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disaster program that will retroactively help ranchers who lost cattle in last fall's blizzard and those who were hurt by a drought two years ago.
• Noem was a member of the South Dakota House in 2007-2010.
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• SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) -- A state prison inmate serving a 72-year sentence for a rape conviction in Minnehaha County has died.
• South Dakota corrections officials say 54-year-old Ramon Garcia died at a Sioux Falls hospital Wednesday following an extended illness.
• An autopsy will be conducted as a matter of standard procedure.
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• SPEARFISH, S.D. (AP) -- The Spearfish City Council has hired a local contractor to demolish a call center that collapsed under the weight of snow from an early October blizzard.
• The 225 Spearfish workers with Iowa-based TMone have been operating out of the city's recreation center since the collapse of the 50,000-square-foot city-owned building during the Oct. 4-5 storm, which dumped as much as 4 feet of snow on western South Dakota's Black Hills. No one was in the building when it collapsed, and computer servers were spared.
• The demolition work will cost about $50,000 and be completed by mid-May, the Black Hills Pioneer and Rapid City Journal reported. The city has set up a committee to recommend a contractor to construct a new building.
• "We don't need a collapsed building sitting at the entrance to our city," Public Works Director Cheryl Johnson said.
• The city expects to reach an insurance settlement in excess of $5 million, according to City Attorney Richard Pluimer.
• "The building had an insured value of $4.3 million, but the city also has a replacement cost endorsement so the final settlement will be equal to the replacement cost of the existing structure," he said.
• Premiere Bankcard donated the building to the city when it left Spearfish in 2011. The city leased it to the Spearfish Economic Development Corp, which sub-leased it to Iowa City, Iowa-based TMone.

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