House State Affairs Kills State Spending Limit Resolution
Air Date:02/02/2011
By Kealey Bultena
The House State Affairs Committee shot down a joint resolution that puts a Constitutional change on the 2012 ballot.
A resolution lets South Dakotans decide if lawmakers should limit state spending to ninety-nine percent of projected revenues. House Majority Leader David Lust says the law isn’t needed.
"Clearly the reality has been that we are a conservative legislature, fiscally, and we’ve lived that through the years, and we’re certainly going through it right now in this session," Lust says. "So if we’ve got something that’s working, to codify it when we’re already doing it seems a little unnecessary."
But Minority Leader Bernie Hunhoff says if that were the case, the state wouldn’t have a structural deficit.
"We call ourselves a practical conservative people in South Dakota, and yet we’re one of those few states that do not have spending limits," Hunhoff says. "It’s a chance to set partisanship aside in the budgeting process and just really start to work together to agree on priorities."
The committee killed the measure nine to four. The vote followed party lines.
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