South Dakota State Representative Scott Craig is changing his vote on HB1182, the Governor’s plan to increase South Dakota Teacher’s salaries and decrease property taxes.
Rapid City, SD- South Dakota State Representative Scott Craig from District 33 will change his vote on HB1182. Craig says, “The 23 nay votes Thursday on the House Floor were by House Members working out a plan to increase teacher salaries without raising a tax. Unfortunately, for most teachers across the state the vote conveyed a lack of support and appreciation, and they are disheartened. I am looking forward to a seeing a second plan filed in the legislature and I believe both plans should be debated in the Legislative body, and the greater of the two plans should prevail. I’m voting to keep this plan moving forward and I’ll consider earnestly any other plan filed in the Legislature.”
Too bad. The workers of SD who rank 50th out of 50 states in average wage will now have to pay more taxes so that the teachers who rank 48th can have a huge pay raise. The $8000 raise as was brought forth by the governor will put the teachers at 26th and the rest will still be 50th. http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oessrcst.htm
I will never again vote for Gov Daugaard, nor for any of the legislators who voted for this huge tax increase.
Gee, a fat lotta good being a right-to-work state does us.
Thank you Rep. Craig for being forward thinking. Your reconsideration is commendable.
I knew the pressure would be so strong that at least one would cave. Probably will be more. But if this passes and no other plans have been debated yet, what will there be left to debate? This one will be law. Now on to the three or so Senate bills to deal with the rest of Daugaard’s blue ribbon plan which will undoubtedly pass too. It will be interesting to see how this all shakes out with the upcoming election.
Since the education of our children was being hurt so badly by low teacher pay, I expect that our student test scores should , in a few years, began to rise. This would be a great thing for our young people. If, however, their scores don’t rise, we just cost the tax payer millions of dollars for nothing. Who is going to keep track of this?
Test scores likely won’t budge. My hunch is, neither will problems with shortages in STEM teachers and retention, issues that have little to do with pay. In fact, every state has trouble with too few science and math teachers and attracting and holding on to teachers across the board — even though those are the main reasons given for raising the sales tax. As I asked on another post, what happens when teachers get a 20 percent raise overnight and nothing changes?
They will be back in a couple of years for more!!!
Now let’s just be capitalists for a minute. We own a business, public education, and we don’t pay enough in the market to get quality job applicants – I wonder if what we pay might be part of the problem? There are other issues, and we should address those, but the capitalists get it – we have a market pay problem and a responsibility to fix it. Conservatives know the DC budget tricks of phony cuts and smoke and mirrors. Nobody likes taxes, but that’s how government gets their money to run their business. Plus, failure to responsibly deal with this is going to mean higher property taxes as the alternative.
I get it that the Bernie Sanders crowd doesn’t want to pay attention to market principles, and they are entitled to their point of view
Mr. Schoenbeck, can you answer my question above?
No, he can’t. BTW, a capitalist will pay more to get a qualified person for the job when there is a shortage of applicants for that job. He doesn’t raise every employee’s pay in doing so. Raise
the salary for the teacher positions with few applications, more teachers-in-training will gravitate
to those fields.
Mr. Schoenbeck’s analogy really doesn’t hold up, does it? I like your thinking. Sadly, schools won’t do raises except for seniority.
–Raise the salary for the teacher positions with few applications
The collective bargaining agreements with the teachers unions DO NOT allow for a differentiated salary schedule based on market demand.
And, the teachers union will NEVER agree to it.
Lee, it’s your own fault you got carried away with your landscaping and now the Board of Equalization wants to tax you for it. Your home is beautiful. Pay for it yourself.
Taxing us more than you need is right out of Bill Clinton’s playbook.
Only tax what you Need!
Dana Randall for governor.
That’s a really dumb analogy from a guy who could sell a ketchup Popsicle to a woman in white gloves.
We cannot have infrastructure without taxes.
Mr. Rhodes, you and Mr. Schoenbeck are both wrong. Infrastructure doesn’t come from taxes, and taxes are not how government gets its money. Rather, infrastructure and government in general are totally dependent on the productivity of workers in the private economy. So infrastructure comes from me and tens of thousands of other South Dakotans working in competitive markets. And government gets its money from me and those same thousands of South Dakotans
We agree through our elected lawmakers to pay taxes to contract for government services. But those taxes in their entirety all were extracted from productive ventures to the “free money” government economy, which has done zip to earn it.
… and transferred to the “free money” government economy, which does zip to earn it.
Mr. Schoenbeck please consider this. Your capitalist example is pretty good but I’d like you to think of it this way then…..
If a business (Lets call it District 30) has 7 school districts or businesses as you like to call it and they have so few customers (students) that they could be managed by one manager why, tell me honestly why, you wouldn’t manage them all with one manager? (superintendent) Custer, Hill City, Wall, New Underwood, Oelrich, Hot Springs, Edgemont all have a superintendent and have less students than Rapid City that seems to manage many high schools, middle schools and elementary schools with one Superintendent. Until ALL revenue savings can be considered (and district – not school closings – consolidations) there should be no talk of more money.
South Dakota has to embrace the future of education. Online teaching is here and we better make courses available to our 9 through 12 students. By doing this, it would require fewer teachers and less brick and mortar. Let’s get serious about the most efficient way to educate our kids. We have the infrastructure to educate online and if done right we could cut our costs in half and South Dakota would be the leader in education in the USA. Embrace the future of education and the fiscal issues will take care of themselves. Go for it SD
That is already being done through the DDN. At this time the state is paying NSU to offer classes to students throughout SD. As a matter of fact, the schools taking the classes do not have to pay for the online courses, so in essence, the cost of each student taking the online class is higher than the average daily attendance payed to each school district for each student.
Excellent point. Let me provide you a better example though.
It is less than 4 miles from the Superintendent’s office of the Pierre District to the Superintendent’s office of the Stanley County District.
Cliff Hadley for governor.
Maybe South Dakota needs a law requiring Daugaard, Schoenbeck and Craig to use the bathroom that corresponds to their lack of balls.
What about Mickelson? How does that guy expect to beat Marty Jackley in a Republican primary after shoving a hundred-million-dollar tax hike down our throats?
A politician who doesn’t have the guts to stand up to the teachers’ unions doesn’t have the guts to be governor.
Does any Republican honestly think that by cow-towing to the teachers union will garner any support for Republicans in the future? I have some really, really lush property to sell in the desert.
🙂
That is very well-stated, Mr. Schoenbeck, and you are right, there are other issues that need to be addressed. Unfortunately, all this year’s season of “Let’s Fix Education” accomplished was to demonstrate the hypocrisy of way too many members of our Legislature. They’ll stand up and say they’re for local control, then turn around and pass laws about who can go in which school bathroom, or complain that schools have too much reserve cash, or that there aren’t enough strings tying this money to teacher pay.
Incredible! So as a Capitalist, I wouldn’t do any due diligence on the cash flow or review anything else before ASSUMING it is my labor pay!
And if it is, where’s my market price threshold where customers just quit buying the product? Can I cut support staff? How many administrators do I have? Or wait, are any of my positions being paid disproportionately higher causing the shortage of funds to pay my teachers? BLAMO! We find a Superintendent from RCAS getting $250k+ a year!
There was more than one way to solve this problem, you just chose not to!
No, it’s not that people don’t like taxes. Well, they don’t, but they realize it as a necessary evil. What we don’t like is when our hard earned taxes are wasted or spent on unnecessary things. What we would like is an honest accounting of how every penny of our tax dollars (emphasis on OUR) is spent. And the SD students are not anywhere near the bottom of the list on achievement, ambition, etc. The scores are not going to change as a result of higher salaries unless maybe those directed strictly at the math/science teachers, and that is not happening with this bill. But without the other bills in the Senate passing, this is only part of the equation, and only the higher tax part.
Thank you, Rep. Craig, for listening to your constituency and choosing to respond.
Yeah, he listened to one of his land-rich donors who wants a tax break on his real estate holdings, that’s who he listened to
Have proof of that? Names? Links to news articles?
A rising tide lifts all boats.
A taxed fleet sits empty in the harbor.
Is this what the SDGOP has come to? A bunch of RINOs pushing tax, spend, and create more government!?
Schoenbeck, take your evil little Democrat ways to the SDDP where you belong!
Shame on you Scott “Judas” Craig!
Good for you, Mr. Craig. Thank you!
voters remorse, prove to.us that you’re not simply a troublemaking democrat troll. an uninteresting one at that.
I would be interested to hear why Rep. Craig really changed his mind. The Pierre – Ft. Pierre example is great.
Enquirer, I need prove nothing to you. It’s the big govt loving RINOs that need to prove why Republicans shouldn’t flush them.
Pretty hard for you people to be shills for the establishment when they are so clearly Undocumented Democrats.
How can Representative Craig think that passing the sales tax will allow the legislators to debate all of the options when it will have the opposite effect? Passing the sales tax is not necessary to debate the alternative plans. In fact, once the sales tax is passed by the House, the representatives will have very little impetus to consider the alternative plans. Furthermore, the senators, who are generally more liberal than the representatives, will probably pass the sales tax increase. Even if one of the alternative bills was passed by both houses, the governor is going to choose to sign his plan and veto the alternative.
The best part is seeing people argue about it on Craig’s FB page. It’s one thing to see voters and even legislators arguing about Scott Craig’s flip but I am trying to figure out why for the life of me how the governor’s people think that letting slip one of the toddlers on his staff in form of his policy adviser is in good form? Is Pierre planning a third party or is there some reason to appear as if the GOP split is wider than the Grand Canyon. I mean, legislators get into the trenches with the voters and I can see them throwing around some comments however if I were the chief executive of the state and just proposed a tax increase that most likely now will pass despite the division it created, I’d be looking at trying to spakle plaster onto the cracks of the party on the path of unity at this point. I am hoping that Konenkamp was simply slipped too many cattlemen martinis down at the country club and slipped his tongue a little, however those folks have to know that salt in a wound is never a good remedy to healing division. Besides, they have to realize I hope that the Democrats are reading those comments too. Nothing like advertising a weakness in the lines.
what was said by the policy advisor? you then reference Konenkamp…could you just explain the back story a little. Thank you
Have there been any studies showing what level of support there is for this tax increase among the people of South Dakota? As a teacher, I am a bit insulated from the real world, but most of the people I talk to indicate they do support this. And most of the people are outside of education.
Am I missing something I just read the bill in its entirety and NOTHING is mentioned in there at all about where the $$ goes other than to lower our property taxes.
“Section 17. It is the intent of the Legislature that from the proceeds of this Act, forty million
22 dollars shall be dedicated to reducing the property tax levies for general education for all classes
23 of property.”
What exactly guarantees that the $$ is going to go to the teachers anyways? Don’t the school boards dictate how much teachers get paid regardless of how much $$ they get from the state. Some school really need to wake up and get their priorities straight, brand new football field and equipment yet the teachers are pissed, gee lets think about that for a second.
I don’t think this is really going to solve anything other than lower one tax raise another. Hopefully in the end the taxes will turn out to the same. They should absolutely put in the bill how MUCH property taxes will be lower rather than the statement like it is above.
Raising the sales tax on every purchase and service and lowering the property tax cannot balance one another because most of each are going to be paid by different people. My rent is not going to go down because the landowner’s taxes did. My food, electricity, natural gas, car repair, and prescription medicine bills and how much I have to pay for the other staples of life, however, are certainly going to go up. The property tax cuts were one of the best examples of cronyism that I have ever seen, and I fear that they are going to come to the detriment of the average South Dakotans.
All of these tax changes are being enacted with NO accountability that the quality of instruction will improve.
It’s a transfer of wealth to the whiniest.
I just listened to Lana Greenfield’s answer at the crackerbarrel, and apparently these bills were drafted before the Blue Ribbon Task Force results were even in. As I have said before, the task force was tasked with coming up with a predetermined outcome and the bills were ready to go out the gate before day one. Why rush through with this particular bill when there apparently are other ideas out there? What if this passes and the rest of the education package (at least 3 other bills) don’t? Then the extra half penny sales tax revenue goes into the general fund with no direction, from HB1182, to be used for teacher salaries. Why not have put all these ed bills together in one bill because they all have to be tied together to work, right? Maybe because it would have been harder to ram through then.
I was a Daugaard supporter, but after the tactics used against anyone who disagreed with this bill, I have serious reservations. Of course, it won’t make any difference because he won’t run again. But it is tarring his image in the minds of many voters, and that is sad.