• This morning I am in a budget hearing for the Departments of Game Fish and Parks, and for Agriculture.  It's always interesting to see what park improvement projects are planned for our corner: they say they are planning on replacing the comfort station at the Roy Lake East Park and the change house at the West Roy Park, plus an additional camping cabin at Roy Lake.  They also plan to address some issues at Ft. Sisseton:  preserving the replica blockhouse, and draining surface water away from the foundations of some of the buildings, which must be addressed to prevent further deterioration of their structural integrity.  Two of the park system's new projects are a visitor center at Blood Run State Park, which is east of Sioux Falls along the Iowa border, and a replacement visitor center at Custer State Park.
• Their non-resident small game (ie pheasant) hunting licenses were down 20% last fall. The Pheasant Summit in Huron last year was well-attended.  A workgroup was formed to follow up on that, but we all recognize that a mild spring with no blizzards or floods to kill the young chicks would help a lot.
• At the State Fair grounds, the fund raising campaign for the new 4-H building is going well.  It's a $4 million campaign, and they have $2.1 million raised so far. 
• Last week there were several emotional issues discussed during committee hearings.  My fellow Democratic legislator, Rep. Kathy Tyler from Milbank, wrote a wonderful summary of those issues that you can find at http://kathytyler.wordpress.com/.  She and her husband are natives of the Veblen area.
• Last Monday we passed HB 1187, which tried to address problems that parents of children with autism are having in paying for Applied Behavioral Analysis, a time intensive therapy that has proven very successful when provided when the child is very young in helping the child to mainstream into the education system.  One of 80 children are affected by some form of this diagnosis; it's the scourge of this generation;  I call it the polio scourge of our generation.  Insurance companies have recently decided that they are not required to cover that therapy, but they didn't make it known until AFTER an Affordable Care Act deadline that would have allowed us to repair this glaring shortfall.  The lifetime care costs of an untreated autistic child are $3.2 million, so this is definitely a cost savings.  It's frustrating that we can't fix the problem for everyone, but we are doing our very best to do that.
• South Dakota voters will go to the ballot box next November and decide whether we should raise the minimum wage.  In our state, 55% of those who earn the minimum wage are women and 78% are older than 20 years old. The teenager who works 40 hours a week during the summer time at minimum wage doesn't make enough to pay for one semester tuition and fees these days!  Women make up two-

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