Senator Rhoden responds to my Feb. 9, 2009 letter

Today, Senator Rhoden sent me an e-mail message asking me to speak with him on the phone regarding the questions I asked him in the letter I sent to him and published on this blog earlier. The Senator was very open and forthcoming about his reasons for voting the way he did with regard to pipeline legislation, SB171 and SB190. His main concern when SB171 was being reviewed in the Senate State Affairs Committee hearing was with the constitutionality of the bill. Upon pressing lobbyists for more information about their claim that at least one other state imposes a similar fee, Sen. Rhoden discovered that the circumstances in that state were quite different from the situation in South Dakota. The other state pipelines were intrastate systems and the pipelines in question crossing South Dakota will be inter-state transmission systems. Federal laws regarding inter-state commerce applied to the South Dakota systems that did not apply to the state lines used for comparison by the proponent lobbyists for the legislation.

My letter discounts his likely concern with the unconstitutionality of this issue compared to his apparent lack of concern for the constitutionality of other legislation. Sen. Rhoden explained that in the other case, testing the constitutionality of the legislation was the intention because of the potential for a positive outcome in the Senator's opinion. In the case of the pipeline legislation, the test stood little or no chance of resulting in a positive outcome and would therefore be nothing more than a large waste of money.

Sen. Rhoden is convinced that adequate funding is currently available to cover the costs of potential pipeline spill cleanup from two existing sources. He referenced the average estimated cost of spill cleanup based on documented historical experience numbers for pipelines in the United States.

Senator Rhoden also apologized for not getting back to me sooner. The timing of his response was not as important as the fact that he did respond and took time out to answer my questions personally, just as I had requested. The same cannot be said of all of my local district's elected officials and I thank Senator Rhoden for his time and his consideration.