By Victoria Wicks
At his weekly legislative news conference, Governor Dennis Daugaard announced good news and bad news about the current budget, and it’s the same piece of information that qualifies as both.
He says the Bureau of Finance and Management tallied the most recent revenue from last month’s collections, and the money is coming in almost exactly as predicted.
“Good news is that we’re on track. Bad news is we won’t have additional extra revenue that we didn’t foresee when the budget was built last December. And so I’ve had conversations with some of the legislature,” Daugaard says. “My hope is that they will continue to have responsible discussions about the revenue that we do have to spend. But to the extent that we were all hoping that things might be rosier, they’re on track, but not any rosier than that.”
Daugaard says $16 million this year and $10 million next year in unspent money is still available. That money is earmarked for one-time spending on projects proposed by the legislature.
Daugaard says revenues fall short by one-tenth of one percent, or about 708 thousand dollars.
Statehouse
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