Say what you will about South Dakota when it comes to Federal money, but it is no secret WE ARE a welfare state (we receive more back then we pay in). Whether you agree with that or not, one fact remains the same, we are at least entitled to what we pay in. That is why it puzzles me that the city is chopping at the bit to get the levee projects done. Federal projects  should be paid for through Federal appropriations not local tax dollars. Not only is it the proper and right way to pay for the project it is inexcusable to take local tax dollars away from city owned projects to pay for something the Feds own and are responsible for.
The levees are owned by the Feds (Corps of Engineers) and regulated by the Feds (FEMA). It only makes sense that Federal money be used to build them. The city claims that the Feds will pay us back. That may take 20 years, if ever, all the while we are paying interest on the loans. Even if they do pay us back the principle we will never see the full amount.
What’s the solution? I’m not sure, but I will say this; I think it is a complete load of crap that the city is claiming our hands are tied. Not only do we have several qualified department heads that have worked with the project and the Corps for years on this, we have eight city councilors, one that is married to the SD Senate majority leader. We have a mayor and a city attorney that is a former judge. We also have Herseth-Sandlin who is in a leadership role with the Blue Dogs in the Congress, Johnson who is a senior Democrat leader in the Senate and Thune who ranks 5th in the Republican leadership. With all of those people working on it, there is no fricking reason why FEMA and the Corps can’t or won’t pony up.
You might say we have a leadership problem (well we do) but I think this is all a bunch of smoke and mirrors. I think Munson and the city like taking out loans and handing contracts over to private contractors. One wonders if we let the Feds handle the project if they would be so generous?
This whole thing stinks, especially since Munson is gearing up to ask for the money from the council who will probably bend over for him because they don’t want to seem like a bunch of dicks by raising people’s insurance rates.
I think there needs to be a full-scale investigation into why we are not getting the money, I also think that FEMA needs to back the f’ck off about the floodplains if they don’t want to pay to fix them.
This isn’t about flood control and 100 year floods it’s about political games and it is becoming more obvious every day.