South Dakota Senate President Pro Tem Lee Schoenbeck has defied the wishes of House Speaker Spencer Gosch and released the names of the House members who signed a petition for a special legislative session on impeachment.
There have been calls for state Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg to resign over his conduct in connection with hitting and killing a pedestrian at night along a rural highway in September 2020,
Schoenbeck received the names of the 49 House lawmakers who petitioned for the special session from the Legislative Research Council and made them public on Saturday
Gosch had refused to release the names, even after several news media organizations sued him and the Legislative Research Council.
Progress toward a possible impeachment has all but halted as the House committee in charge takes its time in hiring a legal counsel.
The Republican-dominated House voted last month to have a committee prepare a report and recommend whether Ravnsborg, also a Republican, should be impeached, but the committee has met just once, voting last month to hire an outside counsel.
It hasn’t hired a counsel yet and hasn’t scheduled any more meetings. Speaker Gosch, a member of the committee puts some of the blame on the legal battle over the petition names