• Last week the Appropriations Committee heard the budgets of the Board of Regents, Transportation, Military and Veterans Affairs, and the Vocational Technical schools.
• On Monday morning a banker on Appropriations Committee brought up credit unions and how they've been expanding their territory and role.  Our state banking commission has no regulatory authority over credit unions, though some states do.  As regulations on regular banks increase, the awareness of the credit union advantage has been growing, with some dissatisfaction about the competitive advantages that they have over banks.
• Last Tuesday we heard from more of our universities.  Enrollment continues at record levels.  A  quality higher education is particularly important because of our unique demographic challenges. South Dakota has an aging population, and we need  to keep our young college and tech school graduates in South Dakota. As a state, we are making progress with more attending one of our six universities or our four technical schools. We are actually a net importer of college freshmen: 2,288 freshmen from other states came to SD compared to 1,458 of our students going out-of-state.  That's a net gain to us of 830 students! 73% of our resident students remain in state after college to work or pursue additional education, and 32% of out-of-state students also stay in the state following graduation. Quality schools make for a quality workforce and chances are, if you get them to start in SD, they will stay in SD!
• While the default rate of our students paying back their student loan debt is lower than national average, the amount of debt they carry is high. Our students' average indebtedness is $23,000. That average debt has remained constant over recent years and 76% of our students carry debt. This is the second highest percentage carrying debt among all states.
• Last Thursday we heard a request from the Ag Research Department and Dean Barry Dunn for a $6 million annual appropriation to add to the $11 million of state general funds the Governor plans on.  We've lost 37 faculty from that school since our budget cuts two years ago, many to competing industries and schools that were offering better pay and working conditions.  We fund our Ag Research at about 40-60% of the level that surrounding states do.  Several farm groups testified in favor of the proposal, and they made a great case.  However, some of those same groups, including Farm Bureau and Farmers Union, worked against the sales tax initiative last fall, which would have been a solution to our funding shortage.  The need here

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