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March Revenues Lag, But SD Close to Revised Year-to-Date Target

We South Dakotans aren’t buying enough stuff to keep our state budget afloat. So says the Legislative Research Council’s latest report on general fund receipts:

SD General Fund Receipts March 2018, Legislative Research Council, 2018.04.05.
SD General Fund Receipts March 2018, Legislative Research Council, 2018.04.05.

State general fund receipts in March fell $1.2 million short of the revenue target that the Legislature revised in February. The shortfall was largely due to the state collecting “only” $68.8 million in sales and use tax in March. That’s 4.1% better than sales and use tax collected in March 2017 but 2.3% below what the Legislative was hoping for.

We had a stronger February, collecting $1.9 million more than the revised target, but that was only because a one-time payment of $3.3 million kept our heads above water.

LRC, 2018.04.05.
LRC, 2018.04.05.

For Fiscal Year 2018 to date, we’re up 3.0% from the first three quarters of FY 2017, but we’re still short of the revised revenue target by 0.14%, or $1.7 million. We can make that up by selling 10.5 million Big Macs—that’s one extra Big Mac a week for the next twelve weeks for each South Dakotan. Come on, team—yes, we can!

March’s numbers aren’t all that bad: that 4.1% growth rate over March 2017 is just about the rate we need to post in the remaining three months of this fiscal year to pay our bills.

2 Comments

  1. mike from iowa

    Here are the five states with the lowest teacher pay, according to U.S. Department of Education data from the 2016-17 school year. All are below the national average pay of $58,951.

    Colorado: $46,506
    West Virginia: $45,701
    Oklahoma: $45,245
    Mississippi: $42,925
    South Dakota: $42,668

    You win again, South Dakota. Better raise taxes or teachers will walk….hopefully for better pay.

  2. Debbo

    There’s a simple cure for what ails SD’s budget, a fair progressive tax system. Which is exactly what the SDGOP does not want.

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