Dear Governor Daugaard:
I want very much to like you. Even though we disagree on policy, I hear a refreshing straightforwardness in your voice. I see a certain unaffectedness in the way you move your hands when you speak. But I also keep hearing things come out of your mouth that make it hard to like you.
For instance, consider the following lines from our local paper that my wife found alarming:
The governor pointed out that many of South Dakota's pioneers could only rely on themselves when they came to the state. "They were on their own---live or die," Daugaard said. "They were the stronger for it.
Don't forget that, aside from hardcore mountain men (whom you do resemble, at least a little, with your craggy good looks), those pioneers very quickly formed communities so life and death would not hinge on their self-reliance. They happily south statehood and adopted a constitution enshrining into law a responsibility to each other to provide education, roads, and other basic benefits of society. I'm not convinced that our pioneer forebears would accept your prescription that local school districts live or die on their own.
You also trouble my affections with your continued inconsistency on tax increases. You insist that the state doesn't have the money to avoid 10% cuts. You refuse to go get that money with any tax increases. Yet you welcome local school districts to raise their own taxes. I have to agree with my party's line here: it sounds like you're passing the buck, leaving local school boards to play the bad guys. This state-local schizophrenia doesn't work. If local districts can have the tax-increase conversation, so can the state.
Finally, while I enjoy straight talk, you're being a little rough and unrealistic on schools and non-profits. In Rapid City this week, you said groups taking a hit from your budget cuts should turn up their fundraising efforts to make up the difference. You also said that organizations that can't withstand a 10% budget cut from the state probably suffer from mismanagement.
The implication that every good non-profit (and by extension of your logic, every school district?) has 10% fat in its budget or 10% mre fundraising potential in its community likely offends the folks I know who are running operations like Habitat for Humanity and the Madison Area Arts Council on shoestring budgets.
I do appreciate the comments I've heard from you that you are proposing these cuts to solve a major problem, not to be popular or get re-elected. I respect that policy focus. But your assurances during the campaign that there was no budget crisis now seem very much like an effort to be popular and get elected.
Again, Governor Daugaard, I want to like you. But I need to hear a little less Dirty Harry and a little more consistency.
My buddy, Barry Smith, pointed out to me a long time ago that all of us can become 10% more effective in our work. The present cuts will not guarantee gains in efficiency. It will only give us 10% less in our funding of the state budget.
Some of the cuts will cost us matching federal dollars for health care programs. The Argus Leader stated in an article that 60,000 more SD residents will be eligible for the assistance in health care programs in 2014. How much will funding for education be cut then?
Cory, did you hear Gov. Daugaard comments on Inside Keloland last Sunday, " We all should share the responsibility to help those who can't help themselves." If so, then why is the state fighting the feds over the recent health care law?
See his comments on Medicaid and how he feels this "shared responsibility" is on the "High Income Stream Physicians ......in the state" See link and go to 19:41 of the video stream.
http://www.keloland.com/videoarchive/?VideoFile=012311ik
Kevin, I need to watch that! Sounds like more cognitive dissonance.
Michael, that makes no sense. We do not have infinite capacity for efficiency. Work requires some minimum amount of inputs, and sheer physics says there will always be some friction, some waste. There comes a point where you can't squeeze another 10% out of your workers. There comes a point where getting any more efficiency will require more energy (studying workflow, developing new strategies and policies, what have you) than you would expend simply doing work the way you do in the status quo.
Take 2
If the cuts go through, innovation will come from necessity. People will do more with less because they will have to.
But Michael, while necessity can motivate innovation, it can also motivate cutting back and just doing less. You think we have infinite capacity to do more with less. But cut 10% from K-12 state aid, and schools will fire teachers and cut programs. Receiving fewer inputs, they will produce fewer outputs. That's not efficiency; that's degradation of our quality of life.
Let me challenge your generalization with an analogy: Suppose there's a gasoline shortage. Some people might be able to go to their workshops, tear apart their engines, retool the parts for maximum efficiency, and then design and install some devices that boost their gas mileage. Good for those genii. Most people will simply drive less. And even the innovators will find there's only so far that you can move a car on a gallon of gas.