Here are highlights from the Joint Committee on Appropriations (JCA) from this past week.

We began with reports from the Board of Regents and our six state universities. Roughly 38% of the on going funding for our universities comes from the state. Their specific requests for the coming year include $19 million for a mineral industries building at SDSMT (Mines), $2 million to renovate Berg Hall at SDSU, and $435,000 for a precision ranching initiative at the west river Ag Experiment Station. They also encouraged support for the governor’s proposed $50 million state contribution to a planned $200 million endowment fund for needs-based scholarships. Besides the requests for money, there was discussion about the past decade of declining enrollments, the current impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic, and an update on the work being done to study and consider efficiencies to strengthen/support/right-size the state’s higher education system. That efficiency study is the result of Senate Bill 55 from last year and has a goal to make recommendations by September 2021 and report to the governor and Legislature next November.

Tuesday, we heard reports from the school for the deaf and the school for the blind and visually impaired. They do great work supporting the unique education and employment needs of our blind and deaf students and their families. 

The attorney general’s office also presented on Tuesday. They updated us on the work their staff of 190 does to keep us safe. They shared that in 2020 they received over 43,000 consumer protection calls and another 789 calls of Medicaid fraud that resulted in 54 new cases being opened. They continue to battle the growing problem of meth and reported a record 3,766 meth arrests statewide in 2020. They asked for $3 million to support various projects and an increase of another $800,000 for on-going needs.

Wednesday the focus was the Department of Education and its request for over $814 million for the coming year. The new department secretary, Tiffany Sanderson, provided updates and statistics on career and technical education, dual credit, special education, K-12 education, and a host of programs, grants and initiatives. The governor’s recommendation to spend $900,000 towards civics education was discussed at length. The social studies curriculum (government, social studies, debate/speech) is reviewed every seven years and this is the year for that review. That makes the governor’s extra emphasis on civics fit in perfectly. She mentioned a “We the People” program that integrates civics into other subject areas throughout a student’s K-12 education as one option that will be considered.

We finished the week with a focus on our four technical education colleges. Enrollment the past four years in our tech schools has been pretty stable and they continue to see near 100% placement for their graduates. One special item discussed was the governor’s proposal to pay off $21 million of bonds, which would save the state and the tech. schools over $1.6 million a year.

These are a few highlights from one week in the JCA. If you want to know more about any of these items you can hear the discussions and see the PowerPoint presentations for the JCA (Joint Committee on Appropriations) through sdlegislature.gov.

As I finish writing this, its time to pack and head back to Pierre. Monday at 7 a.m, your JCA will be back at work. There is no shortage of budgets to review and questions to ask as we move through the challenging work of balancing the state’s budget.

In service to God and you,

John Mills, Representative, District 4, mills4sd@gmail.com OR John.Mills@sdlegislature.gov