Editor’s note: This is the fifth in a series of five stories featuring District 7 candidates for state House of Representatives.

BROOKINGS – Tim Reed feels he accomplished quite a bit in his first two years as state representative for District 7, and he wants more time to continue his work.

There are two, two-year District 7 posts in the state House of Representatives up for grabs on Nov. 6, and in the running are Democrats Bill Adamson and Zachary Kovach, Independent Cory Ann Ellis, and Republicans Doug Post and Reed.

Reed has lived in Brookings his entire life, earning a bachelor’s degree in economics from South Dakota State University. He and wife Mary have two children. Reed worked at 3M and at I2 Technologies for a while, then worked for the South Dakota State University Foundation.

Reed felt the call to serve the community and was part of local government for 13 years, serving eight years as mayor.

“I left the foundation when I was mayor,” Reed said.

“Then I’ve really just been doing the mayor and legislative work,” he added.

Reed was elected as state representative for District 7 in 2016.

“I enjoyed the challenge of the last two years and I do feel I made a difference, and I want to return and continue serving District 7 and work to ensure the great quality of life we enjoy in South Dakota,” he said.

He’s using the skills learned in local government and some he’s acquired in the past couple of years as a fellow of the Bowhay Institute in Legislative Leadership.

“That was a week-long process to go through that was very helpful,” Reed said. “I served on the Municipal League Board. It was there that I did a lot of lobbying and really following issues closely in the Legislature. While that helps me get started, the first two years there was a lot of learning,” he admitted.

He sees the main priority for District 7 and the state as salary policy, for state workers including SDSU and increases in teacher pay.

Other priorities are mental health care and access to those services, which he spent “quite a bit of time” looking at in the Access to Mental Health Care Services Interim Committee, to which he was appointed over the summer.

Reed sees agriculture as important to South Dakota’s future.

“We have to continue to focus on ag and expanding other economic opportunities,” he said.

To move into the future, he said government has to keep an eye on things like a good education system, teacher pay, and community service providers like Advance, which works with people who have special needs.

“Government has to provide the basic services and unless we have the workers that will do that, you know, we won’t have those things we expect, and our quality of life will go down,” Reed said.

One long-time issue that needs resolution is how we’re going to increase teachers’ pay.

“The Partridge Amendment … when the teacher salary increase was put into place, that added a half a penny sales tax. The Partridge Amendment said as we start getting more revenue from remote or internet sales, that half-penny should be reduced over time back to the 4 percent where it was before the bill to increase teacher pay,” Reed said.

“My concern with that is if our sales tax revenue is growing fast enough so we can keep teacher pay, state workers’ pay, SDSU’s professors pay, growing at the rate of inflation,” he said.

He’s been working in some areas that he feels need more attention.

“I’ve been focusing on sexual assault victim assistance, and actually, just crime victims in general. And I want to continue focus there,” Reed said.

“There are still some – for example, prophylactic medicines for sexually transmitted diseases for someone that’s been sexually assaulted. There are concerns about access for that and the cost,” Reed said.

He was one of two freshmen legislators elected by the caucus to serve on the Legislature’s executive board and was part of the judiciary committee that worked on bills centered on drug distribution crimes and increasing penalties.

“Another area that I want to pursue is data privacy issues. The attorney general’s data breach bill was passed in the Legislature last session, and we worked on that in the judiciary committee and I was asked to present it on the House floor and it did pass,” Reed said.

There’s other work he wants to continue doing.

“I hope to continue my work with the Streamlined Sales Tax Governing Board. And that work really culminated with the passage of the two senate bills – Senate Bill 1 and Senate Bill 2 – at the special session (in September). So there’s still more work to do for that process,” Reed said.

“I do feel I was very effective in my first two years. I was able to work on crime victim assistance bills, sponsor them and get them passed. Over the last two years, we were able to get the Animal Disease Research and Diagnostic lab funding and then also the Precision Ag facility that will break ground here (soon),” Reed said.

Contact Jodelle Greiner at jgreiner@brookingsregister.com.