I noted yesterday in my update of my review of the twelve emergency bills coming up on Veto-Plus Day today that the $89.6 million in immediate new spending proposed by Draft 938 is all federal money, with no sign of bold initiative or investment by the state itself in coronavirus response. Bob Mercer checks in with the Bureau of Finance and Management and tells us a little more about how that money will be used:
$55,760,060 in a pool in BFM to be distributed as needed as federal stimulus money.
$27,880,030 for two calendar quarters of a 6.2% federal enhancement to the federal medical assistance percentage (FMAP). The authority is added to the budgets for six departments: Social Services, Health, Education, Veterans Affairs, Corrections, and Human Services.
$1,000,000 in the Department of Health to provide Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) coverage to eligible individuals.
$3,804,762 and 10 FTE in the Department of Labor & Regulation for unemployment insurance services.
$1,200,000 to the Department Human Services for congregate and home-delivered meals for older Americans [Bob Mercer, “S.D. Legislators Now Face at Least 12 New Bills, with 11 from Governor, on Session’s Final Day,” KELO-TV, updated 2020.03.29].
That $55.76 million is dropped into BFM’s “Computer Services and Development” budget slot. I’ll be curious to see if they intend to spend those stimulus dollars on something other than computers and web pages, like medical training, or tuition waivers for aspiring nurses and doctors.
Que the banjos. The lawsuits from COVID-19 will likely reverberate for a decade. “Can I serve you a virus drink”? https://www.kotatv.com/content/news/2-Saloon-10-workers-in-Deadwood-have-COVID-19-patrons-possibly-exposed-569229081.html. Likely the revenge of Al Swearengen brings COIVD-19 to Deadwood’s Saloon-10. This historical representation is from an earlier plague in Deadwood: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05S6UHDoXUk Say, “Amen”.
Stay home.
If you’re a government person — act like it. Make people stay home. Close businesses. Reach down. Find a pair. It’s a matter of time until the lawsuits against towns, cities, counties, and states flow because they knew or should have known there was an infectious public health emergency for which the reasonable person would have taken restrictive actions – but x town, city, county, state failed. Perhaps because some state fool proclaimed 3 weeks ago that the virus in SD was, “stable” about 80-90 cases ago.
Only $1 mil for WIC? I’ll be interested to see where the $55 mil goes as well.
No doubt the big dollars will go to heinous things.
Oh , You can bet that if there are some dollars that can be shuffled they
will be.
After all, we need more cops, more Drug dogs, more big brother to keep
those damn (fill in the blank) in order.