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Amendment S Drives Maybe $600K in New State Spending

Tucked into pages 24 and 44 of Governor Daugaard’s FY2018 budget summary book is the state price tag for Amendment S, the somewhat redundant crime victims bill of rights that voters wrote into our state constitution last month. Governor Daugaard says we need to add $400,000 to this year’s budget to cover the costs of “software upgrades to the Statewide Automated Victim Information and Notification (SAVIN) system.” Back in September, S sponsor Jason Glodt called that upgrade cost “a very small price to pay for a tremendous benefit.”

The Governor is tacking a smaller amount onto the Attorney General’s FY2018 budget:

The Office of the Attorney General’s ongoing general fund budget is increasing by $0.2 million and 9.0 FTE due to the passage of Amendment S, Crime Victims’ Rights, and the Smart on Crime Initiative [FY 2018 Governor’s Budget Summary Book, 2016.12.06, p. 24].

That sentence leaves unclear the split between S and the Smart on Crime Initiative, which appears to refer to the policy changes included in a report submitted Thursday by a workgroup convened by the Governor to address increased meth use in South Dakota (more on that in a later post). But in addition to $400K needed right now to upgrade SAVIN to satisfy S, we’ll be adding dollars and jobs to the state budget on top of the new ongoing costs for counties.

3 Comments

  1. Super Sweet 2016-12-18 22:08

    What will be the impact on this budget if Trump/Devos eliminate the Department of Education?

  2. Super Sweet 2016-12-18 22:09

    This post was suppose to go under the education department budget.

  3. grudznick 2016-12-19 18:09

    Letting the public initiate these things is bad. It is bad.

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