Our friend Senator Al Franken of Minnesota is cheering for the same federal funding his South Dakota counterpart John Thune loves, the dollars for the Lewis and Clark water project.
But Senator Thune is getting a little torqued at our red-state mooching:
“This is ridiculous. In South Dakota, you've been getting water from this project, but none in Minnesota and almost none in Iowa. In fact, all these communities, Worthington, all these communities in southwestern Minnesota have paid their full share,” Franken said ["Sen. Franken Hopes Federal Money Will Help Water System," KELOLand.com, 2013.03.21].
Senator Franken and his Minnesota constituents know full well they are subsidizing South Dakota's faux-skinflint fiscal policy. We'd better hope they don't get wise and cut off our fix.
Madison has paid in full too. I have no faith that anyone else will get hooked up other than what is already done. Funding for discretionary programs is gone as the feds get their spending habits under control.
200 million was needed 3 years ago by Lewis and Clark to finish the project east of Sioux Falls, but the federal funding has not come through and even more $$ will be needed to finish the project. This was discussed at the R/W conference in Pierre.
Does anyone know what promises were made , if any, when the different communities kicked in on their share of this project? The money from the feds has been coming in piecemeal fashion for many years now. The project has just been limping along because of no solid Fed commitment and I was just wondering what the initial commitment was that would make these towns cough up money.
The federal government isn't getting any water out of this project, is it? Maybe those who are getting water from it, or who will be getting water from it, ought to step up and pay for the rest of it. Time to recalculate each community's "full share" without factoring in any more money from the feds.
Each of the 3 states involved in this project are in significantly better financial shape than the federal government, and each of their state governments is significantly more functional than congress. So instead of handwringing and finger pointing, the stakeholders need to step up and get it done.
Barry, the towns gave money so that construction could start moving forward because the feds promised and then did not deliver in a timely manner. Madison has a share of the water promised to them. The city could sell that share to someone else and get back their investment.
Omg: Sioux Falls sucks even worse than Rapid does.