Governor Daugaard’s Paradigm: Permanent Cuts, Passing the Buck

Last updated on 2011.12.06

As I listen and re-listen to the highlights of Governor Dennis Daugaard's budget address, I hear some important sentences that tell us a lot about the governor's budgetary and political paradigm. There's an odd combination of not passing the buck to future legislatures but passing the buck to local government.

First, consider these lines from Wednesday's speech (I transcribe from radio highlights and apologize for any missed prepositions):

• "We don't want to have this discussion year after year" about making cuts. "We'll be back here again next year talking about more cuts."
• "I'm tired of talking about cuts every year and about freezes. I'm tired of looking at death by a thousand paper cuts. We need to hit the reset button and get our budget to the new norm" of ongoing expenditures equaling ongoing revenues.
• On that band-aid metaphor: "Let's tear it off, let's get the pain over with. Let's set ourselves up for a positive future, a brighter future, instead of... freeze and cut every year."

I hear in these words what could be read as an admirable desire to take the bull by the horns and solve the problem now, no matter how painful. At the very least, it's smart politics: do the hard stuff right away, when voters still love you. Take the heat for a couple years, then give voters time to get over the shock and fall back in love with you by the next election cycle. String out the budget-balancing cuts over the next four legislative sessions, and you keep up a drumbeat of dreary news from Pierre that makes voters think, "Gee, this governor's no fun."

But watch that talk of "the new norm" and the "reset button." Consider school funding: a 10% cut in state aid means we fund 2011 education at... what, 2007 levels? That cut hurts this year. And it keeps hurting. With his all-at-once cuts, Governor Daugaard removes the discussion of cuts from the table next year, but his "new norm" makes this retreat from education funding permanent. Even if we get back to the increases state law used to promise our schools, we fund 2012 education at 2008 levels, 2015 education at 2011 levels, and so on.

Again, this tactic is politically smart. If all goes as planned, we won't hear Democrats saying, "Oh, there goes the Republican governor, proposing another cut to education." But this tactic is socially dangerous. Unless the psychology in Pierre changes significantly, we will never see a 10% increase to restore K-12 funding. This budget proposes a new norm of less commitment ot K-12 education.

Governor Daugaard boils his budget philosophy down to one neat sentence:

The budget must be structurally balanced without raising taxes.

Governor Daugaard here enunciates his fundamental budget principle. I'm fine with the first; I hate debt. But the second part seems a less justified assumption. Why can't taxes go up? What core belief tells Governor Daugaard that the pain of cutting services is so much more acceptable than the pain of increasing state taxes? Why is it acceptable to pass the buck to local districts who more likely than not will say, "We can't fire 14% of our teachers. We need to raise taxes." GOP exec Lucas Lentsch couldn't explain this state-local schizophrenia; the governor needs to explain why it is inherently impossible for the state to raise taxes but perfectly acceptable for local governments to do so.

We need to establish a new norm in which we pay for every penny of our public services. But Governor Daugaard's new norm imposes a permanent retreat from education and other public serviecs that promote South Dakota's quality of life. This retreat is all the more alarming when the governor is not considering another viable option that is no more painful than his proposed cuts: tax increases.

Let's not confuse taking the bull by the horns with pemanently hobbling him. And let's not pass the buck for paying for valuable services entirely to the local governments. Our schools and other public services are worth paying for. Let's at least discuss sharing that cost as a statewide community.