In a year of low budget expectations, legislators made one small GOP-dogma-aligned improvement the Fiscal Year 2027 budget approved yesterday. House Bill 1326, the general appropriations bill, authorizes spending $2.544 billion in general funds, $1.828 billion in other state funds, and $3.101 billion in federal funds. Federal dollars will cover 41.5% of the cost of doing South Dakota’s business in the coming fiscal year. Governor Larry Rhoden’s original budget proposal relied on Uncle Sam for 42.4% of its spending.
So hooray for the Legislature in making South Dakota nearly one full percentage point more self-sufficient than Governor Rhoden could pencil out!
But don’t cheer too loudly: that 41.5% reliance on federal funds is still far above the 33.2% from FY2019.
The good news? Gaia is clearing overgrowth from thousands of acres West River.
South Dakota the welfare state.
Cory, this “reduction” is not real. It’s just the difference between what is known about what federal funds might be available at the time the Governror submits his budget to the Legislature in Decemeber and what is known about those same funds in March. All Budgets change over time. Budgets really are never done. There could be more federal funds coming or some federal moneys could be held up.
Few policymakers dispute the reasons educated people are fleeing my home state of South Dakota. The state’s governor is a reactionary cracker. Infrastructure is crumbling. Industrial agriculture is smothering wildlife habitat. Churches are girding for gun violence. Meth has replaced alcohol as the state’s drug of choice. Pierre’s culture of corruption and attacks on kids have ended open government. Native wildlife are being exterminated to make way for disease-ridden domestic livestock and exotic fowl. Jails far outnumber colleges. Bankers continue to enslave landowners and the state’s medical industry triopoly operates without scrutiny.