South Dakota State Code Ever Changing

April 25, 2014. Many people recognize that laws can change, but many don’t pay attention to the extent they can turn on a dime. As Governor Daugaard noted in a recent column, the legislature often prides itself on how many laws can be revised during a legislative session:

With legislators’ help, we’ve already gone a long way in removing unnecessary red tape in state government. During the 2012 and 2013 legislative sessions, we repealed 378 unneeded rules and 919 obsolete sections of law, totaling more than 148,000 words. This legislative session, I’ve signed 21 repealer bills so far – a few of which were brought by legislators themselves – eliminating over 30,000 more words of unnecessary rules.

We’ve repealed outdated provisions dealing with a wide range of subjects, from petroleum products, to county prisoners, to the federal census, to traction engines, to the medical department of the National Guard, and more.

That’s a long laundry list to keep track of.

And as Governor Daugaard noted, it’s not just laws – there’s a constant and continuous process within state government bureaucracy where rules can change on a dime – and can affect people’s livelihoods and legal requirements in uncertain ways.

This past year, The Administrative Rules of South Dakota, or ARSD, changed rules on everything from how elections are conducted to how agricultural products such as raw milk can be handled and sold by producers.

That’s a lot for any business to keep track of. But by not knowing, business owners and others could potentially run afoul of a rule that has enforcement actions attached to it.

If you want to keep up on the state’s rules as they affect your business, a list of the current rules, as well as proposed changes can be followed at the South Dakota Legislative Research Council’s web site at http://legis.sd.gov/Rules/.

For more information about South Dakota state code, contact the Goosmann Law Firm at info@goosmannlaw.com or call 712-226-4000.

Follow Dan Lederman on Twitter @DanAtGLF!