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District 14 Legislative Reports

By Staff | Feb 17, 2017

Well, it is day 30 at the legislature. Next week marks the day we call “crossover” when all of the bills that started in their respective houses have had their hearings and moved on to a vote in their chamber. This week before crossover sees a lot more floor action to get those bills voted on. Then the bill is either defeated or moves on to the other chamber. We started with 344 total bills introduced, and we are down to 66 waiting for action.

After the hearing on the marijuana bill last week, a number of changes have been made to the bill, including smoking of the marijuana product. There was a lot of discussion during the hearing about whether smoking should be allowed, and the committee agreed that it should be.

Last week, we passed legislation to help our local pharmacists as they work in this new environment with pharmacy benefit managers. These PBMs are putting a lot of burdens on your local pharmacist and the services they have provided to our communities for many years.

Yesterday, the 80 miles-per-hour on the interstate bill was defeated. There was a lot of interesting discussion and information. The bill would have also doubled the fines. Did you know the average prevailing speed is 80-82 mph on our interstate? There was a lot of good discussion and a lot of comparisons to South Dakota, which raised their limit to 80 mph a couple of years ago. I guess there has been no increases in fatalities and the amount of tickets written have dropped considerably. Well, it looks like this bill will be gone for this session.

Thanks for the messages. Keep in touch.

Jerry