South Dakota’s Economic Development Wins
A column by Gov. Dennis Daugaard:
There are many things happening in our state that lead me to be hopeful about South Dakota’s future, especially in the realm of economic development. Overall, 2017 was a great year in terms of economic development wins. The Governor’s Office of Economic Development helped facilitate deals that total over $735 million in investment and are expected to create more than 1,400 new jobs.
Last July, we broke ground on the Long Baseline Neutrino Facility at the Sanford Underground Research Facility – the old Homestake mine. This Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment will fire a beam of neutrinos from Fermilab near Chicago to huge detectors at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in Lead. The experiment hopes to unravel one of the great mysteries of the universe: the oscillation of neutrinos. This experiment will require a $400 million construction investment in Lead that will have an economic impact of nearly $1 billion.
We also broke ground on a major new soybean processing facility in Aberdeen. When complete, AGP’s soybean plant will be the largest investment in their history, with capacity enough to process 20% of South Dakota’s entire soybean crop.
In Sioux Falls, we supported Gage Brothers, a 100-year old South Dakota manufacturer, as it launched a new $40 million facility. We supported BalCon Enterprises’ plans to construct a new 22,500 square foot processing and warehouse facility in Elk Point, a project that will add 22 full-time jobs. In Beresford, we secured a commitment from Hendrix Genetics to build a $25 million commercial turkey hatchery, creating 79 new jobs. The facility will hatch over half a million baby turkeys every week.
There were many other business expansions in 2017, including OtterTail Power in northeast South Dakota, Red’s All Natural Foods in North Sioux City, B9 Creations in Rapid City, Applied Engineering in Yankton, Performance Pet Products in Mitchell, Great Plains Processing in Yankton, Aero Trailers in Watertown and Harvard Integrations in Tea.
This year, 2018 began with a major announcement from AgroPur of a $250 million expansion in Lake Norden. When complete, this expansion will increase the plant’s daily milk processing capacity from 3 million pounds to more than 9 million pounds, equal to the output of an additional 85,000 cows.
We are seeing success because South Dakota allows businesses to prosper. We have a low tax burden – no corporate income tax, no personal income tax, no business inventory tax, no personal property tax or inheritance tax. We also have low costs and reasonable regulations.
It is also thanks to the hard work of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development and our economic development partners throughout the state. They do the work of identifying prospects from around the country and selling our state and our communities. More often, they work with local businesses, already in our state, to help them expand. By keeping South Dakota a business-friendly state, I’m confident 2018 will be even better than last year.
-30-
What this column says to me is that South Dakota recruited almost no investment from outside the state except for the federal dollars that come to the underground lab in Lead, which makes up almost 60% of the total investment in SD the governor is bragging about. The rest of the investment is very nearly all from in-state businesses. So virtually no private businesses are relocating to SD despite the low tax burden. This performance is dismal. Dismal.
South Dakota has a low tax burden for millionaires. It’s millionaire friendly more than business friendly.
“While South Dakota’s state and local taxes average 7.9 percent of income, differently positioned taxpayers experience South Dakota’s tax system very differently. For the top 1 percent of South Dakota households (a group with an average income over $1.1million), the Mount Rushmore State’s decision not to levy a personal income tax has indeed been an enormous boon. This group pays just 2.1 percent of their income in South Dakota taxes—the 2nd lowest (or 48th highest) state and local tax bill for this group in the entire country.”
“But while South Dakota’s reputation as a “low tax state” is accurate for wealthy households, it bears little resemblance to reality for the state’s less affluent residents. The poorest 20 percent of South Dakota taxpayers (earning an average income of $11,200 per year) actually face the 11th highest state and local tax bill in the entire country, at 11.6 percent of income.”
https://itep.org/south-dakota-is-a-low-tax-state-overall-but-not-for-families-living-in-poverty/
If economic growth is occurring in South Dakota, its not trickling down to low and middle income families.