Thursday, December 4, 2008

Re-establishing priorities…

Today Governor Rounds announced his budget proposal for next year, which included tapping into the general reserves, and—more importantly—the property tax reduction reserve. Read more highlights here…

Dipping into the property tax reduction reserve is essentially a property tax increase on the citizens of South Dakota who are already weighed down heavily with property tax burden.
Over the past several years, the South Dakota Legislature has had the practice of using reserves to balance the budget. Now, during tough times, our reserves are in great jeopardy; as is our commitment to education and other areas of need.

So what do we do?

Unfortunately, we must endure some pain. And it will take a keen eye towards establishing high performance teams in our administration to develop benchmarks and performance measurements to get the job done. It will take strong leadership to bring us out of the structural deficit we are in, to bring this state to a position of fiscal strength once again.

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