The gumbo effect

By Lorraine Collins

Anyone who grew up on the prairie or in the Badlands knows about gumbo. I don't mean the kind they eat in Louisiana. I mean the kind that sticks to your feet after a rain in South Dakota. In the old days before there were a lot of paved roads around here, driving on a dirt road and encountering a rain storm meant you were more likely than not to get stuck in the slick, muddy clay. We used to say that when you were walking in gumbo you'd take one step forward and slide back two. My father would laugh and claim that when he had to go somewhere, he'd turn around and walk backwards so he could get where he was going.

I've been thinking about the gumbo effect as a pretty good metaphor for what's been happening in South Dakota in recent years. That is, the more we strive to go forward, the farther back we seem to slide, at least in some important areas. For years and years we have claimed that we want to increase state aid to education but we haven't even managed to maintain the same level of support as in the past and this year schools have received even more cuts in funding.

Somehow, the idea seems to be that if we fire enough teachers and administrators, enlarge some class sizes and cut out various courses, we will improve education. And in terms of achieving an educated and competitive work force, the concept appears to be that we should raise tuition, making it more difficult for young people and their parents to afford a university education. If there's one thing we like to talk about in South Dakota it's the importance of education. We just don't want to pay for it.

 Of course, it's not only education that we don't want to pay for. We're kind of tough on roads and bridges, too. A recent report by the Road Information Program noted that only four states have a higher percentage of structurally deficient bridges than we do, but it is kind of comforting to know there's at least something in which we didn't come in last. South Dakota's AAA says that the poor condition of our roads costs motorists an average of $319 a year in extra vehicle operating costs, although I have no idea how they figured that out. The condition of our roads and bridges affects our ability to spur economic growth, which we claim we want, although we just don't want to pay taxes to fix them.

The U.S. Census Bureau just released a report that places South Dakota dead last in tax collections in the nation. In fact, our per capita tax rate declined $40 from 2009 to 2010, so in terms of providing more money for government, we're going backwards. This is hardly a surprise because our idea of enticing business and industry to our state seems to be to brag about having the lowest taxes and the lowest paid work force in the country. The fact that wages are low may help account for the fact that twice as many workers in South Dakota hold two jobs as the national average.

We in South Dakota seem to prefer taxes to be paid by somebody else, which is why we like to tax tourists and why the federal government provides $730 million more for our general appropriations budget than we do. It's nice of the people in the other 49 states to help us with our budget. I just hope they don't start thinking of us as a bunch of freeloaders.

I do realize that speaking in favor of taxes is like speaking in favor of death, that other inevitable thing. It's just something we don't want to think about and generally feel it's something that happens to somebody else and not us. But if we don't do something about making our income take care of our needs, maybe we'll have to start walking backwards. We might get ahead. And anyway we can see where we've been, even if we have no idea where we're going.

Lorraine Collins has published a collection of her Black Hills Pioneer columns called "Gathering My Wits."

Paying for the quality of life

Our neighbor Lorraine Collins always has an interesting perspective on a wide range of topics. Here's another that should catch your interest -- and perhaps spur a comment or two. Her commentaries appear regularly in the Black Hills Pioneer, and she graciously allows us to share them with on-line readers here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The other day I met a young woman who had just moved to the Black Hills from the Sioux Falls area. She said she'd been surprised that that wages were so low out here since the cost of living was so high, compared to where she'd lived before. I don't have much hard information about the cost of living, but I hear complaints about how much higher groceries and gasoline are here than in East River.

I also came across a recent report by U.S. News that ranked various South Dakota cities in terms of best places to retire. Eight of the nine cities were in East River, with Rapid City the lone representative of West River. The cost of living in all East River cities was described as low whereas Rapid City was ranked average. Income was ranked low in all towns except Pierre and Sioux Falls where it was average. Housing prices were high everywhere. So the young woman's opinion seems to have some credibility--higher cost of living, lower wages out here.

About a year and a half ago when I was writing a column about South Dakota's economic situation, I found some statistics that showed that people in East River earned quite a bit more than those of us here in the west. The mean salary in Sioux Falls was $2600 higher than in Rapid City and $5400 higher than that of people in "non-metropolitan" western South Dakota, which is where most of us live out here.

This may help explain why some folks out here tend to be skeptical that politicians from Sioux Falls can understand us, and why candidates for governor or Congress from metropolitan East River towns sometimes have a hard time connecting with us. I think it says something interesting about our state that this spring's candidates for governor include three lawyers with Sioux Falls connections, the former mayor of Brookings and two West River ranchers.

I was thinking about all this economic stuff recently because of two stories in the media. One said that South Dakota workers are paid less than workers in any other state, and the other reported that the governor spoke to outstanding high school seniors and encouraged them to find jobs in South Dakota. Since they'd just learned they could earn more money by leaving the state, the governor tried to put a better spin on that news.

He said they shouldn't believe the "hype" that South Dakota is a low-wage state and that we rank 10th in the nation when disposable income after taxes is adjusted for the local cost of living. I looked for that peculiar statistic at various online sites but I couldn't find it. If South Dakota ranks last in the nation for wages, is it also true that the cost of living here is cheaper than anywhere else in the country? Or if it isn't, are our taxes so low compared to other states that we have higher percentage of our money left after paying taxes? If so, is a higher percentage of less income better than a lower percentage of a higher income? The statistic seems meaningless to me.

I came across an interesting chart in a Retirement Housing Guide on line. It ranked state property taxes in 2007 and included such things as taxes as a percentage of home value as well as taxes as a percentage of income. In terms of taxes as a percentage of home value, South Dakota ranked 13th. If I understand this, it means that our homes were taxed more heavily than those in 37 other states. In terms of "taxes as a percentage of income" we ranked 23rd.

The governor said, "The quality of life is here." Many of us agree with that, but we shouldn't pretend we aren't paying for it, one way or another.

~

Lorraine Collins is a writer who lives in Spearfish. She can be reached at collins1@rushmore.com

Your Tax Dollars at Work

I believe that much, if not most, of the travel done by our congressional delegation and their staffs is justifiable in doing their jobs. I suspect some isn’t.

But just how much do they travel? Where do they go? Why? How much does it cost?

Many of these questions and others are answered in a fairly new web site I discovered this week. It also includes salaries and other financial information relative to our tax dollars. Take a look at the site http://www.legistorm.com/ and see what you think. I promise that it’ll keep you busy for a while!

It would be good to see such an initiative in South Dakota. A few state governments – Alaska comes to mind – have launched web sites that post state expenditures.

Thus far, there’s been no appetite amongst the administration of Governor Mike Rounds to make this kind of information available on line. Perhaps that’ll change down the road – with a good bit of nudging!

New Open Records Law -- Past Due

Students of history have little problem finding examples where citizens became complacent and ended up losing many of their freedoms.

Bit by bit, seemingly innocent and harmless encroachments occur – almost invisibly – until one wakes up and finds them gone and is either unwilling or unable to reacquire them.

And so it is with South Dakota’s open records laws. In these United States, most of them anyway, public records are presumed open and available for public scrutiny unless action is taken to specifically close them. In South Dakota, government agencies generally operate on the premise that they can close any records that they are not required by law to keep. And that premise is driven by a wrongheaded state law.

As journalists and many genealogists can tell you, it can be a difficult – if not impossible – task to obtain even the simplest of public documents. The South Dakota open records law is confusing to citizens and government employees alike.

According to an article by Bill Harlan in the Rapid City Journal (“Open-records bills coming to South Dakota”) there are several legislative bills in the works to change things, but they may be no less confusing. A Government Openness Task Force was set up to examine the issue but has not yet endorsed any specific plan.

We’ll be watching this issue closely and encouraging folks to do the same. More than that, as the proposals come forward, we need to aggressively support a strong bill, if we find one in the mix.

Change would be good.

How to Help Our State

Lorraine Collins of Spearfish is a free-lance journalist whose work is seen frequently in the Black Hills Pioneer newspaper. Here is her latest offering.

---------

I’ve been looking for a coat for quite a long time, now. I know just what I want. It’s the coat I had about 45 years ago. Hudson’s Bay, of “car coat” length, in soft wool, with a nice collar that could be turned up against the wind. Every time I see pictures of me in that coat I don’t spend any time looking at how young and slender I was then. I just stare at that coat. I’ve spent some considerable time this fall looking at coats in several cities and towns trying to find one like that, but I just haven’t found any. This makes me feel bad, not only for myself, but for the state of South Dakota.

When Governor Rounds gave his annual Budget Address to a joint session of the legislature last month, he explained that, “our income stream at state government is based on consumption”. We rely on sales tax in this state and people have not been spending as much money as they need to in order to keep the state coffers in good shape. He told the legislators to “go back home and tell people to buy.” I want him and our local representatives to know that I’ve really been trying. Actually, I did buy a new chair, and that was pretty expensive, but I’m probably not doing everything I could to help our state.

Realizing this, I’ve come up with an idea about how to help South Dakota get the income it needs even though I haven’t been able to buy as much as I should. It might help an economy based on consumerism when consumers are not doing their part.

My idea is the “alternative sales tax” like the “alternative minimum income tax” I’ve been hearing so much about. I think the idea of the “alternative minimum income tax” was that very rich people who can hire really good accountants could figure out how to avoid paying the federal income tax. So this alternative tax makes them pay at least something. It worked for a while. But the trouble is that it’s now causing a lot of hardship for people who are not multi-millionaires but still pay a bigger tax. Though this may have given the alternative tax idea a bad name, I would still like to consider an “alternative sales tax” for South Dakota.

Let’s say that you go into a store and look at something, maybe try it on, look at the color but you’re not sure, so you return it to a clerk. Then maybe you pick up something that Aunt Enid might like for her birthday, but decide against that, too. So in the end you buy nothing. As you leave, the clerk gives you a slip of paper that says you owe the State of South Dakota 4% of what you didn’t buy. I know this sounds outrageous, but think about it! You didn’t spend $200 for a coat you didn’t like, but you are still contributing to the state’s wellbeing! And if you take the $200 you didn’t spend and put it in a savings account, you could be reliving that old American idea of thrift, which used to be a virtue before it became our patriotic duty to go to the mall. But even though you’re selfishly saving money instead of spending it, you are still helping South Dakota.

I know this is tough, but we who live here have to do something to help our state. I know our state also depends on the Video Lottery but I don’t like to gamble. And even though the governor is disappointed by the fact that the cigarette tax is bringing in less money than anticipated, I really don’t want to take up smoking in order to pay a dollar a pack in tax to help out. But I don’t want to be accused of being a slacker. So unless the legislature can come up with some new concepts this year, I think they should at least consider my idea and help our state.

----------

Our thanks to Lorraine Collins for letting us use her material at Black Hills Monitor.