A Republican state lawmaker from Newell was indicted and arrested on a felony charge of intentional damage to a public road this week.

Representative Travis Ismay, 48, was arrested Wednesday morning and released on a $500 bail bond. The crime he’s accused of committing is a felony that carries up to two years in prison and a $4,000 fine.

Ismay declined to offer details Thursday to South Dakota Searchlight on the alleged incident, citing his search for a lawyer and the ongoing nature of the Butte County criminal case.

Ismay said he hopes to tell his side of the story eventually, and he wasn’t aware of the existence of the law he’s accused of breaking.

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“When it all comes out, I pray that everyone will write about it,” Ismay said.

Ismay’s indictment doesn’t offer details on the incident, aside from saying that the crime allegedly occurred on Friday — three days after he won the Republican nomination to seek reelection to his District 28B state House seat. He’s unopposed in the November 3 general election.

A Butte County grand jury took testimony from a sheriff’s deputy, a highway department employee and a Butte County resident before issuing the indictment.

The law has been on the books since 1877, and was last modified in 1939. It can apply to “every person who intentionally digs up, removes, displaces, breaks, or otherwise injures or destroys any public highway or bridge.”

Including Ismay’s case, there have been seven such charges filed against five individuals in the past 10 years in South Dakota, according to the Unified Judicial System.

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Neither the Butte County sheriff nor Butte County state’s attorney immediately returned calls to Searchlight on Thursday.

Ismay has no criminal record in South Dakota beyond a few traffic citations, but he’s sparred with Butte County officials.

Ismay's legal troubles extend beyond this week's arrest — six people were charged in 2023 for forging signatures to get him on a 2022 primary ballot, part of a pattern of disputes involving the lawmaker.

In 2023, the year before he was first elected to the Legislature, Ismay was among the leaders of a group of Butte County residents who circulated a petition aimed at removing four commissioners from office over the county’s handling of medical marijuana ordinances. Ismay would go on to unsuccessfully attempt to put a repeal of the state’s voter-backed medical marijuana law on the 2024 ballot, and to introduce a bill in 2025 meant to accomplish the same goal. That medical pot bill failed.

During each of his two years in Pierre, Ismay brought bills to allow citizens to recall county commissioners. During hearings on those bills, Ismay spoke of being ejected from county commission meetings for actions he described as exercising free speech. Both bills failed.

No trial date has been set in Ismay’s case.