To try to maintain its edge, South Dakota assembled a permanent task force comprising industry players such as McDowell to monitor developments in other states and propose new legislation each year. In March, Governor Daugaard signed the group’s latest submission into law, making it harder for former spouses and their offspring to tap certain trust assets.
The bill was sponsored by the House’s Committee on State Affairs, whose chairman, David Lust, is also House majority leader and head of the trust task force. When the part-time legislature isn’t in session, Lust works at a Rapid City law firm where one of his partners is a leading trust lawyer.
Lust receives no “direct benefit” from the legislation, he said.
Bernie Hunhoff, a Democrat and the House minority leader, said some in his caucus roll their eyes when the task force’s annual proposals come up for a vote. They’re aware that the trust industry drains revenue from the U.S. Treasury, which supplies almost half the state’s budget each year, he said.
“There’s a bit of an irony there, if not hypocrisy,” said Hunhoff, editor and publisher of South Dakota Magazine. “Anything we can do to poke the federal government in the eye, or to help anybody, even wealthy strangers from 1,000 miles away, avoid taxes, that seems to be a popular thing out here.”
Still, Hunhoff said the proposals have bipartisan -- and virtually unanimous -- support.
“If we don’t provide for these kinds of trusts here, this will happen in some other state, so we might as well try to get the activity here,” he said. “If we can find opportunity for a few dozen young lawyers, I guess I’ll set my philosophical concerns aside.”