State Funding

How ALEC member/state legislator Corey Brown w/ Denny DoGood suckered in the ‘smart’ ones over a $30 million dollar windfall for the state (H/T – GP)

l3wis March 11, 2013 29Comments

Unclaimed property in rural Georgia? Not anymore.

A short time back we asked the question “SD State Treasurer Sattgast must have asked SOS Gant to design a website”?  Go back and read it.  We now ask the question again in light of the November, 2012 election results where the Governor lost his pet projects to the people’s revolt and are now getting SB 235.  For those who do not follow the actions of our esteemed elective officials playing government in Pierre for their enjoyment (and potential profits?) we bring it up again.

SB 235 started out life as an empty piece of legislation. A quirk our legislature has, is the ability to change empty bills to do whatever it so chooses.  This year’s session has created a monster rollup bill to hide a great deal of ugliness covered by pretty gift wrapping with the passage of SB 235.  Everything we the voters of South Dakota did not like about the Governor’s special projects fund and its untraceable / unregulated gifts, are now going to be rolled into this law.  There are some nice things the ALEC funded pushers of this law have allowed to happen to gain supporters but digging deeper into their motives shows the depths of the subterfuge.  A massive amount of new money is falling into the hands of South Dakota politicians to divide up.  To divide up this massive amount of new money, they have sucked in a bunch of naïve Democrats and tea partiers to block future organized efforts to rein it in.  How can you have a petition effort to stop something you are part of? Shame on you Bernie and Jason…

How does this apply to Sattgast, Gant and the unclaimed property fund?  Well, according to reports, big USA banks are rechartering their national banking operations to operate under the rules and laws of the State of South Dakota.  Why is this important? A former SD State Treasurer fought to guarantee the owners of misplaced or unclaimed property the ability to get it returned to them.  SD Treasurer Butler fought Wild Bill Janklow and his legislators all the way to the Supreme Court on our behalf before losing.  Butler became a hated man in Pierre and Citibank, probably still is.  Janklow brought Citibank to South Dakota and he continued to help them, by losing track of the owners of “property” so it could be split without audit.  South Dakota gained a bit and Citibank gained a bunch.   We had to believe the banks without any audit.  Right…

Now we fast forward a few decades to this year’s session.  The Mitchell Daily Republic has an excellent discussion of SB 235.

This surge was fueled when several major banking corporations, such as Citi and Wells Fargo, consolidated their charters in South Dakota for tax reasons. That means money left behind in accounts throughout the nation will become unclaimed property here.

The part they do not tell you is how the state gets to keep all these funds.  Remember the state’s unclaimed property website?  It has been made impossible to use.  We had wondered why it was designed so badly. Now we know.  People looking for their property will never find it.  Now add millions of unclaimed accounts or property to this fund having originated in other states or countries.  If you did not have a chance before, guess what opportunity you have now?  Now think of the millions of account holders from around the world who will never see their investments.

So, to steal money from unsuspecting depositors, insurance policies, safety deposit box holders and more, South Dakota has designed a website to make sure the scam works.

The normal dilly-dally by the state legislature

l3wis March 4, 2013 4Comments

This is why I don’t blog as much about the state legislature, it’s like a freaking broken record. They do this every year. (notice the cartoon is from 2009)Waste enormous amounts of time on guns and abortion without really addressing the budget;

The South Dakota Legislature’s budget-writing committee has delayed a decision on how much revenue to expect for the rest of the current year and the budget year that begins July 1.
The Joint Appropriations Committee had planned to make a formal decision Monday. But House Appropriations Chairman Fred Romkema of Spearfish says the decision is delayed until at least Tuesday because the Legislature has not settled the fate of some other bills that could affect revenue collections.
The committee later this week will put the finishing touches on the spending plan so the Legislature can pass the budget by Friday, the end of the main run of this year’s legislative session.
Gov. Dennis Daugaard has proposed a $4.1 billion state budget, with $1.3 billion to come from state tax funds.

Oh, but they had time to thumb their noses at voters with this proposal;

A comprehensive South Dakota economic development fund proposed by state legislators would be paid for with contractors excise tax collections and money from unclaimed property.
Republican Sen. Corey Brown, of Gettysburg, outlined the Building South Dakota Fund to the House State Affairs Committee on Monday. The panel voted unanimously to move the bill to the House floor.
The measure was introduced at a bipartisan news conference last week. It would focus on providing tax breaks for large projects that the state otherwise might not attract. It also would provide money for training workers and helping communities build the infrastructure needed to encourage development.
Republicans and Democrats have worked for the past two months to find a compromise plan.
The bill received supportive testimony from nearly two dozen people.

At least it is not coming out of the general fund, and supported by contractors, BUT voters clearly told them last November, NO HANDOUTS TO LARGE CORPORATIONS, and what do they do? Well at least job training is included, but I have a feeling that will be trickle down. You know, if the state was attracting businesses that paid living wages, I would be all for these incentives.