Eight-years ago, South Dakota had 12,900 state employees. Today, we have 14,500. That is a growth rate of nearly 12 percent. The state of South Dakota added, on average, a new employee every other day of the entire Rounds’ Administration. All of this while the state’s population remained virtually the same. The best illustration of the current leadership’s failure to keep government lean was when Governor Rounds responded to the downturn by stating that “no longer would we hire anyone who is not essential”. That begs the question – where we previously in the practice of hiring “non-essential” staff? We think the Governor and current leadership answered that question. We believe the growth can be cut to pre-Rounds\Daugaard levels, without a reduction in service. Then we should limit FTE growth to no more than the growth in the state’s overall population.