South Dakota Gov. Larry Rhoden makes an announcement on Oct. 24, 2025, at the Sioux Falls Regional Airport about a plan to help fund improvement projects at the Sioux Falls and Rapid City airports. The Legislature ultimately approved a bill to make loans to the airports from a state housing infrastructure fund, and Rhoden signed the bill into law. (Photo by Joshua Haiar/South Dakota Searchlight)
A state loan fund intended to incentivize housing construction will soon be available for airport improvement and maintenance projects in Sioux Falls and Rapid City.
The change is in legislation that lawmakers approved earlier this month and South Dakota Republican Gov. Larry Rhoden signed into law Tuesday while visiting the Rapid City Regional Airport.
“More gates, more flights and more destinations means more visitors, more business and more opportunity,” Rhoden said.
More legislative news
See all of Searchlight’s coverage of the 2026 legislative session.
The money for the loans is held by the state’s Housing Infrastructure Financing Program. Legislators and then-Gov. Kristi Noem created the program three years ago. The money can be used for housing-related infrastructure such as streets, roads, sewer lines and water lines.
The fund has supported 85 projects across the state, helping create 7,421 single-family housing lots or units and 5,754 apartment or other multi-family units.
The program initially held a $200 million mix of state and federal funds. The state Housing Authority issued half of the money as grants. The other half, for loans, had about $65 million remaining as of late last year, which led the governor and lawmakers to propose tapping into the fund for airport projects.
The new law will take effect in July. It allows for loans from the fund to South Dakota airports in metropolitan statistical areas with populations of at least 125,000, which is a threshold that only the Sioux Falls and Rapid City areas currently meet. The loans will have 20-year terms at 2% annual interest.
Last year, lawmakers and Rhoden authorized a $15 million, zero-interest loan from the housing fund to help with construction of a new elementary school in the Douglas School District, based in Box Elder. The district, which borders Ellsworth Air Force Base, is experiencing rapid growth related to the impending addition of B-21 bomber planes.
This year’s bill is one of 210 that Rhoden has signed into law from the annual legislative session. Another bill Rhoden signed Tuesday will add “necessary site work” to the list of allowable uses for housing infrastructure money, and change the program’s maximum loans from one-third to one-half of total project costs.
Lawmakers concluded most of their work March 12 but will return Monday to the Capitol in Pierre to consider the governor’s vetoes. He has issued one veto so far — against a ban on lab-grown meat, as part of his compromise support of a five-year moratorium that he approved — and has dozens of bills left to consider.
More recent bill signings
Other bills signed recently by Gov. Larry Rhoden have included:
- House Bill 1298, which makes it a felony crime to publish the home addresses, dates of birth or Social Security numbers of judges and law enforcement officers without their consent and with an intent to place them in fear of death or great bodily injury.
- Senate Bill 49, which implements regulations intended to safeguard the integrity, privacy and security of genetic data and provides a civil penalty for violations.
- SB 222, which appropriates $10 million to the state Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources, with $2 million funding state-approved wastewater and stormwater infrastructure projects and $8 million funding the state’s riparian buffer project, which helps keep polluted and sediment-heavy runoff out of rivers, lakes and streams.
- SB 69, which appropriates $5 million so the Highway Patrol can replace an old airplane with a newer one.
- SB 79, which appropriates $6 million in support of a new advanced manufacturing laboratory and classrooms at Southeast Technical College in Sioux Falls.
- SB 136, which appropriates $5 million for grants to volunteer fire departments for the purchase of personal protective equipment.
- SB 107, which adds areas within 500 feet of a licensed and registered child care program to the definition of a community safety zone, which is an area where registered sex offenders are forbidden to live.
