Press "Enter" to skip to content

Daugaard Open to More State Handouts to Northern Beef Packers

We now have five candidates who want to unseat Governor Dennis Daugaard. If they are serious, they will all prepare the following quote for campaign fundraising letters:

Gov. Dennis Daugaard said Friday he does not believe the state’s financial support for the now-defunct Northern Beef Packers plant in Aberdeen, S.D., was a mistake.

I think that was the right decision,” Daugaard said [emphasis mine; Chris Mueller, "S.D. Governor: Beef Plant Support Not a Mistake," Prairie Business, 2014.01.27].

Follow up that damning expression of blindness even in hindsight with this vow never to learn from past mistakes:

The plant cost more than $100 million to build. White Oak Global Advisors, a San Francisco-based investment firm, bought the plant in December with a $44.3 million cash-and-credit bid. Daugaard said he remains hopeful White Oak will get the plant up and running, and said state assistance isn’t out of the question.

We’d consider it just like any other economic development project,” he said [emphasis mine; Mueller, 2014.01.27].

Millions go poof. A few hundred Aberdonians lose jobs. The project runs years late and delivers none of its promised performance. And Governor Dennis Daugaard says he'd give this boondoggle the same consideration for more state funding as he would any other economic development project.

Does Governor Daugaard really believe that such a spectacular failure should not change the way his office of economic development invests our money? It's as if Napoleon were shouting, "Attaquons la Russie encore!" It's as if the GOP were shouting, "Let's nominate Sarah Palin again!"

Governor Dennis Daugaard is refusing to admit that South Dakota made a bad investment in Northern Beef Packers. He is threatening to make another bad investment. Joe, Susan, Mike, Lora, and Curtis, if you're serious about replacing Dennis, you take Dennis's words above, make sure every South Dakotan hears them, and explain how those words show that South Dakota needs a new governor.

10 Comments

  1. Rick 2014.01.29

    Maybe the standards for a reckless investment have changed in South Dakota. The state's always encouraging us to invest our money in Deadwood's slot machines and in the state's video lottery addiction. From that perspective, yep, tossing millions and millions in a beef plant that was red flagged as a disaster by experts before it was built would be a worthy investment in Daugaard's opinion.

  2. Mark 2014.01.29

    Incredible.

  3. Keryl Brady 2014.01.29

    Millions go to a business venture that went "poof". How much long-term good would've come of investing that sort of money in education or expanding Medicaid for 48,000 South Dakotan? We'll never know. Because it's better to spend it on businesses that go down the tubes than on constituents, apparently.

  4. Roger Elgersma 2014.01.29

    On the one hand, that packing plant operating would be a lot of jobs which is a very good then. On the other hand, corporate welfare is disgusting. This project is now such a cheap investment that there is no reason that it should get taxpayer money any more. It should easily make it on its own now.

  5. Roger Elgersma 2014.01.29

    good thing.

  6. John Tsitrian 2014.01.29

    The main thing is that the governor needs to get informed by people who know something about cattle. When Rounds got the thing rolling with that South Dakota Certified Beef program he got little or no input from people out in the field. Daugaard needs advice from livestock producers, not financiers.

  7. Roger Elgersma 2014.01.29

    When all the alcohol plants were financed in part by farmers who pledged corn, and not one single cattleman put one dollar into the packing plant, I knew we had a different situation from the very beginning.

  8. Roger Cornelius 2014.01.29

    Here's a radical idea, probably unheard of by Daugaard's economic development standards, why not put all these millions of dollars we are hearing about into the actual business of processing beef.

    If they would simply stop all this skimming off the top of the project with attorney fees, loan monitoring fees, consultant fees, etc. there maybe an opportunity to have a respectable business that operates on a responsible level.

  9. Roger Cornelius 2014.01.29

    Roger Elgersmsa,

    What we have now isn't corporate welfare, it "socialized capitalism".

  10. John Tsitrian 2014.01.29

    Yeah, you nailed it, Mr. Elgersma. My friends and associates in the cattle biz were uniformly disdainful of the South Dakota Certified Beef program and the packing plant itself. Governor Rounds didn't have a clue about what he was getting the state into.

Comments are closed.