Opinion: Making cuts painful but necessary

I awoke Friday morning to 131 emails on my state-issued laptop, most of them inveighing against cuts in state government.

They confirmed what most of us already know: We want programs slashed in order to put our fiscal house in order — just make sure the cuts do not affect me.

Cuts are the flip side of the coin of the realm: When the state begins to think about raising taxes, we’re OK with it unless that tax is on us.

Put another way: Go gore someone else’s ox.

Thursday, House and Senate Republicans rolled out a list of programs and services to be reduced for about $52 million in savings to South Dakota taxpayers. The process, which has taken place over many weeks, has been painful. Let me give you a couple of examples: The State Fair is one of my favorite events. It is the yearly high point for 4-Hers and their families. Did I mention it is one of South Dakota’s oldest traditions? Yet state funding for it has come under attack, year after year, in part because of budget pressures and in part because our state has changed, and rural South Dakota isn’t universally valued by lawmakers.

This shows up in another area, as well: education.

Billed as a cost-cutting move, HB 1150 eliminated small-school factor money that smaller schools receive for open-enrolled students from outside their districts. Never mind that those students cost just as much to educate in a smaller school as do those students who come from within the district. Point being, the bill sponsor said the legislation, which is still in doubt, would save $1 million for the general fund, though other estimates placed that figure at half a million.

Lawmakers are looking in every corner for savings. Our state has dug itself a fiscal hole of at least $40 million for the coming budget year, and probably $75 million next budget year. If we don’t make cuts now, the problem is magnified later on.

Democrats want to balance the budget, as well, and as I wrote earlier in the session, it’s nice to have a common goal. The principal difference is that Republicans are seeking reductions instead of tapping into reserve funds, believing that we likely will need the reserve funds next budget cycle.

The reductions that were itemized Thursday and which prompted the flurry of emails to me Friday illustrate the point made at the top: Cut programs, just don’t cut my program.

Oddly, some of the outcry was for a program not even included on the list: South Dakota Public Broadcasting.

Full disclosure here. I wanted SDPB to share in the sacrifice. After all, it receives more than $4 million annually from South Dakota taxpayers and is a high-profile example of the state competing directly with private enterprise. If the state opened state-sponsored hardware stores, or grocery stores, I’d feel the same way. A state-sponsored radio or TV station is no different.

By the way, I like much of the programming on SDPB, but in a time of budget crisis, we shouldn’t be cutting education or the School for the Deaf but leaving SDPB unscathed.

And what about the cuts in incentive programs that help attract wind power, and pipelines and ethanol plants to our state? Has the Legislature lost its mind? Maybe. But maybe not.

What lawmakers have done (this may change before the session ends) is reduce the lucrativeness of the incentives. The incentives are still here, just not quite as attractive as before. When do “incentives” become “subsidies” for businesses that do not need it?

Last, Gov. Rounds said weeks ago that he wanted specific program-by-program cuts when the Republican caucus suggested his budget could be improved. We’ve done this, but we’ve also added a 2 percent reduction to be handled by the departments themselves. There is wisdom in this. Who better knows the Department of Tourism than its director?

I would not begin to predict which reductions rolled out on Thursday will stand. There is a week left in the Legislature. The phone and fax lines are humming, and e-mails are piling up by the thousands.

This has not been an enjoyable process. Even if you believe that state government has become too large, as I do, you cannot escape the fact that real people are affected by these decisions. Reducing programs and the people that go with them is a task nobody enjoys.

Noel Hamiel, Mitchell, is a Republican who represents Davison and Aurora counties in the state House of Representatives.

Tags: noel hamiel, opinion