REFORMING STATE GOVERNMENT

Time to Make State Government Smaller, Smarter, Open & Accountable

1. State government spending is out of control. Since 2005 alone, our state budget has grown by 32 percent and since 2003 it has grown by a stunning 53 percent.
2. The Rounds\Daugaard Administration has submitted a budget that will spend $107 million more than we will take in – the largest budget deficit in South Dakota history.
3. State government has grown a staggering 5.5 percent over the past seven years. Had we held spending increases at 3 percent a year, as Democrats have sponsored legislation to do, we would have saved $522 million or a whopping $74 million a year. Had we done just this piece alone in reforming government, we would be debating what ato do with a surplus today, instead of debating how to deal with a record state budget deficit.
4. The problem here is not, as the Governor attempts to say, the fact that we face a national economic recession. We have been in a recession for a year and a half. Yet, the Rounds\Daugaard Administration has submitted unbalanced budgets in seven of the past eight years.
5. Rainy day and stimulus funds have been raided to balance our budgets, taxes and fees have been raised.
6. The state has added 1,500 new jobs in the past seven years – a 13 percent increase even though our state’s population has remained fairly stagnant. To put it another way, during the entire seven plus years of the Rounds\Daugaard Administration, we have added a new state employee every other day.
7. The state has 1,800 contracts, many of which are no bid, potentially costing the state tens of millions of dollars a year.
8. State government spending is out of control – multiple state airplanes when few are needed or justified; a $200,000 a year Federal Lobbyist when we already have three – their names are Senators Johnson and Thune and Rep. Herseth-Sandlin.