District 20 Representative Lance Koth legislative report – week 1

By Mitchell Now January 15, 2024 9:24 am

In addition to the Governors State of the State we heard from Justice Jensen on the judicial branch and Tribal. This has been on the news so will not spend time in giving my commentary of what was said. My time is primarily spent serving on the appropriations committee. As in the past, all bills with funding attached will have an appropriation committee hearing along with We will have committee hearings through Feb 7th (20 legislative days) hearing from 37 agencies all of which have proposed budgets along with the Governor’s recommendation. We will then begin putting together budget sheets for each agency rolling them up into the 2025 G bill. This is a proven method and is continually refined each year to make sure we prudent in using legislators and agencies time.

We heard from Bureau of Finance Management (BFM) the rationale for the Governor’s budget including an economic forecast. Their analysis includes but is not limited to:
• National baseline forecast is for slower growth
• National employment growth is projected to continue at a slower rate in 2024 and be nearly flat in 2025
• Inflation slows to 2.7% in 2024 and 2.0% in 2025
• Pandemic relief payments shrink to near zero in 2023
• Consumer spending is expected to slow but remain positive in 2024 and 2025

This week we heard from School and Public Lands, PUC, State Auditor and an overview from BFM on the remaining COVID and ARPA money, State Treasure, Dept of Veteran Affairs, Dept of Military, Legislative Audit and Legislative Research Council.

We will have committee hearings through Feb 7th (20 legislative days) hearing from 37 agencies all of which have proposed budgets along with the Governor’s recommendation. We will then begin putting together budget sheets for each agency rolling them up into the 2025 G bill. This is a proven method and is continually refined each year to make sure we prudent in using legislators and agencies time.

Basically, we heard the departments preferred budget and what the Governor has recommended which in many cases are different. We will take all the information received at these hearings and develop proposed budget sheets which are summarized each day into a running total of what the expenditure side of the budget might look like. Mid February we will be setting revenue projections for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2025. Along with we will adjust fiscal year revenue numbers for 2024 based on YTD January 2024 actual numbers.
Because of the number of bills and 37 day legislative session we began hearing bills on the floor on Friday and will continue to hear bills the last day of our work week.

South Dakota continues to move forward. Our form of Government, including a Citizen Legislature with term limits and 3 equal branches of Government continues to serve our State well, in my opinion. We have a balanced budget and are retaining our AAA.

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