It's really easy for Pride to be about young people and parties,' says Sophie Fisher, LGBTQ program coordinator for Seabury Resources for Aging, a company that runs queer-friendly retirement homes and assisted-living facilities and which organized a pair of Silver Pride events last month for LGBTQ+ people over age 55. These were 'the first people through the wall' in the battle for gay rights and protections, Fisher says. Now, 'they kind of get swept under the rug.' Loneliness and isolation The challenges and obstacles for elderly LGBTQ+ people can be daunting. 'We're a society that really values youth as is. When you throw in LGBTQ on top of that, it's a double whammy,' says Christina Da Costa of the group SAGE — Services and Advocacy for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Elders. 'When you combine so many factors, you have a population that's a lot less likely to thrive than their younger brethren.' Older LGBTQ+ people are far more likely to have no contact with their family and less likely to have children to help care for them, Da Costa says. Gay men over 60 are the precise generation that saw their peer group decimated by AIDS. The result: chronic loneliness and isolation. 'As you age, it becomes difficult to find your peer group because you don't go out to bars anymore,' says Yvonne Smith, a 73-year-old D.C. resident who moved to Washington at age 14. 'There are people isolated and alone out there.' These seniors are also often poorer than their younger brethren. Many were kicked out of the house the moment they came out of the closet, and being openly queer or nonbinary could make you unemployable or vulnerable to firing deep into the 1990s. 'You didn't want to be coming out of a gay bar, see one of your co-workers or one of your students,' Smith says. 'People were afraid that if it was known you were gay, they would lose their security clearance or not be hired at all.' In April, founders cut the ribbon on Mary's House , a new 15-unit living facility for LGBTQ+ seniors in southeast Washington. These kind of inclusive senior-care centers are becoming an increasing priority for LGBTQ+ elders. Rayceen Pendarvis, a D.C. queer icon, performer and presenter, says older community members who enter retirement homes or assisted-living centers can face social isolation or hostility from judgmental residents. 'As we age, we lose our peers. We lose our loved ones and some of us no longer have the ability to maintain our homes,' says Pendarvis, who identifies as 'two-spirit' and eschews all pronouns. 'Sometimes they go in, and they go back into the closet. It's very painful for some.' A generation gap Perry and others see a clear divide between their generation and the younger LGBTQ+ crowd. Younger people, Perry says, drink and smoke a lot less and do much less bar-hopping in the dating-app age. Others can't help but gripe a bit about how these youngsters don't know how good they have it. 'They take all these protections for granted,' Smith says. The younger generation 'got comfortable,' Pendarvis says, and sometimes doesn't fully understand the multigenerational fight that came before. 'We had to fight to get the rights that we have today,' Pendarvis said. 'We fought for a place at the table. We CREATED the table!' Now that fight is on again as President Donald Trump's administration sets the community on edge with an open culture war targeting trans protections and drag shows, and enforcing a binary view of gender identity. The struggle against that campaign may be complicated by a quiet reality inside the LGBTQ+ community: These issues remain a topic of controversy among some LGBTQ+ seniors. Perry said he has observed that some older lesbians remain leery of trans women; likewise, he said, some older gay men are leery of the drag-queen phenomenon. 'There is a good deal of generational sensitivity that needs to be practiced by our older gay brethren,' he says. 'The gender fluidity that has come about in the last 15 years, I would be lying if I said I didn't have to adjust my understanding of it sometimes.' Despite the internal complexities, many are hoping to see a renewed sense of militancy and street politics in the younger LGBTQ+ generation. Sunday's rally and March for Freedom , starting at the Lincoln Memorial, is expected to be particularly defiant given the 2025 context. 'I think we're going to see a whole new era of activism,' Perry says. 'I think we will find our spine and our walking shoes – maybe orthopedic – and protest again. But I really hope that the younger generation helps us pick up this torch.'
Newsweek
an hour ago
- Newsweek
The Bulletin June 5, 2025
The rundown: President Trump has reinstated and expanded a travel ban targeting citizens from 12 countries, citing national security concerns following a recent terror attack in Boulder, Colorado. Get more details. Why it matters: On June 1, Soliman, a 45-year-old Egyptian national, carried out a firebombing attack at a pro-Israel rally in Boulder, injuring 12 people. Soliman, who had overstayed his visa, used Molotov cocktails and a makeshift flamethrower during the assault. Trump announced a reinstated ban would prohibit entry for citizens from 12 countries; Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. However, the country of origin of the attacker—Egypt—is notably absent from the list, raising questions about the ban's effectiveness and underlying motivations. The National Iranian American Council told Newsweek the move would "not make America safer." When asked why Egypt was left of the list, Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma told CNN that the order was being considered before the Boulder terrorist attack. Read more in-depth coverage: Trump's Travel Ban: Exceptions Travellers Need to Know TL/DR: The omission of Egypt, the home country of the Boulder attacker, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, suggests potential inconsistencies in the policy's application. What happens now? Legal challenges to the travel ban are anticipated, with opponents likely to question its consistency and potential discriminatory impact. Deeper reading Donald Trump's Travel Ban Surprisingly Omits One Country
