South Dakota Governor Dennis Daugaard was one of the featured speakers at Saturday morning's deployment.  He says he'll be returning to Pierre and is looking forward to putting his signature on the newly approved Criminal Justice Initiative.  Earlier this week the South Dakota Legislature gave final approval to a plan to cut the state's prison costs by treating more nonviolent offenders in community programs, such as drug courts.  The House voted to pass the bill, which was earlier approved by the Senate.  Governor Daugaard says once he signs off on the bill some pieces of it will take effect this July with other parts implemented by the end of the year.

Gov. Daugaard says, "Part of the reason for the phasing is that it's a very sweeping set of changes and it imposes a burden on the Unified Judicial System. It imposes some burden on the DOC, a lot of changes. They've got to hire new people, so we didn't want it to be too much all at once."

Daugaard says he will be signing off on the bill this coming week.

Brendyn Medina