“I hear from people who are struggling to stay in their homes. You knock on doors for a campaign, you hear from people. And that is one of the top issues. I had a lady in tears at her door because she didn’t know if she was going to be able to afford to pay her taxes.” - Taffy Howard
Senate Joint Resolution 505 - Proposing and submitting to the voters at the next general election an amendment to the Constitution of the State of South Dakota, establishing the trust for unclaimed property fund.
Government Operations and Audit Committee - GOAC
Comprehensive Property Tax Task Force — 2025
State Credit Card charges - Dakota Scout Article
Transcript:
Dave Roetman: This is the Making Waves Podcast. My name is Dave Roetman. We're here with Taffy Howard. Taffy, welcome.
Taffy Howard: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Dave Roetman: Now, you're a representative. Actually, you're a senator. So, what district do you represent? And can you tell us a little bit about how you got involved in politics?
Taffy Howard: Well, currently District 34. I was a representative for 33 until the redistricting, which that's a whole other story because I was targeted in that redistricting. They thought by redrawing the lines and putting me into 34, I would not be able to win election again. And they were right in that it was much tougher. I did have a runoff or a recount once I was in 34.
And as far as getting into politics, you know, my youngest was in college. And I was so frustrated at the time because we had just passed a massive tax increase. I think it was, I remember it was SB1. It was a huge gas tax. All those taxes rolled into one.
And I was so upset. And I was approached by a representative at the time, one of my representatives. And he asked if I would consider running because two of our representatives were not running for re-election.
So it was both seats were open. And I had never thought about running, but I was so frustrated at the time. I was like, I am, I was, I still am.
I'm sick and tired of people saying they are conservative and then going to peer and not voting as a conservative. So that tipped me over the edge. And I was like, okay, fine, I'll run.
And it was a three-way primary. And yeah, so I was elected and served six years in the House. Then I challenged Dusty Johnson and lost that and was out for two years. And in that, that's when they redistricted. So then I was asked to consider running for the Senate in 34. I'm like, okay, I'm still frustrated.
We still have, there's, you know, we can get a decent number of Republicans who will vote conservatively on fiscal, or I mean on social issues. You know, we pretty much, I don't know, you know, maybe on one hand Republicans elected in the state who maybe secretly support abortion. But for the most part, we can stand together on social issues, but it's the fiscal issues.
We have, just like in D.C., we have so many big spending Republicans. I'm just so frustrated about it still.
Dave Roetman: Well, that's a great story. And perseverance wins out. I'm glad you're back in the Senate. There's a lot of things to talk about. For example, in this last legislative session, you were championing, spearheading the unclaimed property trust fund bill. Could you tell us a little bit about that?
Taffy Howard: Sure. Now, this is a fight that I started I believe seven years ago was when I first brought the bill, because at that time we were bringing in probably $40 to $60 million a year, and it was all just being spent.
I mean, other than paying out what we owed, what people claimed for their own money, other than that we were spending every dime. And I'm like, you know, this isn't right, because at any point, at any time, people can come back and claim their money, and we have to pay it. But here we were spending it, and then to hear that it's actually counted in accounting, it's counted on our books as a liability.
I'm like, okay, well, this is not right. We need to be setting this aside. So I tried it seven years ago, tried it again.
I had the support of Sattgast when he was Treasurer, and then Haeder came in. He supported it. But it just wasn't going anywhere.
Too many people like to spend that money. But the last couple of years, we've been bringing in like $200 to $300 million a year, and now our unfunded liability is up to roughly $1.2 billion. So that woke enough people up to where they were like, okay, I think she's right. We do need to do something about this.
Dave Roetman: And you were quite successful.
Taffy Howard: Yes, and thank goodness, because the people of this state are on the hook for that. So we set up the trust fund. We had a bill and a joint resolution, and the reason for that is so that the joint resolution will put everything into the Constitution, put the trust fund in the Constitution, so that then our investment council can invest that in a wider range of investments and get us a higher return, like they do with our other trust funds, because we have a health care trust fund, the cement plant. We have other trust funds.
Dave Roetman: I didn't know that about what we were putting in the Constitution would result in higher rates of return. That's fascinating.
Taffy Howard: We created it with the bill. We created the trust fund with the bill. Without putting it in the Constitution, we're stuck putting that money in our cash account. It'll earn, you know, it's like a CD. I mean, it's basically you're not earning really anything. So allow us to put it in the Constitution. That's the only way we can have the investment council invest it. And we have the best investment council in the nation. They do an awesome job.
Dave Roetman: Yes, I've heard. I've heard other states copy what South Dakota does, because our investment council is so good, but they just follow what our people do.
Taffy Howard: Yes, thank goodness. So, yes, that should earn us a percent higher interest probably, hopefully more. So we need people to vote for that because it'll be on the ballot. I'm actually – I have two things on the ballot, that and then the other joint resolution ensuring that non-U.S. citizens can't vote in our elections.
Dave Roetman: Interesting. Tell us about that.
Taffy Howard: Well, so if you go to Article 7, Section 2 of our Constitution, it ensures that every U.S. citizen will be allowed to vote in our elections. But it doesn't – if you think of drawing a circle around those U.S. citizens, it doesn't exclude non-U.S. – it doesn't say that non-U.S. citizens can't vote.
So you could catch some non-U.S. citizens in there, because it's just saying, well, if you're a U.S. citizen, you have to be able to vote. But it doesn't say that Sioux Falls couldn't pass an ordinance and allow non-U.S. citizens to vote. So this says, okay, yes, if you're a U.S. citizen, you have to be allowed to vote, you know, obviously, with the limited exceptions that we have.
But you will not be allowed to vote, and no city, no county, no one can pass anything that says you can vote if you're not a U.S. citizen. Because like San Francisco, there's a place around the country where they are allowing non-U.S. citizens to vote. So we want to prevent that from happening here.
Dave Roetman: Yeah, the founders of our nation, I'm sure the writers of the Constitution of South Dakota, never occurred to them that non-citizens would vote or be allowed to vote.
Taffy Howard: Right, right, exactly.
Dave Roetman: Two things that are important. Thank you for putting those on the ballot. I'll be sure to help campaign for them.
Taffy Howard: Thank you.
Dave Roetman: You're welcome. So let's move on to GOAC.
Taffy Howard: Yeah, Government Operations and Audit Committee.
And basically, I can't remember when it was first created. It's been around a while. But we have the duties that we have, we have to look at the performance metrics from various agencies.
They rotate through, so you don't do every agency every year. So this year, we're told, this is what you have to cover in GOAC. But then we have the ability to add things to the agenda. And that's where being Chair is really nice. I've already added a few items. We'll add some more items.
We've only had one GOAC meeting. We'll have three more through the rest of the year. Typically, we probably could have covered everything we had to cover in three, but we spread it out over four so that we can add in the additional items that we need to cover.
So the first GOAC meeting in May, we heard from the Brand Board, their annual report. We have to review that by statute. But then in addition, we also heard from Commissioner Terwilliger on the credit cards.
And I'm sure you've probably read the Dakota Scout article and how they did a FOIA request to get Governor Noem's credit card expenditures from when she was in office, and how she spent like three-quarters of a million dollars over five years on things like multiple charges for $500 for Sirius XM radio. I mean, you can go to charges and you're like, you know, I don't think state taxpayers ought to be paying for her to go to Vail, Aspen, Jackson Hole. These are places, obviously, she didn't go to take care of state business.
You know, we had a good hearing on that. Actually, the Auditor came in as well. But basically, it ended up being, well, she didn't really do anything illegal.
It was clearly, to me, unethical, but not illegal. But I'm hoping because we had the hearing in GOAC and we have a great GOAC committee, great. I'm hoping maybe we can get some legislation out of this because my main issue with this is that so much of her spending was clearly related to a personal PR campaign or, you know, an unspoken campaign for vice president.
She was out there campaigning for herself. State taxpayers shouldn't be on the hook for that. So there ought to be some clear demarcation between what state taxpayers have to pay because you're doing state business or it's campaign business and your campaign funds should pay.
Dave Roetman: Do you think that there's going to be legislation brought from these questions from these committee meetings?
Taffy Howard: I'm hopeful that GOAC, the committee, will be able to. Obviously, we need to work on some legislation, but I'm hopeful that we'll be able to get behind something. Now, whether it goes anywhere, you know, you don't know.
Dave Roetman: What kind of powers or authority does GOAC have? Can you just investigate things? Are there things that you can do to enforce rules or are there rules that need to be made?
Taffy Howard: Well, we can. And, in fact, this last legislative session, we actually gave back GOAC the ability to subpoena people. So we, that is, we are the investigative committee of the legislature.
So, for instance, last year when Ernie Otten was chair, they started going down looking into all the cases of fraud. As you know, everybody knows we have, it just doesn't seem to end. Every time you turn around, the AG is talking about another case of fraud in the state.
So they started last year. Unfortunately, it was not able to be finished. So we will have, at the next GOAC meeting, we'll have DOR for sure come in because one of the court cases finished up.
So now they're able to talk about it. But they actually issued a subpoena last year to have DOR come in and talk about the fraud that they were facing. Unfortunately, due to the court case, it all got pushed.
So they'll be coming in July. But, yeah, we, if, I mean, the title is Government Operations and Audits. So we do have to review, we do have to review the legislative audit every year. That's part of GOAC's duties. But we also get to dig into the operations of government. And if there's something going on that needs to be looked at, we have the ability to bring people in, and hopefully they come in willingly.
But if they don't, we certainly have the ability now to subpoena. Before this session, if they wanted to subpoena somebody, which they did last year, they had to go to E-Board, the E-Board, and get the E-Board to sign off on that.
Dave Roetman: I see. E-Board is the executive board of the legislature, right?
Taffy Howard: Yeah.
Dave Roetman: Okay. I want to make it clear for our listeners because they might not know what that is.
Taffy Howard: Yep.
Dave Roetman: So another thing you're involved with is the Property Tax Task Force.
Taffy Howard: Yes.
Dave Roetman: So tell us more about that. What's going on with that?
Taffy Howard: Well, nothing yet. We haven't had our first meeting yet.
I'm a little disappointed. We're a little late getting started with that. But it had to go through the E-Board and everything. So I'm hopeful because we have conservative leadership. I'm hopeful looking at the people that were appointed to this. I'm hopeful that we will be able to actually make some progress, some real progress.
But once again, whatever comes out of this committee, we'll still have to go through the full legislature. But, I mean, you know, I hear from people who are struggling to stay in their homes. You knock on doors for a campaign. You hear from people. And that's one of the top issues. I had a lady in tears at her door because she didn't know how she was going to be able to afford to pay her taxes to stay in her home.
Now, and I have Rapid City. This is a nicer neighborhood. Everyone is struggling. It doesn't matter what their income is. I mean, maybe, I guess, the very, very upper tier are not struggling. But for the most part, everyone is struggling. And property taxes have been increasing exorbitantly. I saw one example. I'm not kidding you. They increased 128% in one year.
Dave Roetman: Wow.
Taffy Howard: That's it. Now, I'm hearing that's an outlier. But it's not uncommon for me to hear from people that had a 20% or 30% increase. So if you look at our effective rate in South Dakota, we're at 1.28%. The national average is .9%. I mean, to me, it's – and people like to go, well, you know, we have higher property taxes, but we have no income tax.
Well, you could compare us to Tennessee. You could compare us to Wyoming. You could compare us to several other states with no income taxes, and we still have higher property taxes.
And I don't know if you –
Dave Roetman: This is a real issue.
Taffy Howard: It is.
Dave Roetman:A lot of people have been talking about this. And you're right. The people on the fixed incomes who have not planned for this, are not budgeted to have these massive increases in property taxes on top of the other inflation that they have. And people are being forced out of their home. And that's not just a tragedy. It's unjust.
Taffy Howard: It is. It is. And it's shameful to me that a state like California could have something like Prop 13, which actually helps their citizens, but we can't. I mean, I've tried multiple times to pass a Prop 13 version here, but we cannot get it done.
Last year, two years ago, Wyoming had 12 property tax relief bills that went through their legislature. Most didn't make it. Two made it to the governor's desk, and he signed one.
And I can't remember the details of that, but then this year they came back, and he did sign another bill this year that basically for homes a million or below in assessed value, he cut their taxes by 50%. Fifty percent cut. And when I tell people that, usually their response is, yeah, but they have oil and gas money. They'll backfill it. No, no. He signed that bill with no backfill. So he essentially told the counties, the schools, the cities, deal with it. You're going to reduce these people's taxes by 50%. I'm like, wow.
Dave Roetman: It seems to me that the government should actually be the ones scrimping and saving, not people who want to just stay in their own homes.
Taffy Howard: Right? And oh, my goodness, it is almost impossible to get people in government. I mean, this last year, Noem's outgoing budget actually had some cuts in there because revenue was down, so they had to.
But we had people who said they were conservatives fighting to put the cuts back, to restore the cuts. I'm like, okay, this is our chance, people, to actually cut something. And now we're fighting to restore it, so I don't know.
But the property tax task force, I'm hopeful that we can look at everything. I mean, we should be looking at the sales tax exemptions. We should look at property tax exemptions.
The question there, why should Sanford, who owns, you know, billions of dollars worth of property, why should he not pay any property taxes?
Dave Roetman: That's a good question.
Taffy Howard: Yes, right? Right. I talked to one legislature, 25% of her taxes are due to opt-outs. She has either five or six, I can't remember, five or six opt-outs on her tax bill. That's crazy. That's insane.
Dave Roetman: That's standard practice these days in some of these school districts, that they just do an opt-out. And the process for preventing the opt-out is that you have to collect petitions to put it on the ballot, not the other way around. So they can just do an opt-out, and we just have to accept it, Because it's almost impossible to, I tried this once, I had to get 6,000 signatures in less than a week. And that's not easy. And we fell short by about 240. But it was over the 4th of July weekend, no less. And we just could not get the signatures in that amount of time. Point being is that we shouldn't have to collect signatures to put an opt-out on the ballot. It should go to the voter right away.
Taffy Howard: Yep, exactly. We did have a bill this year that would have helped with those, with opt-outs, and it failed. So you can't even get people, they won't make it easier for the people. So, yeah. But tiffs, we should look at those.
We need to be looking at cuts. I mean, just without telling cities, counties, and schools, you need to stop spending as much. You know, why does Rapid City need to pay, what is it called? We have a Director of Positive Climate and Culture.
I believe that's the title that they gave this person. Yeah. So, you know, from the State Department of Education, well, from the Feds, everything from Trump on down, you know, eliminate all DEI garbage. Well, that's how Rapid City got around that. We're going to rename it and spend more than $100,000. I'm like, oh, my goodness, you can cut.
Your administrative, your superintendents, your administrative staff should not be making what they're making, and they need to stop. They're spending too much of their capital outlay money on their general ongoing budget. That needs to stop.
There are things we can do to help people make some cuts where they need to make cuts. But then, you know, we could be looking at things like caps, you know. So the governor did get his bill through, and I was glad that he put me on that workforce, and I did get a couple of changes made to his bill that made it a little bit better.
I had a bill that was a separate bill that essentially said, if you do a renovation or improvement to your home, that shouldn't count as growth. So for people listening, if they don't know what I'm talking about when I say growth, so let's say Pennington County is setting their budget for next year. They're allowed to increase their budget by 3% or CPI inflation, whichever is less, plus growth.
So then you're looking at all the new building going on, all the new construction, and before it was also if you did something to your home, and it changed in assessed value, that counted towards the growth. So you were essentially being double-taxed, because not only did your assessed value go up, which increased your taxes typically, but then that increase in assessed value was also contributing to the growth, which helped increase your taxes. So the governor was only willing to do it up to 40%, but I'm like, great.
So as long as if you do a renovation or an addition and it doesn't increase your assessed value by more than 40%, it doesn't count towards the growth. Yay. Unfortunately, his bill, so it also capped, it started out it was going to cap growth at 1%.
The average growth across the state in the last available year was 1.2%. So it would have been a tiny bit of help, but at least it would have helped at least five years. But then it was amended, I can't remember if the House, I think it maybe was amended in the house to 2%. So now it helps like maybe Pennington, Lincoln, Minnehaha, occasionally. Occasionally they'll have a year where their growth is over 2%. So otherwise, that's not going to help much. So we have a lot of work to do.
But we could put a cap on assessed value increases. We could put a cap on taxes payable, which I tried this last year. I like that idea.
I mean, I'm all for eliminating all property taxes. And essentially, why not put like a sales tax on your home when you buy it, just like when you buy your car. And when you pay that up, you own your property free and clear.
Dave Roetman: I like that idea. Because I don't like the idea that we have to pay taxes, and if we fail to pay those taxes, then they can seize the property. We don't even own our own land. We're renting it from the government.
Taffy Howard: Exactly. Amen.
So I am fully with you there. I would love to eliminate property taxes completely. Some things would have to be converted to user fees. I mean, we have to pay for roads still. Schools have to be paid for. How do you cover that? I think everyone who has a kid in school needs to have skin in the game versus just the property owners.
Now people will say, well, people renting are paying. In a way, yes, but how much are they paying? I don't know. We could go down that road, but obviously there would have to be a lot of adjustments made, a lot of cuts made, which I'm okay with.
Dave Roetman: I'm all for a smaller government.
Taffy Howard: Yep. You know, I was just reading, Massey was one of two Republicans that voted against Trump's big, beautiful bill. But I love Massey. I love Massey. He is a fiscal hawk.
And he made very good points. I mean, we cannot continue down the road of increasing our debt, increasing our deficit. The chickens are going to come home to roost eventually. And nope, there's just so few people who seem to care or to understand that. So I don't know.
Dave Roetman: I agree with Massey. He's brilliant.
Taffy Howard: Thank you. Yes, he is.
Of course, he's an engineer by schooling, and that tells you something. I think he's a double E, electrical, and those guys are pretty smart.
Dave Roetman: Well, that's fascinating. And thank you so much for your being a fiscal hawk for us, because I think some of these issues, like, for example, double taxation when the assessed value goes up, I did not realize that. And I've had two assessment increases because I've done remodeling in my home. And that makes a lot of sense why my property tax went up 30%.
Taffy Howard: Right.
Dave Roetman: And we really appreciate that. Final thoughts?
Taffy Howard: Elect more conservative.
There were, you know, too many 18, 17, 17 to 18 votes in the Senate this year, too many. So be prepared for the next election. I was just looking at the Citizens for Liberty scorecard, and it is really sad that we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven Republicans that are scoring below 50%, several score below 40%.
I mean, it is, how can you call yourself a Republican even, much less a conservative, which some of these actually do. But so we have, we have work to do. We barely got the pipeline bill through this year, thankfully.
But like there was a bill on data centers to give them a huge, a massive tax cut. And we barely killed that. That's going to come back because I don't know, people desperate to get data centers in the state. I don't know.
Dave Roetman: I don't see why you'd have to subsidize something like that. That's a money making business. They should pay taxes like everybody else.
Taffy Howard: Yep. Yep. Exactly. And there is nothing stopping data centers from coming in right now. We already have, I think, four, eight, we already have some. They're welcome to come in if they abide by whatever county, you know, if the county has setbacks, easements, whatever, fine. Come in. Build your data Center. You're free to do that. But why do we have to subsidize you? Especially when you hear instances of like in Georgia where people's electricity rates are going through the roof. It's not, I don't see them as being a good deal at all. And they specifically want several counties, and one of them would use as much electricity as the entire town of Rapid City. I don't know. How is that a good thing?
Dave Roetman: If we had surplus electricity, that would be one thing.
Taffy Howard: Right.
Dave Roetman: I don't think we really do.
Taffy Howard: No, no.
Dave Roetman: Interesting.
Taffy Howard: Yep. They would be building more infrastructure, and who's going to pay for that? I mean, it has to be passed on to somebody.
It will be passed on to somebody. It will be the rate users, I mean, the users of the system. So those are my final thoughts: More conservatives.
Dave Roetman: Those are good final thoughts. I really appreciate it.
Dave Roetman: This has been Making Waves Podcast. My name is Dave Roetman, and we've been here with Taffy Howard, Senator from District 34.
Taffy Howard: Yep. Thank you so much for having me on.
Dave Roetman: Thank you.
This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit daveroetman.substack.com
