Regents change political activity policy to allow employees to run for Legislature

The South Dakota Board of Regents changed its political activity policy at its Thursday meeting in Madison to allow public university employees to run for state legislative office.

The change comes six months after the state Supreme Court reversed its decision on whether state employees can run for elected office. For decades, state employees were restricted from running for the Legislature after a 2001 ruling from the court deemed their employment a conflict of interest.

Conflict of interest was a heated topic among legislators ahead of the 2024 legislative session , when Gov. Kristi Noem was tasked with appointing two empty seats in the Legislature. In February, the court announced in an advisory opinion that legislators can have contracts with state government if the money comes from the annual budget bill, but not if the money comes from any other bill.

The regents’ earlier, restrictive policy was created as a reaction to the 2001 decision in Pitts v. Larson.

Rich Helsper, an attorney at Helsper, McCarty and Rasmussen Law Firm in Brookings, represented state lawmaker and South Dakota State University employee Carol Pitts in a conflict of interest lawsuit in front of the state Supreme Court in 2001.

The Supreme Court’s February 2024 decision and the Regents’ policy change allows for more perspectives in the legislative process, Helsper said. Any concerns about conflict of interest will be handled by voters.

“You don’t want little groups to go out to Pierre and represent who they’re employed by rather than their constituents,” Helsper said. “That’s not good either, but that’s where the voters come in. If that issue comes up and the voters want a representative from DSU in Madison to represent their interests, then so be it.”

DSU – Dakota State University – is one of six public universities in the state.

In 2001, Carol Pitts was a Republican Brookings legislator working at SDSU. Pitts told South Dakota Searchlight in a recent interview that she had asked several state officials and the Board of Regents if she was able to represent her district without conflict. The regents’ policy at the time said employees could run for local and state offices, as long as it didn’t conflict with their work.

Lyndell Petersen , for example, was elected to the Legislature in the 1970s while working for SDSU Extension. Petersen, a member of the South Dakota Hall of Fame, served in the Legislature for 18 years, including eight on the Appropriations Committee. Petersen had a significant impact on agricultural policy in the state.

“I really, really like this, because I think somebody like that would not have been able to serve under this prior to this,” Regent Randy Frederick said of Petersen before the Regents unanimously approved the policy change. “And that would have been quite a loss to the state of South Dakota for years, because of his expertise that he brought to the Appropriations Committee in the South Dakota Senate.”

The February announcement from the state Supreme Court was a “big deal” for Pitts and thousands of state employees, she said. The clarification promotes the “citizen” in South Dakota’s citizen Legislature, and it allows people to focus on serving rather than “looking over their shoulder.”

“For me, it was closure,” Pitts said. “What I was fighting for was correct, and I’m glad that it had come back forward and was clarified.”

Pitts chose to resign from SDSU after the state Supreme Court determined that she should not be paid by the university as long as she was serving at the Capitol. She moved to a company in the private sector, at the behest of the attorney general at the time, and resigned from the Legislature in 2002 when her legislative role interfered with a state contract her employer sought. She returned to the Legislature in 2007 and served two more terms.

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Regents change political activity policy to allow employees to run for Legislature