Rookie Representative Nicole Uhre-Balk (D-32/Rapid City) demonstrates efficient lawmaking by changing one word to make a ceiling-to-floor change in K-12 education funding.
Rep. Uhre-Balk’s House Bill 1205 amends the formula for the index factor that tells the Legislature how much it is supposed to increase funding for K-12 general and special education each year. Right now, that increase is supposed to be “the annual percentage change in the consumer price index for urban wage earners and clerical workers as computed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the United States Department of Labor for the year before the year immediately preceding the year of adjustment or three percent, whichever is less”. HB 1205 changes less to greater.
With one word, HB 1205 changes 3% from a ceiling to a floor.
Requiring at least a 3% increase instead of capping increases at 3% also removes the frightful possibility that a year of deflation could dictate a decrease in K-12 funding.
We probably shouldn’t care much about this clever change, since, as Lieutenant Governor Tony Venhuizen has patiently explained, the index factor is a guideline, a goal, a gentle suggestion that the Governor and the Legislature may ignore at will. Since it’s not binding, the great Canon of Statutory Construction “Presumption Against Surplussage” (“Why is there at all? Why did they put it there? What was it meant to do?”) dictates that we should just strike the index factor from statute, which Senator Jim Mehlhaff (R-24/Pierre) proposes to do with Senate Bill 200.
But Representative Uhre-Balk still deserves a gold star for inviting a substantive debate on our fiscal capacity and commitment to education by changing just one word.