I didn’t hear anything about that “Next Big Thing” Kristi Noem said she’d be looking for, but the Governor’s first regular budget address did include $22.7 million in general fund spending increases and $8.9 million in general fund cuts for Fiscal Year 2021.
Governor Noem proposes spending $8.9 million more on state aid to K-12 education. However, that 2.13% increase in general fund spending on public schools from this year’s budget isn’t enough to propose any increase in the state’s target teacher salary of $50,360.26. Factor in the fact that we expect K-12 enrollment to rise 0.93%, and the amount the state plans to spend per student rises just 1.19%. Most tellingly, while the great Daugaard tax increase of 2016 raised the state’s share of K-12 funding from 53.8% to 60.9%, Governor Noem and the Legislature let the state’s share of its constitutional burden to sustain free and universal public education slip back below 60% in FY2020, and Noem proposes letting the state share slip further in FY2021 to 58.9%
In other words, local school districts, Noem expects the costs of education to rise and expects you pick up more of the tab, probably via opt-outs. Good luck.
The FY2020 budget boosted full-time equivalents on the state payroll by 6%, to over 14,000. Noem would hire just 0.2% more employees this year. As I predicted last night, Noem says no one working for the state gets a raise next year. She does plan to kick in $4.1 million more to cover state employees’ health insurance.
Noem proposes $3.7 million more for “Confronting Meth Epidemic.” That could buy us two and a half more weeks of global news coverage and SNL jokes.
The Governor must think her On Meth™ campaign is going to work wonders on addiction and the crime it inspires. Under the performance indicators for the Department of Public Safety, Noem’s budget predicts no increase in FY2021 in felony or misdemeanor drug arrests. That seems odd, given that the FY2020 budget anticipates an 8% increases in misdemeanor drug arrests and a 25% increase in felony drug arrests.
DPS takes one of the lighter hits in Noem’s $8.9 million of cuts:
The Department of Social Services and the Department of Human Services, agencies dedicated to taking care of vulnerable South Dakotans, each take seven-figure cuts.
The budget offered today is not a campaign centerpiece. It’s the sort of dreary number-crunching and cost-cutting that a Governor has to do when the economy’s underperformance matches her own.
Meanwhile, sleepy Pat Powers can’t muster any analysis of Noem’s budget address and can only hurk up her office’s talking points. Why bother? Why not just link to the webpage where the Governor ordered the Bureau of Finance and Management to post her self-promoting propaganda?
Gov. Noem, just like her processors, delivered another gloom and doom speech. Just think what kind of message that sends to young people in this state?
We need positive thoughts from our governors that creates a positive image for this state. If things are so depressed in this state, then why is unemployment so low? Yes there are issues, but do not make the negative the theme for SD.
If we want to keep our young people here in SD, then the message needs to change to a positive message of what we can do to make improvements to this state.
Its time to push forward raises for our healthcare worker, teacher and employees. Its time to lower the cost of higher education. Its time to address the issue of struggling EMS in rural areas. If that involves raising taxes, then that is what we have to do. Be a positive visionary to move us forward, not a doom and gloom person who says we can not do anything again this year. All this doom and gloom talk just pushes people to leave SD.
I have a friend who works at a nursing home. She constantly tells me that they are understaffed and can just not find workers. She wonders at what point it will come that they will end up shutting down. She listened to the governors speech today and was so mad that more money was not going to be set aside for healthcare. She always talks about how sad it would be for the residents to have to leave their livelong hometown and be separated from their spouses who come to see them everyday.
Nice to see Gov. Noem trying to get spending under control.
Less government is a breath of fresh air. The teacher will be fine
Hopefully next year we can see more tax relief. I internet tax is a good start.
With the boom Trump economy people can get jobs instead of bleeding the tax payers
Sam@, what planet do you live on?
“It’s the sort of dreary number-crunching and cost-cutting that a Governor has to do when the economy’s underperformance matches her own.”
OUCH! (But fitting.)
The bossturds. grudznick wonders why there are not cuts to the schools and employees. The legislatures need to give them all a haircut and a shave. I am disappointed young Ms. Noem has not yet figured out how to pull Daugaardesque slashing of the budgets.
In addition to seeking state funds, nearly a million dollars, to cap 40 abandoned gas wells, the bill must raise the bond for gas wells to the cost of state capping , $22,175/well — better yet, to 1.5 times or more that amount. Raising the bond to over the state cost of capping incentivizes the company to clean-up their own mess in order to reclaim their bond.
https://rapidcityjournal.com/news/local/governor-proposes-state-money-to-plug-orphaned-gas-wells/article_853ceedc-a820-5ffd-b182-baf4c0f9ddec.html#tracking-source=home-top-story
South Dakota loves government. South Dakota has more government per capita than any state. Start by reducing the number of counties by two-thirds. It works for Wyoming with a similar sized land base and population. And cut university and school administrative positions — transferring those funds to living salaries for professors & teachers.
The South Dakota chicken-little “leadership” (if we can call it leadership) is beset with the fear of scarcity. It must adopt to a mindset of abundance. South Dakota is a wealthy state in the wealthiest nation on earth. That mindset change requires a fundamental change in vision and in putting humanity first.
We need more tax dollars to pay for education, health care and all the rest. We could also reduce the prison population for non-violent offenders and since Kristi comes from a consolidated school district, it might be time to draw the lines and get us down to 80 or 100 districts or maybe even fewer. I would like to see a plan that comes with increasing revenue AND decreasing costs. We will always be behind as long as we allow our state to be a tax haven that really only matters to the very rich. The recessive taxes we do increase penalize the poor and we need to change the model. Take these ideas to Pierre along with a dollar and you still can’t get a cup of coffee.
What cuts would you like grudz?
Sleepy Pat Powers? ha ha
Apparently that wonderful Trump economy has passed over South Dakota.
John is right about the economic attitude. There’s a Calvinistic sense of virtue in “doing without” and “squeezing nickels” that’s endemic to SD. Good money management is laudable, but deprivation of basic needs is not.
SD could provide much better for those who cannot provide for themselves, but it’s a matter of will.
Folks must find the will to trust in the genuine abundance available and write commensurate budgets. For that to happen, voters must elect legislators and statewide office holders who are similarly optimistic, rather than the deep pessimism that soaks the SDGOP.
Legislators who’ll enact a progressive income tax along with some decreases in sales and property taxes will save the large majority of citizens $.
The SDGOP clamors that $ will pour out of the state. No. It won’t. When Minnesota’s former Gov. Mark Dayton campaigned for his initial term, his chief policy proposal was raising taxes on the rich. The Minnesota GOP promised there would be an enormous exodus of wealth. Didn’t happen. MN has a high overall tax rate and a few wealthy people departed, but very few.
SD has enough. South Dakotans work very hard and produce income. The problem is the people who produce it don’t get to keep it and run it through the economy. Tax avoiders like Dan Lederman, the guy with all the hospitals and similar types get their greedy hands on the wealth created by the working class and they hoard it away. They create artificial scarcity.
SD, get your $ back.
@Debbo … So that’s Calvinism? I’m glad to know that. Thanks 🙏🏻 I’ve always said it’s a German trait of “Deriving pleasure from denying yourself pleasure.” There is a certain reward to it. But, it can be like the shoemaker whose kids have holes in their shoes. SD Republicans take “Calvinism” to an unhealthy extreme. Especially for those low income families that pay the same percentage of tax but get far less in benefits than the well to do in SD get.
Technically, Calvinism is the theology that we’re all evil sinners from our first breath and our natural inclination is to do evil and be rotten. If we ever do anything decent, it’s not something we can take credit for. It’s due to god’s presence in us. We deserve to suffer.
Conservative Christians are mostly Calvinists. Mainline Christian theology is not strictly Calvinist, but contains bits of it, including Original Sin.
I’ll refrain from my theological rant dismantling that theology here, except to say that Calvinism is in error. 😊
Debbo … Even your thumbnail description explains to me that Calvinism and the SDGOP embrace of many parts of it, are indeed in error. I thank you, again.
*Those weren’t the fundamentals of the UCC Protestant life, I was taught as a youth. In fact, just the opposite.
Mr. Owen, I imagine they could cut out the entire department of education and give that money to the teachers, but prohibit schools from giving raises to fat-cat administrators.
Also, they could cut every employee’s salary by 1% and probably get back a huge chunk of change to give to the medicaid welfare agencies who are always complaining, and the employees would hardly notice. If you pay $10.00 or $9.90 for a a nice gravy laden biscuit and strips of bacon, do you really notice?
You’re welcome Porter. It’s the need SD has to change it’s thinking, to exchange meek timidity for risks and boldness!
Stanford University has a study called d.school, which stands for Design School. It’s not the kind design that probably first springs to mind. It’s a true and open multidisciplinary collaboration to foster social justice.
This article from California Sunday is longish and worth your time. NSU could add this to their summer offerings! 😊
is.gd/C53dW5
Here’s a proven way Klueless Kristi can change lives for the better in SD, high speed broadband. Two terribly impoverished counties in Kentucky did it, and this New Yorker article includes all the financial details.
is.gd/XiUVzN
https://www.legis.nd.gov/files/resource/finance-facts/2019ndfinancefacts.pdf
North Dakota has 100,000 fewer people yet spends 700 million more per year (watch out in the link above, the figures are for a 2 year biennium)
Of that, 400 million is from oil tax, so you can’t blame it on the difference on that.
Napkin math, but there is a lot of missed public benefit – well paid teachers, funding for social problems like addiction, Medicaid expansion. Much of that is reinvested into the economy.
I certainly don’t feel overtaxed
Ummm . . .anybody notice the post on facebook relative to Stace Nelson and somebody named Church? That Sioux Falls paper. . .
As Ricky Bobby might say, thank little one-foot-long Baby Jesus that Kristi was able to give her super-qualified daughter a raise last year, for whatever made-up job she has, before Kristi froze state wages. I can’t imagine how she’d get by on only $40k/year in South Dakota. The horror.
Imagine the horror also if Kristi hadn’t spent that money on the meth campaign; I mean, she’s, like, the Governor, right, and most definitely couldn’t have gotten the word out (that we need to crack down on meth) by using a series of absolutely free press releases. No, no way that would’ve worked, Mensa Barbie. Thank goodness that money wasn’t absolutely wasted on healthcare or teacher pay. Whew, dodged a fiscal bullet there.