South DaCola

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Education funding Elections SF School District Taxes

Sioux Falls School District bond election to use ‘Vote Centers’

l3wis 4Comments

So the School District couldn’t say a damn thing at Monday night’s board meeting, but seem to sing like a canary once the cameras are off. They are proposing to run the election, in which we will be asked to bond well over $300 million dollars, using super precincts or vote centers.

While I am not a fan of vote centers, they CAN work if you work them correctly. Unfortunately, this is NOT the scenario we want. Why?

First, the obvious. This is a lot of money. We should open this election to the entire community at ALL precincts and we should put it in with the general election. Having a special election in the middle of September with only a handful of precincts guarantees a very low voter turnout. The school district argues they must have their levees and budget set by September 30. Poppycock, they can amend the budget and levees at any time and have admitted this already on KSOO and in the Argus Leader.

Second, Bev Chase with the School District, who will be running this election, has a terrible record on running elections. They should be contracting with the county to handle this. Last time she ran a stand alone election in 2017 there was a myriad of problems, absentee voting was locked up when she was on lunch break, many people who voted were not reported to the SOS data base that they voted in the election (I have had at least 3 voters tell me this), there were NO precincts in the entire northern part of the city.

Third, we have no idea what kind of E-Poll book they will be using and who will be running the software. This could open the election up to tampering, hacking, and voter fraud. If the software does not work correctly, people could vote multiple times at multiple precincts. Hart Interactive who originally created the hardware and software for E-Poll books no longer supports them. BPro tried to get them to work in the primaries and failed so miserably that the SOS said she will not allow their use in the General. So what tricks does the School District have up their sleeve?

Who will tabulate the votes? A hand count isn’t going to cut it. This needs to be tabulated and data needs to be generated so the SOS knows who voted. This is a large sum of money that will increase our taxes over the next 25-30 years, this isn’t electing some yahoo to the school board.

We have made the local chapter of the ACLU aware of these issues, some may be a violation of Federal Election laws, hopefully they will look into it.

economy Education funding Sioux Falls

Is SD’s anti-union, right-to-work, low wages hurting us?

l3wis 5Comments

Well in the rankings business, it is;

“Most states point with great pride to the quality and availability of their workers, as well as government-sponsored programs to train them,” CNBC’s report said.

It rated states based on:

  • The education level of their workforce.
  • The number of available employees.
  • The states’ demonstrated ability to retain college-educated workers.
  • The concentration of STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — workers, increasingly in demand by business.

“We measure workforce productivity based on each state’s economic output per job,” it continued. “We look at the relative success of each state’s worker training programs in placing their participants in jobs. We also consider union membership and the states’ right-to-work laws. While organized labor contends that a union workforce is a quality workforce, that argument, more often than not, does not resonate with business.”

South Dakota ranked a somewhat concerning No. 39 in this category. It can’t be based on productivity, which is always strong, so I’m guessing our low unemployment and potentially comparatively low educational attainment might have hurt us.

I truly think more organized labor will turn these numbers around.

Education funding SF School District State Funding State Legislature

I told you so?

l3wis 12Comments

epa0899l

I’m still spitting nails

This is the first of several stories we will be reading about how the Governor’s moronic, ignorant and mostly selfish plan to increase teacher pay falls short;

The legislation promised to give teachers significant raises and give South Dakota schools the ability to compete. But now that districts are doing the math, the Governor’s plan isn’t adding up.

I knew from the beginning, from the dirty track record of Rounds and Daugaard when it came to education funding, that his half-penny increase was a ploy to test the waters of a sales tax increase. Don’t we remember the same promises about Video Lottery?

While the half-penny increase will affect all of our wallets, you will soon see the funding to teachers diluted and the money basically going to property tax relief for the largest property owners in the state.

I warned of the precedent.

It’s easy to point our fingers at the Republicans for acting like a flock of sheep (well, not all of them), but it is the Democrats whose chickenshit votes to push this over a 2/3rds majority that really screwed the chicken on this one, when they all knew that there is millions in the education trust fund that could fill the gap of teacher pay WITHOUT RAISING TAXES!

What a mess, and the worst part about it is we will all be paying more for a broken plan that hasn’t even been implemented yet.

 

Education funding State Funding State Legislature Taxes

HB1182 passes senate, one of the most ignorant decisions the State Legislature has ever made

l3wis 4Comments

I have been following the state legislature for many years, and passing a regressive sales tax increase to give raises to one sector of public employment is probably one of the worst things I have seen our state legislature do in recent memory (besides all the social issues).

I won’t rant about all the other options we had to increase teacher pay without raising taxes, we have seen those options (there are hundreds). One of the best that was actually presented to me a few years ago by representative Hunhoff (who voted yes) was pulling from our gigantic state reserves. We didn’t hear much from Hunhoff on that idea this session. He must have forgotten about it.

So what happened? The only ones voting against this were the cheap skates of the legislature, who would vote against any tax increase. But what about the other Republicans? Are they so scared of property tax and and income tax that they voted to tax the poorest of our society more? Most likely.

But the big losers in this debate? The SD Democratic party. For years they cry about the food tax and general regression of sales taxes to begin with, and when they had a chance to stand up to this and present their own plan they suddenly turn into a gigantic flock of chickenshits.

It doesn’t surprise me our doofus of a governor would concoct such an ignorant plan, I just never imagined 2/3 of our legislature was this moronic to go along with it.

I’ll pray for you tonight.

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