The South Dakota State Library offers an online collection of official state documents. One such document that popped into my RSS reader this week is Executive Order 2013-10 from Governor Dennis Daugaard. Signed June 28, 2013, this order recognizes that some federal highway funding rules called "MAP-21" (hmm... a cousin of Agenda 21?) exempts some agricultural activities from federal highway regulations. However, some of these exemptions conflict with South Dakota law. Our commitment to state supremacy be darned, the Governor's order thus declares an emergency and deems MAP-21's agricultural exemptions effective for the duration of the current fiscal year or until the "emergency" ends. The conflicting state statutes essentially disappear for a year by gubernatorial decree.
The emergency here, of course, is likely that if South Dakota didn't follow MAP-21, we'd lose those precious highway funds. South Dakota Secretary of Transportation Darin Bergquist told the U.S. Senate just how precious those funds are in testimony last March:
With our long stretches of highway helping connect the nation, and with relatively few people to support that extensive network of Federal-aid highways, our State has always received a higher share of Federal highway apportionments than its share of contributions to the Highway Trust Fund. That result is in the national interest, but we don’t take it for granted. Maintaining the State’s highway formula share helps the SDDOT respond to transportation needs and provide quality transportation options to our citizens and businesses. In addition, buses and vans deliver all of South Dakota’s transit services, and good highways are essential to support those services [emphasis mine; Darin Bergquist, testimony to U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, 2013.03.28].
The remainder of the testimony talks about all the good things that come from big government spending in South Dakota. Commerce, health care, education, tourism, national defense... all relying on federal government largesse.
This testimony and the Governor's executive order make clear why conservative ideologues have to distract voters with talk about abortion, prayer, and the imagined tyranny of ObamaCare. In the real world, South Dakota runs on a Governor overturning state law without Legislative input and his Transportation Secretary declaring that taking more in federal money than we pay in taxes is good for South Dakota and for America.
See, South Dakota? You're really all Democrats.