South DaCola

Editorial Cartoonist from South Dakota

State Funding

Kristi Noem State Funding State Legislature Taxes

Half-Penny Sales tax increase was a bad idea from the get go

l3wis 2Comments

Noem keeps up with the tradition of past Republican Governors in our state, telling us how poor we are right before the legislative session, then once it is over they start spending money on pet projects (mostly corporate handouts). Oldest trick in the book. This even comes after added revenue from online sales and the half penny increase;

Noem announced her budget plans Tuesday, which urged state departments to tighten their belts as they head into a difficult financial year. That plan included not having any discretionary inflation increases for overall K-12 education, Medicaid providers and state employees.

But that means there will be no change between target teacher salaries from 2020 to 2021, making it the third year the state has fallen behind on its promise to keep teacher pay competitive if the budget passes

I said it was a bad idea to raise taxes because I knew this would happen, the money went straight into the general fund for the Governor and legislature to waste. Even after several years, it still makes me livid that the legislature didn’t find the money elsewhere (that they have in investment funds) to pay teachers more. Now we are back to square one, and an unneeded tax increase to boot. Don’t get me started. Our State government has been inept for decades, and gets worse by the day.

Kristi Noem State Funding

The Myth about State Vendors

l3wis 5Comments

Believe it or not, not all services the state requires can be accomplished by private businesses located in our state. I know that may come as a shock to you, but that is just the way it is. Even if the state is purchasing a product or service from a state owned business, there is usually no requirements that business has to purchase other materials needed to complete the project in state. Just like private business, the state has to use the best resources available at the most reasonable price.

You may disagree with the state using a Minnesota firm for their idiotic meth campaign, but it likely went through proper channels. I have worked in printing for over 25 years, and the government, whether that is Federal, State or even local (like county, school and city) buys mountains of products out of state. I have bid on and won jobs from Minnesota, California, Colorado, Florida, Missouri, New York, and many more out of state agencies and cities including Portland and San Francisco. Even state private non-profit agencies like the Chamber and other trade organizations buy products from out of state.

While it is disheartening to many people, this ‘national’ commerce actually saves taxpayers money (or it should) because you are getting the best product for it’s value in a timely manner. That is NOT always the case (like the meth campaign), but most of the time. Simply saying we have to use a local firm could end up costing us a lot more in the end. Look at the administration building and Midco aquatic center, very expensive and both with issues, we used local contractors.

Just Sayin’

Property Taxes South Dakotans State Funding State Legislature Taxes

While most South Dakotans barely scrape by, $355 Billion sits here in tax free trust havens

l3wis 6Comments

How much is $355 Billion? It is 710 times the City of Sioux Falls yearly budget. Yeah, it’s a lot of dough, and most South Dakotans don’t have a clue our legislators are allowing this while our benefit to the state coffers is virtually ZERO;

In recent years, countries outside the US have been cracking down on offshore wealth. But according to an official in a traditional tax haven, who has watched as wealth has fled that country’s coffers for the US, the protections offered by states such as South Dakota are undermining global attempts to control tax dodging, kleptocracy and money-laundering. “One of the core issues in fighting a guerrilla war is that if the guerrillas have a safe harbour, you can’t win,” the official told me. “Well, the US is giving financial criminals a safe harbour, and a really effective safe harbour – far more effective than anything they ever had in Jersey or the Bahamas or wherever.”

That means legislators are nodding through bills that they do not understand, at the behest of an industry that is sucking in ever-greater volumes of money from all over the world. If this was happening on a Caribbean island, or a European micro-principality, it would not be surprising, but this is the US. Aren’t ordinary South Dakotans concerned about what their state is enabling?

“The voters don’t have a clue what this means. They’ve never seen a feudal society, they don’t have a clue what they’re enabling,” Wismer said. “I don’t think there are 100 people in this state who understand the ramifications of what we’ve done.”

That’s what we get with ONE party rule in South Dakota (and it doesn’t even matter which party). If we could even implement a teeny-tiny tax on this wealth, it would help us out tremendously in education, road funding and healthcare as well as many other things. We could eliminate video lottery, the food tax, reduce property taxes and help address our drug crisis in the state. But we continue to elect the greedy and the stupid (who are one in the same).

SF City Council SF School District Sioux Falls State Funding State Legislature

Sioux Falls City Council does not need to raise property taxes

l3wis 10Comments

Besides the fact that the county and school district are going opt-out crazy (even though the SFSD has a $11 Billion in valuations and we are looking at another record year in building permits) the city council gets to vote on property tax increases at the end of September (historically).  The state allows between 2%-3%. Last year the council voted 7-1 to increase it by 2.1% (Stehly was the lone NO vote).

Yesterday during the city council meeting, councilor Pat Starr pointed out that while the city only needs a 25% reserve fund they have around 38%.

There really is NO viable reason the city needs to vote for this increase. It will be interesting to see how the city council votes on this increase since I can’t remember the last time it has ever been voted down. I think it has passed every single year for at least the last decade.

We all know that the RS5 rarely votes for the citizens, so it will be fun to listen to their reasons why they need to vote for this unneeded increase. I have often argued with record growth in our city (and valuations) we shouldn’t have to increase the percentage the city taxes.

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