Massage Therapy Board looks at 2026 legislation - KELOLAND.com

[Bob Mercer]

PIERRE, S.D. (KELO) — The state government panel that regulates massage businesses and schools in South Dakota has started building a package of possible requests for lawmakers to consider during the 2026 legislative session.

The South Dakota Board of Massage Therapy spent more than two hours in a teleconference meeting Wednesday talking through what should be added to or repealed from the current chapter of state laws.

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The board will make final recommendations at the next meeting on July 23. After that, the package will be reviewed by the South Dakota Department of Health — the board is attached to the department — and then further reviewed by governor’s office staff and possibly Gov. Larry Rhoden.

Among the ideas discussed Wednesday were getting rid of temporary licenses and possibly replacing them with a student permit, limiting inactive licenses to no more than five years, requiring establishment licenses, changing the minimum number of student hours to 650 from the current 500, and requiring continuing education hours for people who let licenses expire and later want to be licensed again.

The board also touched on possible increases in license fees but didn’t discuss any specific amounts. The board’s executive secretary Kate Boyd said the board financially is in “dire straits.”

The board’s president, Fallon Helm of Aberdeen, said she is optimistic about the current relationship with the department. “At the end of the day, it will be up to them,” Helm said.

A lawmaker who participated in the meeting, Republican Rep. Tesa Schwans, advised the board that it needs to have one voice in its presentations to the Legislature and observed that lawmakers don’t like to see mixed messaging.

Schwans, a licensed cosmetologist, said it’s important the department and the governor agree with the board’s recommendations. The first-year lawmaker said the board needs to emphasize that safety of the public is the uppermost goal.