The last week of session flew by and yet drug on and on and on…. We finished up committee hearings on some of the last issues to be discussed and started work on the items that had been talked about, worked on, and visited during session, yet were in disagreement on. Overshadowing the week’s conversations were the dismal revenue numbers we had to work with. The state is dealing with lesser revenue’s than anticipated due to a couple of factors. First we have a general slowdown in the economy nationwide. We are feeling the effects of that here at home in South Dakota and people are spending less, which generates less sales tax revenue for the state. A positive is the fact that we are an agriculturally strong state and the farm industry had a good year. But when you couple that with the fact that most farmers are paying down debt or trying to purchase machinery, and most of the purchases have been delayed because of delivery dates far off into the future, it results in less sales tax and therefore explains why we don’t see a bump in our numbers immediately from the strong ag prices. I do expect South Dakota to rebound much quicker than the rest of the nation and our revenue numbers should hold up if we face our state budget conservatively and responsibly. Therein lies the problem.

After receiving revenue projections and looking at the shortfall we were facing on the state budget, the House Republican caucus took a position to try to leave Pierre with a balanced budget. That meant taking no revenue out of reserves to backfill the budget because of overspending. Unfortunately, this meant many good programs and issues would not get funding or increases that weren’t statutorily required. And of course, all of the legislators had ideas as to which ones should be cut and which ones shouldn’t. This is where we ran into many delays as conference committees met and tried to work out the differences. We all ended up compromising and negotiating figures and we did finally come to agreements within both bodies.

I was assigned to the conference committee that addressed House Bill 1087, which ended up holding the legislation that cut the funding from the lap top programs in the schools. The Senate had passed this bill and cut the 3 million dollar program in order to free up money to be spent in new areas or additional funding for other programs. I took the position that we should never as a state cut a successful program that has already proven its value to fund something that has not been implemented yet. There were 54 schools hoping to use this program in 2009 to cost share the purchase of laptops for teachers and students and all of the schools using the program in the past needed the money to provide training for their teachers and help with support costs. Basically, by cutting this program, we’ve given some but not all of our schools the tools necessary to start the program, and then cut the funding for it. Once again, I believe it was a poor solution but the Senators and Democratic Representative killed every amendment we offered to provide any funding whatsoever in conference committee.

We also passed the tech school funding bills. I expect the Governor to veto them due to the lack of funds. The two final bills included 3 million dollars in additional funding. I voted for one that included money for repairs and maintenance, but did not feel I could support the other and further spend ourselves into a hole. We ended the session at a very fluid estimate of 12 million dollars coming out of our reserves with the knowledge that we very well could have a backfill amount to deal with next session of anywhere from 20 to 35 million. Those are dollars that are impossible to predict due to the nature of what they are spent on. They include disaster aid, fire suppression dollars, and other items that could possibly come to pass, but are unpredictable. We are anticipating that regardless of conservative approach to spending, our reserve fund will take a significant hit.

I will let Paul cover what was in the final education package; however I did want to address one amendment that was put on. If you will recall, I offered a bill this session to allow school districts to utilize TCAP dollars to fund teacher’s salaries. The bill received a lot of discussion and was ultimately killed; however it is still going forward. The amendment that was put on Senate Bill 187 set up a task force to study how TCAP dollars could be utilized by schools for funding of teachers salaries. The amendment also requires that teachers and administrators be appointed to the task force by the Governor. There were a few things in the amendment I did not like, however I was glad to see that teachers were going to have to opportunity to give input and that we were going to look at opening that program up for use for teacher’s salaries. There is currently 4 million dollars per year available for use within the TCAP program.

We finished session up with a vote on the general bill, Senate Bill 203, around 11:15 on Friday night. The appropriators spent a long day looking at over 75 amendments to the general bill that day and earned their stripes. I’m sure they were seeing numbers floating around in their heads as they slept that night. They did a great job and I appreciate their efforts to get up done in a timely matter and on our way home.

My daughter Kassidy and niece Isabel were with me on Monday thru Wednesday. They enjoyed their time and I enjoyed having the company. Some of my family that also made it out the last week were my father and mother in law, Al and Sharon Noem, my mother Corinne Arnold, and my brother Rock Arnold and his family. The younger boys were a little bored, so I understand Rock gave them a financial incentive to search for blue tiles in the capital flooring. It turned out to be a money making endeavor for them and I’m not sure Rock can afford to come back next year.

I will miss Representative Paul Nelson and Senator Brock Greenfield next year. I depended heavily on them and their sage counsel and historical wisdom cannot be replaced. Please thank them for their service to District 6 next time you see them.