This of course is no shocker to me, I have been covering this for over 6 months. Every month finance director Eugene ‘Montgomery Burns’ Rowenhorst would come before the city council and say the same thing, “Uh, yeah, um, we are down, um, but we are watching it closely, um, and we will wait until the Christmas shopping season and we may come out ahead (paraphrasing).” Well it did not happen. The councilors would repeatly ask what cuts were being made and his answer would always be the same (see above). Well no cuts were made, business as usual, now the next mayor and council will have to try to fix the turd sandwich that was created, as Staggers so colorfully pointed out;
“Whoever the new mayor is, this person will have to take a look at the budget right away to see if there is a course correction needed,” Staggers said.
Forbes interactive state debt disaster map shows that South Dakota isn’t doing as well as advertised in the State of the State.
http://www.forbes.com/2010/01/20/states-debt-pensions-interactive-map.html
Go figure.
State debts of Nebraska, North Dakota, Iowa and Montana are all in better shape and more manageable than is the South Dakota debt. Pawlenty’s Minnesota is a disaster. Palin’s Alaska is a welfare state wreck collecting -68.6% less tax revenue in 2009. Good thing we have so many fiscally responsible republican governors.
I found it interesting that the state was down -1.1% but Sioux Falls (the city that generates the most revenue for the state) was down over -5%. Who knows though? Rowenhorst and the council have often complained that the State Department of Revenue does a poor job of keeping records. They could have been cheating SF outta millions (from our 2% take) and we wouldn’t know it.
Why doesn’t SF take care of their own tax collections then?
That would be ideal, but state law prevents that.
The state may been a good parent. Hopefully, withheld tax revenue will assist the rescue mayor. Once the city is rid of the corrupt syndicate, there may be funds for rebuilding constitutional democracy.
PG- Kinda like Y2K?
And Vernon wants to add another penny to the sales tax……right???!!!