Promises made, promises kept

Greetings. “Promises made, promises kept.” The 101st legislative session is officially over. We need to go back to Pierre March 30 for what is called Veto Day. This is designed to override any vetoes the governor gave, and we have one bill, funding Richmond Lake Dam, to vote on. Session starts at 1 p.m.
I left last week with SB245 still hanging. Well, SB245 passed the House with 42 yea votes. We needed 36. Then, in the Senate, they had to concur and we got 20 yea votes out of 34 and needed 17 or 18.
The reason I’m not sure (17 or 18) is that the Senate was arguing all session about whether the Lt. Gov. could break a tie. We had one legislator who sadly had a stroke (Sen. Arch Beal), so the Senate had 34 voting members, making a 17 to 17 tie a possibility.
I don’t like the way they vote in the Senate. In the House, we all press a green yea or red nay button at the same time, and then once everyone has voted, an electronic board flashes the vote count with yea or nay depicted. In the Senate, the clerk reads each senator’s name alphabetically and they render a voice vote. There is no electronic board. Consequently, those senators at the end of the alphabet, such as Zikmund or Voight, can decide if a bill passes or not.
No, in their rules, they cannot change the sequence to calling the vote starting with Z and go backward to A. Ah, well, I love the House of Representatives.
The Senate is half as big, with 35 members, one for each legislative district. The House has two representatives for each of the 35 districts, making for 70 representatives. A previous House member, Rep. Tim Rounds (U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds’ brother), used to always say that the Senate was like a symphony and the House was like a rock concert. I guess I’m a rock concert type of person?
So, we got SB245 passed and Gov. Rhoden signed it into law. Did you see me on the news standing next to the governor who was seated signing that bill, and also SB96? That bill was to allow each county to add a half cent to sales tax with the revenue earmarked for owner occupied home owners.
This comes up to around a 20 percent decrease in property tax charges. SB 245 takes 4.2 cents sales tax to 4.5 cents, which it was going to do automatically in 2027 as the sunset clause comes off then. The three-tenths of a penny is around $110 million in additional revenue. The entire amount is earmarked to owner occupied homeowners, another 20 percent decease in property tax. 
Once the dust settles and both SB69 and SB245 become reality, it is around a 40 percent reduction in owner occupied property tax charges. This is the biggest tax shift ever enacted since statehood Nov. 2, 1889! Now, is that a hooah or what? So, I’ll end like I started, “Promises made, promises kept.”