Somethings never change in South Dakota; fall harvest, pheasant hunting, influenza scares and Mikey’s ‘The Sky is Falling’ speaking tour;

Revenue to the state of South Dakota was down by $33 million in the first three months of this fiscal year, Gov. Mike Rounds said Monday, setting the stage for a painful legislative session next year.

At the same time, thousands of people have been added to the Medicaid entitlement program, which pays some medical expenses for the poor. The 6,400 people who have qualified for the state/federal program since August of last year could represent another $40 million to $50 million in expenses, creating a “huge budget problem,” Rounds said.

Yes, blame the poor for all of our problems, nevermind the rich in the state don’t pay their fair share of taxes or that we handout no bid contracts like candy.

It wasn’t all gloom and doom. Business optimism is on the rebound, and unemployment in South Dakota remains low compared with the national average.

Yet we have the highest number of working moms and the lowest hourly pay of any state in the nation. Unemployment may be low, but underemployment is high.

Heidepriem said he opposes any increases.

“For my part, I don’t think you can tax yourself out of a recession,” he said.

And imagine that, it is the democrat who is the fiscal conservative in all this.

This story is a few days old, but a great read;

On Tuesday, March 11th, 2008, somebody — nobody knows who — made one of the craziest bets Wall Street has ever seen. The mystery figure spent $1.7 million on a series of options, gambling that shares in the venerable investment bank Bear Stearns would lose more than half their value in nine days or less. It was madness — “like buying 1.7 million lottery tickets,” according to one financial analyst.

But what’s even crazier is that the bet paid.

At the close of business that afternoon, Bear Stearns was trading at $62.97. At that point, whoever made the gamble owned the right to sell huge bundles of Bear stock, at $30 and $25, on or before March 20th. In order for the bet to pay, Bear would have to fall harder and faster than any Wall Street brokerage in history.

The very next day, March 12th, Bear went into free fall. By the end of the week, the firm had lost virtually all of its cash and was clinging to promises of state aid; by the weekend, it was being knocked to its knees by the Fed and the Treasury, and forced at the barrel of a shotgun to sell itself to JPMorgan Chase (which had been given $29 billion in public money to marry its hunchbacked new bride) at the humiliating price of … $2 a share. Whoever bought those options on March 11th woke up on the morning of March 17th having made 159 times his money, or roughly $270 million. This trader was either the luckiest guy in the world, the smartest son of a bitch ever or…

I got a newsletter today from Senator Johnson. I found this pie graph from the New York Times interesting. I wonder how many teabagger heads exploded after reading this. I’m sure something like “Lying Socialists!” was shouted in living rooms across the state. The truth hurts.

I have always enjoyed Matt’s columns, he is one of the few independent voices at the AL. This part of his Sunday’s column was a real zinger;

U.S. Sen. John Thune has shown little inclination to offend the Republican Party or corporate interests. On the contrary, they appear to have him on speed dial.

When Congress finally found the courage to curtail the brazen abuses that the credit card industry long has been inflicting on consumers, U.S. Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin voted against the bill – the only Democrat in the House to do so.

U.S. Sen. Tim Johnson was the sole Democrat in the Senate to vote against the bill. Johnson also is a member of the Senate Banking Committee, which, when omens of financial doom were everywhere, completely whiffed.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with Sioux Falls mayoral candidate, Mike Heuther this week after he told me he quit working at First Premier, (paraphrasing). “I won’t do the bidding of Denny Sanford.” That’s good to hear Mike, you should pass that message onto your Democratic counterparts in Washington. Don’t bother with Ironic Johnny, he is a lost cause.

Matt also states the obvious in his column;

So get set for more antics once financial industry reform replaces health care reform on Capitol Hill.

More disinformation.

More duplicity.

More defamation.

More lies.

More scare tactics.

More name-calling.

Get out!

The August Financial Report was released, and it seems we collected $2 million dollars less in retail taxes in August 2009 then we did in August 2008. If this trend continues we could see us almost -4% from 2008.

Let’s put our rose colored glasses on, raise water and sewer rates, raise retail taxes, raise property taxes, raise vehicle registration, and over budget for deficit spending in 2010. We’ll pull out;

The foundation commissioned a national poll that surveyed 4,004 people between June 18 and July 13, including 400 South Dakotans. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. Among its key findings:

- 29 percent of respondents in South Dakota said they had problems paying their mortgage, rent or heating bills.

-  44 percent said they’ve cut back on the amount they spend on food; 45 percent have cut back on saving for retirement.

-  And 22 percent have had a friend or relative stay with them because of a lack of money.

“That 22 percent may be the single most striking figure in the survey data for me,” said Kevin Walker, Northwest’s chief executive officer. “That tells me one out of five South Dakotans have provided emergency or transitional shelter. That really brings home the impact of the recession on families and communities.”

Having trouble keeping up? Stop whining and move in with a friend, we gotta city to build God Dammit!

Construction values are 50% of what they were last year at this time;

The number of building permits issued in Sioux Falls through August this year is up from the same time in 2008, though the value of that construction is down significantly.

Sioux Falls has issued 4,308 permits this year, up from 4,242 in 2008 but still down substantially from the 4,564 permits issued in 2007, according to city records.

But the total construction value in 2009 of $176.7 million is down from 2008, when the numbers through August were at $294.1 million.

There have been 681 new single-family, two-family and multiple-family permits issued in 2009 at a value of $71.3 million.

That compares to 1,016 new residential permits approved through August of 2008 at a value of $114.6 million.

This is no surprise to me, if you have been following the local economy as I have since last fall, you could have seen this coming a mile away. But city hall put their blindfolds on and approved a tax increase to build new roads anyway. While this is bad news for our local economy, it is good news to taxpayers. It means we can hold off on building new roads until it picks up, therefore saving us millions in the CIP budget, money we can either put in reserves or use on infrastructure upgrades (which should be the priority anyway). If developers can’t pony up their 50% towards new roads, taxpayers shouldn’t pony up either. According to the July financial report, taxpayers have put in $1.6 million into the new fund this year while developers have put in a whopping $90,000. Yes, we have put in 17x more money then the devolpers. Yet, the SD MSM doesn’t see a story here? Go figure. Of course this would require a new council that isn’t spend happy. In the informational meeting on Monday, councilor Beninga had a pity party about not having enough time to offer amendments to 2010’s budget, which probably means he will offer very few if any at all. The funny part of the conversation was when clerk Owen informed all the councilors that Staggers already turned in his (he was absent from the meeting). They seem shocked, and one councilor joked, “He has been probably working on them for a year.” Not quite. Then they asked if they could see them, and she replied that she would have to get permission from Staggers to show them. The city attorney’s office apparently is unaware of the new open records bill that started July 1. Quen Be De also got on her soapbox about wanting to raise the retail tax by a penny, and joked that not all the wisdom in the state resides in Pierre in the winter. While I do agree with her statement, I would have to say most legislators probably have more intellect in the tip of their little toe then she has in her whole body.

I can’t wait for the retail tax increase legislation to fail. Maybe I will throw a party.

We also should have been spending more money on maintaining existing infrastructure instead of squandering it on $3 million dollar streets to nowhere;

The next mayor of Sioux Falls could face some tough decisions unless sales tax revenues begin growing at a healthy pace by next year.

Even rosy revenue forecasts call for the city to use a generous amount of reserve funds over the next several years to keep up with growth in the city’s general operating fund, which pays for basic services such as public safety and snow plowing. A new mayor takes office next spring.

And Finance Director, Eugene ‘Montgomery Burns’ Rowenhorst wants to give his advice to the next mayor;

The city’s revenue forecasts call for a 4 percent rate of growth in sales taxes next year, and 6 percent each year following 2010. Absent that type of growth, city Finance Director Eugene Rowenhorst predicts the next mayor will be forced to find “expense controls.”

Remember when local economist Mark Weber warned Sioux Falls about the economy and preparing for the worse? Well guess what, they were not listening, once again;

Sales tax collections in Sioux Falls through July are down 0.4 percent from last year, causing some city councilors to worry that a projected sales tax growth of 4 percent in 2010 is too optimistic.

Eugene Rowenhorst, the city finance director, told the City Council during a budget hearing Monday that sales tax revenues did not grow at all in the first seven months of the year. The council originally had budgeted for a 6.5 percent increase this year, but that later was modified to a projected 2 percent increase.

It’s not like you couldn’t see this coming for months and months. It was pretty obvious that SF was not immune to the recession, but it doesn’t stop Eugene from spinning it even more;

But the fact that the tax revenue is down this far into the year has some councilors worried about next year. During the budget meeting, council member Kermit Staggers questioned why the 2010 proposed budget projects a 4 percent increase in sales tax.

Rowenhorst’s answer was that the economy is expected to improve by next year, and the 4 percent increase is a middle ground between the 2 percent growth that eventually was projected for 2009 and the historic 6 percent to 7 percent increase in sales tax receipts.

“We’re coming out of the recession and getting back to a more normal growth phase,” Rowenhorst said.

Sorry, Eugene, I have trouble taking the word of a man who basically ignored economic trends by not preparing for the worst. I believe Munson did not care what happened with the economy, it is his last year in office, and he had a legacy to build. How do you justify cutting the budget when you can ‘pretend’ everything is going to be fine down the road. I have often been told by many people that Munson is a positive man, and I believe that, but IMO, lying to yourself and the public to get what you want is very negative, very negative indeed. I have been saying it for years that Munson has put his priorities above the public’s best interest, and while McKennan Park residents will be enjoying a new $170,000 shitter and the Rhino’s at the zoo have a new shed to sleep in the rest of us and the next mayor are going to have to figure out how to fix this shortfall and overspending by Munson.

The first thing the next mayor needs to do on day one is fire Eugene and anyone who is loyal to him in the finance office, and employ someone who is in touch with reality.

I had to read this editorial twice to make sure, they were saying what I thought they were. I’m shocked!

The allowance to raise property taxes by 3 percent or the rate of inflation each year is just that. An allowance.

It’s not an automatic function that city officials should customarily build into each year’s budget.

Yes, but that is the nature of socialistic, tax and spend, big government Republicans, they don’t care if the average Joe can make ends meet, they only care about their ‘ends’ and ‘behinds’.

As residents continue recovering from the economic downturn, a respite from property tax increases undoubtedly would be well timed.

Indeed, there are times when even in the face of economic downturns it makes sense to spend in ways that take advantage of unique opportunities – such as issuing needed bonds when interest rates are low.

It’s hard to see how automatically raising property taxes fits into this category, though.

Actually, it’s the exact opposite. The 2010 budget offers a unique chance to hold the line on property tax increases.

City officials need to offer a better reason than they’ve stated why Sioux Falls should pass on this opportunity.

You mean, you agree with Staggers for once? Get out!