This story has been updated with comments from Lt Governor Tony Venhuizen
SIOUX FALLS S.D. (KELO) — The South Dakota Bureau of Finance and Management (BFM) has released a list of federal spending cuts that will cut several grants offered by the South Dakota Department of Health, South Dakota Department of Social Services, and the South Dakota Department of Education.
The cuts includes nearly $2.9 million dollars in cuts to the East Dakota Educational Cooperative. with the Board of Regents losing nearly a $1 million.
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Other agencies being impacted include the HelpLine Center, Children’s Home Society, University of South Dakota, Avera McKennan, among many others.
The Department of Health had more than $1.7 million in terminated services.
The Department of Social Services had more than $1.5 million in terminated services.
The Department of Education had more than $5.8 million in terminated services.
Lt Governor Tony Venhuizen said in an interview with KELOLAND News that while these federal funds might be going away South Dakota is prepared.
“These are notices that the state has gotten over the last few weeks totaling about $10 million so far and that is going to be tough,” Venhuizen said. “In South Dakota we have been smart in that we get these federal grants we don’t build them into our base budget, we know that they could go away at anytime and we are ready for that.”
Venhuizen said the federal government will have to address the issue of spending and cuts are one option to do that.
“Most of these are if the grant would go away, the activity would go away and frankly when we see a federal government where the federal deficit is more than $2 trillion a year,” Venhuizen said. “At some point the federal government has to start addressing spending or we are going to be in a lot of trouble and we as a state have to understand that that’s going to mean we all have to do our part.”
Venhuizen said the reason BFM released the list is to be transparent about what grants are going away.
“We as a state will have to have that conversation now. A lot of these activities were federally funded and if the funding goes away the program goes away,” Venhuizen said. “Now legislators can look at this list and ask if there is anything that state funds should step in and backfill, in many cases that will not be true, but that’s a decision legislators will have to make.”
KELOLAND News contacted multiple state departments involved for comments and interviews. Several of them referred to a KELOLAND News interview with Venhuizen that was done earlier on Friday. The interview with Venhuizen was scheduled on the topic of the 100th anniversary of the Legislature. KELOLAND was able to ask several budget cut questions during that interview,.
You can find the full list of cuts in the document below.
federalspendingcutsDownload
