Thinking Ahead...

Governor Rounds announced Tuesday that he is placing a hold on executive branch spending, including a limit on out of state travel, new office purchases, and new hires within the executive branch. All this is an effort to prepare for an expected lull in sales tax revenues, 20% of which the state receives around the holiday season. Read more here…

Preparing for the worst and conservatively estimating revenues is crucial toward creating a sustainable budget and keeping the state out of the red. We went through this very same thing in 2001 and 2002 with the City of Brookings. Tough times call for tough measures, and that includes reducing expenditures rather than using reserves. For the past several years, our state has been liberal in using reserves to ‘balance’ the budget. It is times like these that previous poor fiscal practices catch up with us.

Governor Rounds is doing the right thing, and we need to support him.