Rep. Scott Odenbach, R-Spearfish, on the House floor during the 2024 legislative session. (Makenzie Huber/South Dakota Searchlight)
Rep. Scott Odenbach must be wondering why he went to so much trouble. The Spearfish Republican was the driving force behind two legislative efforts to create a community engagement center at Black Hills State University. Little did he know that all he had to do was put in a good word with the Joint Appropriations Committee and the center that had been rejected several times by its colleagues in the Legislature would get the funding it needed.
Odenbach’s quest began in 2023 with a bill that aimed to fund a Center for Exceptionalism at BHSU. “Exceptionalism” is a conservative buzzword that translates to something like, “Your country is fine, but ours is GREAT!”
That version of the center was charged with creating K-12 curricula that would “teach students to balance critical thinking with love of country.” In fact, some of the bill’s proponents became so vocal about patriotism that it seemed that students who were deficient in that area were destined to fail.
Because of its $150,000 price tag, the bill needed a two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives, or 47 positive votes. It failed twice by 46-23 votes.
This year, Odenbach dropped “exceptionalism” from the center’s title, hoping to capitalize on the reputation of a recently deceased and beloved professor to create the Nicholas W. Drummond Center for Civic Engagement. Odenbach called the new bill a “generalist” approach.
While the bill contained fewer details about what the center would do, it stirred the same patriotic fervor among lawmakers who spoke in favor of the legislation, with one saying students should know “why America is a positive good” and another arguing students should doing. “Learn more about the greatness of our democracy.”
It is clear that even in the generalist version, exceptionalism was alive and well among the bill’s proponents. The bill did appeal to Odenbach’s House colleagues and passed through the House by 63 votes to 5. However, it did not receive such a warm reception in the Senate, where it again failed by one vote, 16 to 17.
This is where the story gets weird. Facing legislative setbacks in not one but two legislative sessions, the civic engagement center was revived through the Joint Appropriations Committee. As noted in a Searchlight story from South Dakota, committee members gave BHSU an additional $926,406 in funding. The Executive Director of the Board of Regents told the appropriators that this was certainly enough to cover the estimated $200,000 in seed money the center would need.
Lawmakers who had declined to fund the center approved the new dollar amount for BHSU, including funding for the civic engagement center, when they passed the state budget bill.
In a Dakota Scout story, BHSU President Steve Elliott said the center would be tasked with developing curriculum, hosting campus-focused civic events and providing experiential learning opportunities and civic programming.
According to South Dakota Searchlight, BHSU will present the center’s progress to the Legislature during the 2025 session. If it is already operational, perhaps the center representative can explain the civics lesson inherent in the center’s creation. Maybe that person can justify how the center was created and funded by a legislature that has proven multiple times that it didn’t think such a center was a good idea.
Maybe that lesson in civics can explain to lawmakers what two years of committee hearings and floor debates were worth. Perhaps that citizenship lesson could teach lawmakers the real meaning of the votes they cast after their wishes were so casually ignored by appropriators willing to spend money on a project that lawmakers had rejected three times.
Perhaps the civic lesson here is that the real power in Pierre lies with the people who control the state’s checkbook. It seems like the rest of the Legislature is just going through the motions.
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The post Funding a Civic Engagement Center Is Its Own Civics Lesson appeared first on South Dakota Searchlight.
