House kills Bear Butte bar buffer
By Celeste Calvitto, Journal Staff Writer
PIERRE — After hearing a procession of people declare that it would hinder property rights and commerce, a legislative committee decided Tuesday to kill a proposal that would have created a bar-free buffer zone around Bear Butte.
Rep. Paul Valandra, D-Mission, and Rep. Jim Bradford, D-Pine Ridge, proposed that no on-sale alcohol licenses be granted to businesses within a four-mile zone after the Arizona-based owner of Broken Spoke Saloon in Sturgis announced plans last year to build a biker bar and concert site north of Bear Butte for the 2006 Sturgis rally.
“We were incensed about it,” Valandra told members of the House Local Government Committee. He said that in talking with community members and people who might be affected by the plan, “I felt a little discouraged because there was not a large outcry for protecting the site.”
Valandra said the “carnival atmosphere” infringed upon a site that American Indians consider sacred.
Meade County Commissioner Dean Wink said it was a matter of private property rights, “setting a precedent that could come back to bite us,” as well as local control.
“This is a reason that county commissioners don’t get involved in city or school board issues,” Wink said. “I hope the state can respect that this is a Meade County issue.”
House Majority Leader Larry Rhoden, R-Union Center, said South Dakotans “have come a long way in recognizing this is a sacred site for Native Americans” since the days when rally founder Pappy Hoel rode his motorcycles up Bear Butte.
“People would be mortified at that now,” Rhoden said. Today, he said, “this bill is totally unreasonable. ... It’s outrageous.”
The Full Throttle Saloon would likely be in the buffer zone “as the crow flies,” Roger Tellinghuisen, a Spearfish attorney representing the business, said. He said the state has not moved to create similar buffers around other state parks or places of worship.
“It’s an atrocious bill and needs to be canned,” Rod Woodruff, owner of the Buffalo Chip Campground, said.
He said the plan was presented to him as a way to limit competition. “I find that offensive,” he said.
Woodruff said it would be a violation of the South Dakota Constitution to enact a measure that that would favor any one religion.
“To grant this because of religion, to impede landowners’ rights, that’s un-American,” he said.
Rep. Gordon Howie, R-Rapid City, made the parliamentary move to defer the bill to the 36th day of the legislative session, which kills it because the session is 35 days.
“This is an emotional issue,” Howie said. “But it’s about property rights when you start talking about maybe impacting 10,000 or 15,000 acres.”
Reps. Bill Thompson, D-Sioux Falls, and David Sigdestad, D-Pierpont, supported the measure.
“We have conflicting values,” Thompson said. He said that in exercising property rights, “the value of sacredness should not be disregarded.”
Sigdestad, who was a co-sponsor of the bill, said people were reading things into the proposal that weren’t there.
Valandra said the issue is not new.
“If people thought about the rights of landowners before 1868, we wouldn’t be having this discussion,” Valandra said with a touch of humor just before the committee voted 9-3 to kill the bill.
Contact Celeste Calvitto at 394-8438 or Celeste Calvitto
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February 2006 Reports
Last updated on February 15, 2006