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crease going into the per student allocation. We also allocated some additional funds for healthcare providers that rely heavily on Medicaid. Another highlight was freezing tuition rates at our colleges and universities.
• We did stop some bad bills from becoming law. It is disappointing that we spent so much time on some very extreme ideas. Some of these brought SD into the national spotlight in a very negative way. Some would have allowed for legalized discrimination and others were anti-labor bills. These are part of a nation-wide agenda pushed on us by outsiders.
• We failed to do enough for education as we will still be behind where we were five years ago. Our attempt to get us back to that point failed as the education reforms that we introduced were killed by the majority. We will continue to work to get the leaders of the state to recognize that our teacher pay is last in the nation and we are falling farther and farther behind. Teachers will continue to leave SD or take other career paths. We also need to recognize that our colleges and universities are not turning out many education majors and we have a lot of our teachers reaching retirement age. What we did this year is a start but we have a long ways to go.
• We failed to expand Medicaid. The argument that the Federal government will not live up to the commitment they are making and that we should not be so dependent on the Federal government is an interesting one when you look back up to the top of this article to see that we are gladly taking a lot of Federal money to fund other things. 40% of our budget comes from the Feds. The amount of relief that this expansion would provide would be beneficial in many ways. We still hold out hope that our state will eventually decide that this expansion would be a good thing for SD. In my opinion it would help the state and local governments, businesses, and the working families who are in need.
• Failing to provide the help needed for families affected by autism was also disappointing but at least a study will be done. We are hopeful that we will learn more about the climbing rates of autism and the treatment options. It seemed like a good part of our legislature did not care to provide help to these families. It is my hope that they mean well and that we will work hard to find a way to help these families in the future. The rate is climbing and we are all going to be affected. If we can have early interventions we will save money in the long term plus provide the help these individuals need to be become productive members of society.
• We did pass a long awaited texting and driving bill. This bill will go into effect on July 1st . The process was quite interesting. Two different bills passed out of the two legislative bodies and a conference committee was held but they could not reach an agreement. A second conference committee did work out a compromise (Continued on page 10)
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