• PIERRE, S.D. (AP) -- The South Dakota government has launched a centralized website that will enable people to learn and comment about all rules proposed by state agencies, officials said Tuesday.
• Dusty Johnson, chief of staff for Gov. Dennis Daugaard, said people previously struggled to find such information because they had to search through websites run by individual state agencies. Now there is one Internet site to get notice of all proposed state rules, find out about public hearings and submit comments about those rules, he said.
• "It's going to be a lot easier for citizens to use and find that information," Johnson told the Legislature's Rules Review Committee, which has the final say on rules passed by state boards, commissions and agencies.
• The website also will have archived records of proposed rules, recordings of public hearings and agency actions, he said.
• Johnson said the South Dakota Legislature has long had a website that lets people follow proposed legislation from the time it's introduced to the time it's passed or defeated. The new website will do the same thing for rules.
• The governor's office wants the members of the legislative committee to offer suggestions for improving the rules website, Johnson said.
• "It is far from a finished product," he said.
• Rep. Peggy Gibson, D-Huron, a member of the Legislature's Rules Review Committee, said heralded the new website.
• "This will be a big help for my constituents, and I want to thank you for doing this," Gibson told Johnson.
• Sen. Jean Hunhoff, R-Yankton, said she wants to ensure that electronic comments posted on the site would get to the agency proposing a rule. Johnson said public comments would not be filtered by the governor's office but instead would go directly to each agency.
• The new website is at https://rules.sd.gov .

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