Last updated on 2012.12.11
Hey, eager readers! The latest Madville Times poll asks you this pressing question:
How will referring HB 1234 to a public vote affect the chances of passing the extra-penny sales tax?
- Tax less likely to pass
- No effect either way
- Tax more likely to pass
Register what you think in the poll atop the near-right sidebar. If you want some help weighing the options, consider the following opinions:
Mitchell School District Superintendent Joe Graves and other supes want you to believe that the South Dakota Education Association's current effort to place Governor Dennis Daugaard's education reform legislation on the November ballot will "confuse" voters and hurt the chances of passing the extra-penny sales tax that SDEA helped place on this year's ballot. The $175–$180 million generated by that tax would be split evenly between K-12 education and Medicaid.
Fellow educator and blogger LK contends that the supes' doubts are just groundwork for scapegoating teachers if the sales tax measure fails. LK is at least right to suggest that the supes aren't stating their full reason for trying to tell teachers to stop their referendum drive, since it doesn't make much sense for superintendents to think that teachers are incapable of educating the electorate on the main points of two independent ballot measures.
Frequent commenter Troy Jones says some "smart electoral Dems" fret to him that the opportunity to reject HB 1234 will serve as a sort of safety valve, allowing voters to do something good for education (and yes, rejecting HB 1234 will be very good for education) and soothe their conscience with that good deed as they turn down the sales tax. Jones's thesis rejects the "voter confusion" argument: voters have to understand the ballot measures pretty clearly to carry out such conscientious calculus. But I wonder: I know a few smart Dems, and none of them have expressed such a fear to me.
Neighbor Charlie Johnson got me thinking that we can at least make an argument that the presence of HB 1234 should drive more yes votes on the sales tax. If folks really think HB 1234's merit pay and bonuses for math-science teachers are good ideas, they have an obligation to find a way to pay for those new policies. When they vote yes on HB 1234, they'll have a funding mechanism right across from their pencils on the ballot. Perhaps good conscience will strike these policymakers and drive them to pay for the reforms they want.
Now tell us all what you think! Vote above, then register your analysis here in the sidebar. South Dakota awaits your profound punditry!
Poll stays open until Wednesday breakfast, after which we'll discuss the results. Vote now... and tell your friends!
Charlie Johnson is living in Spearfish?
In SD, we don't have to live nearby to be neighbors.
But I bet you knew that, KW.
It will be interesting to compare your aye and nay votes against reality later, Mr. H. Certainly your blog has become more interesting and interactive than other blogs and that drives legions of web bloggers here, but I still bet most of them are your liberal friends who will vote with a burlap bag over their head and a mouth filled with a wadded ballgag of a failed tin foil hat build that they've been testing.
Bob's right, Kevin! Blogging has broadened my definition of neighbor.
Grudz, what's your impression of the balance in the comment section? I get plenty of folks here disagreeing with me. Maybe that's the next poll I should do: honest to goodness market research to try to figure out where my audience lies on the Steve Sibson–Stace Nelson–Troy Jones–Jeff Barth—Jana-Anne-Bill Fleming–Karl Marx spectrum.
But that's for later: right now the question is the supes' contention on interaction effects between HB 1234 and the sales tax! Keep those votes coming! The fate of the Republic hangs in the balance!
Call me a cynic but you cannot assume that added tax revenues will guarantee an additional $175 million for schools and Medicare. What is to stop the lawmakers from diverting money from the current 4%?
Sales tax goes into the general fund. It is the legislature that will decide each year how the tax revenue is spent and not the "yes" votes on the ballot in November. You can say the 25% sales tax increase will be split between education and Medicare but it may not work out that way. I happen to remember promises made that video lottery would be the savior of education funding.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't support a tax increase. At least some of it would go to education and Medicare. If the tax rate goes up, you can be assured that it will stay forever.
Actually, Michael, the initiated measure is written to specify exactly where the money goes. (See IM 15 text here.) The money doesn't go to the general fund. It goes to a new fund called the "Moving South Dakota Forward" fund. Half the money goes to education, half to Medicaid. The proposed law makes the money about as ironclad as it can.
Now sure, the Legislature could walk in and rewrite this law after we pass it. But reversing an initiated measure approved by the people doesn't seem politically wise.
I'm willing to entertain future possibilities for things that could go wrong. But IM 15 itself does what it says it does.
Well, I suspect that referring HB 1234 would make the extra penny sales tax bill less likely to pass. But not much less. And I don't think it'll matter anyway. The people aren't going to go for a tax rise in the current socioeconomic climate.
It's too bad that teachers have to get scapegoated here. Anyone who thinks that South Dakota teachers exhibit greed is either ignorant, crazy, or both. However, I have already seen that South Dakota has plenty of ignorant, crazy people.
All the really greedy teachers (if there are any) would have long since moved to Wyoming or some other state where they can get paid half again as much as they get here. But the very notion of a greedy teacher constitutes an oxymoron. Greedy lawyers, plenty. Greedy politicians, too many. Greedy teachers? Heck, that's like going into a bar and asking for a shot of alcohol-free gin.
I think the people of this state (and most states) have begun to suspect that increased revenue for education would not go to teachers, anyway. It would go almost anywhere in the system except to the teachers.
I sense a growing cynicism on the part of the American public that tax revenues are being misused and abused, wasted and appropriated, sometimes with great cynicism, as the recent notorious party in Vegas demonstrated. (Or is it parties? Seems to me that there was more than one of those "shindigs" that we, the little people, paid for.)
I think that the penny sales tax initiative will fail, in large part because of the aforementioned cynicism. The referral would, in my opinion, make a lost cause just a little more lost, that's all.
Are not the schools supposed to get guaranteed increases in funding by law?
The legislature ignored that law and balanced the budget.
So if it passes we will have one percent set aside for education and medicare only. Will not the legislature just DECREASE the appropriation from other sources, but still increasing funding to all government entities that suffered recent cuts in funding?
Stan, are you saying that having HB 1234 to vote on would stoke that cynicism? Is that the mechanism by which the referral hurts the initiative?
Michael, the proposed law prohibits exactly that kind of reduction in general fund expenditures from current levels. The folks who drafted the bill considered exactly the concerns you are raising.
The legislators who crafted the school funding formula knew that future legislatures could change the law. That's the case with every proposal; if the prospect of future amendments and repeals were a reason not to vote for a piece of legislation, we'd never legislate.
I disagree with Graves on the issue, but he has a point. If the state has $15 million to bribe teachers into indoctrinating students with Obama’s International-based Common Core Standards, $8.4 million more to train teachers on how to indoctrinate with Common Core Standards, and 10s of millions more to set up a testing system to make sure the Kool Aid is having the desired affect…then why do we need to raise taxes and give even more money to public education? Simply shut down the implementation of Obama's education policy and add that money to the state aid formula.
But wait a minute, Steve: that's not the point Graves is making. He says we need the sales tax. He says putting HB 1234 on the ballot will confuse voters into marking "No" on the sales tax. That $15 million you cite (which isn't appropriated by HB 1234 in its current form) is an issue whether or not we run the referendum. Whether or not we refer it, Daugaard's people can argue what you say above: "We're adding $15M to education! We don't need a new sales tax!" What's the ballot-measure interaction effect that increases the potency of that anti-tax argument?
"Steve: that’s not the point Graves is making."
I said that I disagreed with Graves position, but it is still true that we do not need HB1234 and we do not need more taxes.
"What’s the ballot-measure interaction effect that increases the potency of that anti-tax argument?"
I don't understand the question. If the media would tell the truth, then the people will understand that we have a $100 million plus budget surplus. Daugaard is using that to implement ObamaCare and Obama's jobs for corporations education policy. And the SD Chamber of Commerce has no problems with either. When are you going to realize that both political parties are misleading their members because they are both controlled by the same special interests? And those special interests are international in nature.
You don't understand the question because you continue to shoehorn every discussion into your bogeymen. Listen: Graves is saying that placing HB 1234 on the ballot somehow makes it harder to pass IM 15, the sales tax. I'm asking how HB 1234 has any different impact on the vote for IM 15 by being on the ballot than it does by simply being allowed to stand without referendum challenge. Let's talk about Graves's real point, not the baloney you want to lay on the sandwich.
"Stan, are you saying that having HB 1234 to vote on would stoke that cynicism? Is that the mechanism by which the referral hurts the initiative?"
Yes, Cory, I suspect that it might.
Dang: Stan, you may be on to something. One of the primary arguments against HB 1234 is that we need to be good stewards of our sparse tax dollars and use them only on proven policies, and that HB 1234 promises to waste $15 million. Wow: could Governor Daugaard have sandbagged the sales tax campaign with his own education-policy incompetence?
It doesn't take a Ph.D. in psychology to figure out what's going on here. We see gasoline prices spiking, food prices skyrocketing, Black Hills Power (at least) asking for rate increase after rate increase; we see the prospect of many existing federal income tax deductions or breaks going away in 2012 and 2013 (including the elimination of the 10-percent bracket for the poorest among us); we see rents rising. The threat of a federal value-added tax (VAT) looms in the minds of the pundits and ivory-tower elites, while everyone talks about lowering the "corporate income tax." Everything is getting more and more expensive for us little people, while our wages are stagnant or falling (if we can keep our jobs at all). Meanwhile, investors get richer and richer and richer. Money flows from the poor to the rich, endlessly, regardless of which party holds power.
As a result of all these inexorable trends and forces, I believe, the American people have grown cynical, and recent events do nothing to mitigate that attitude. Some people (I recall the so-called "Free State Project" which ended up going to New Hampshire) actually believe that teacher unions, for example, constitute a threat to our fundamental freedoms because they want to grab more and more of our money. People start asking themselves, "At what point will inflation and taxes drive me from my home, pauperize me, and maybe even cause me to go hungry?" The great majority of us draw our belts in tighter and tighter and tighter, convinced that we will never again see prosperity. Then someone comes along and proposes that our sales tax should go up from 4 percent to 5 percent at the state level (a 25-percent rise). What on earth do you think the gut reaction will be?
So what I'm saying is, anything that reminds people of education costs will bring to mind the recent failed lawsuit, the idea that educators always want more and more money, and all that will likely be met with mindless resistance to any tax increase that has anything to do with education. People have begun to drag their feet and scream and close their eyes and minds to any sort of tax hike regardless of purpose, just like the spoiled brat being hauled off to the woodshed for another thrashing ... another thrashing that will do nothing but embitter him even more.
The solution? I have no clue.
But hang on: might the debate over HB 1234 provide a counterexample to the "greedy teacher" thesis? Here we have an example of teachers saying they recognize that more money is not a solution when that money is directed toward bad policies.