By PIERRE — After 144 years, South Dakota lawmakers decided Tuesday, Sept. 23 it’s time for “the Hill” to retire.
The required two-thirds of each legislative chamber voted to endorse a 1,500-bed, $650 million replacement for the state penitentiary building that opened its doors when South Dakota was still Dakota Territory. The new men’s prison will be the most expensive capital project ever funded by the state’s taxpayers.
It will be built in northeast Sioux Falls on an undeveloped patch of industrial land near the Sioux Falls Area Humane Society. The location is about 3 miles northeast of the penitentiary, which is nicknamed “the Hill” for its perch overlooking the Big Sioux River.
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The votes came during a one-day special session at the Capitol called by Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden after a prison construction task force he created via executive order recommended a new prison with that size, price tag and location.
Gov. Larry Rhoden addresses a joint session of the South Dakota Legislature on Sept. 23 at the Capitol in Pierre. Rhoden was speaking in support of a proposed new men’s prison in northeast Sioux Falls. South Dakota Searchlight photo by John Hult.
The Senate approved the prison plan legislation 24-11, with exactly the required two-thirds support, and the House approved it 51-18, with four yes votes to spare and one House member, Rep. Jeff Bathke, R-Mitchell, excused while on a military deployment. Bathke said last week that he supports the prison plan.
Here’s how Aberdeen area legislators voted:
- Sen. Mark Lapka, R-Leola: yes
- Sen. Carl Perry, R-Aberdeen: yes
- Sen. Michael Rohl, Aberdeen: yes
- Sen. Brandon Wipf, R-Redfield/Huron: yes
- Rep. Nick Fosness, R-Britton: yes
- Rep. Spencer Gosch, R-Glenham: yes
- Rep. Lana Greenfield, R-Doland: yes
- Rep. Logan Manhart, R-Bath: no
- Rep. Scott Moore, R-Ipswich: yes
- Rep. Al Novstrup, R-Aberdeen: yes
- Rep. Brandei Schaefbauer, R-Aberdeen: no
A previous men’s prison proposal, with a higher price and a controversial location in rural Lincoln County, was presented in February during the regular legislative session and failed to earn the two-thirds support mandated for spending bills by the South Dakota Constitution.
Tuesday’s vote answers the most pressing and expensive question posed during a four-year saga on the future of South Dakota’s prison facilities. In 2021, then-Gov. Kristi Noem commissioned a study of the Department of Corrections properties that concluded the state needed a new women’s prison — which is now under construction in Rapid City at a cost of $87 million — and that the oldest parts of the Sioux falls penitentiary had too many inmates and was unsafe for them and the staff.
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The state plans to pay for the new prison with cash. In 2022, lawmakers voted to begin putting millions in excess revenues, which ballooned thanks in part to federal cash infusions during the COVID-19 pandemic, into an incarceration construction fund that has since grown with further deposits and interest earnings. In 2023, they approved the construction of the women’s prison.
The bill passed Tuesday transfers $78.7 million from the state’s budget reserves to the prison construction fund and authorizes the Department of Corrections to spend up to $650 million to build it. Most of the money is already in the fund, but about $42 million of the required funding is expected to come from future interest earnings.
Between 2024 and Tuesday’s vote, the state put $52 million into a plan to build a 1,500-bed men’s prison — at a price of $825 million, in that case — in southern Lincoln County. Lawmakers rejected that prison pitch in February, an act that spurred the creation of Rhoden’s Project Prison Reset task force. Last week, Rhoden’s office said much of that investment was recaptured by reusing designs on the $650 million version that did earn approval, but $21 million of the money spent on the Lincoln County site is unrecoverable.
The approved prison legislation includes the purchase of the Sioux Falls land and an exchange of the Lincoln County land to the owner of the Sioux Falls land. In that $17 million deal, which is included in the overall $650 million project cost, about $12.5 million will go to the landowner, along with the Lincoln County land, which the state valued at $4.5 million.
Scott Waltman of The Aberdeen Insider contributed to this report.
