By Denise Ross

Almost all of the action will be in the Senate Education Committee Thursday in the SD Legislature. Democrats get to make their point about how state government doesn’t live by the budget rules it has imposed on schools and counties. Of the two in-your-face bills the Dems have put up, I like Senate Bill 149 better for its simplicity.

An Act to  increase general funding for school districts, to impose a temporary limit on the growth of state general fund spending, and to suspend the transfer of moneys from the general fund to the budget reserve fund and to the property tax reduction fund.

Another bill wraps the technical institutes into this, but SB149 - surely destined for martyrdom - makes a more direct point. And it makes it during an election year in which the Senate Dems are a scant 2 seats away from taking the majority and in the midst of a bitter lawsuit against the state over school funding. These bills and their certain deaths are part of a larger narrative. Expect to hear about them and their funerals again.

Speaking of that lawsuit and a bigger narrative, the Rounds administration has chosen to break out its legal expenses ($949,000) associated with said lawsuit into a separate bill - House Bill 1077. If the Democrats are going for drama in SB149, the Rounds folks have upped the ante to pure theater in HB1077 before the House Appropriations Committee. Just last week there was a bill for $2 million-plus for “extraordinary litigation” expenses. Rest assured if this were an expense they didn’t want you to know about, it would be lumped into the budget and mushed up so finely that you couldn’t tell it from money used to purchase a new airplane. (Which brings up a whole other discussion about open government records. More on that later.) But Smilin’ Mike’s making his stand, using every club and bully pulpit he can find.

We’ll see in November whose strategy worked.

And last, but certainly not least, there’s House Bill 1229, Rep. Gordon Howie’s tax reform plan. This, to, is fine politial theater, but without the sharpened edges of sheathed long knives present in the first two on the list.

HB1229, in its attempt to supplant a third of our property taxes with a sales tax hike, is more of a Rumplestiltskin-like fairy tale. Spinning fiber into gold, no matter how hard you stomp your feet, never really works. That doesn’t stop some folks from trying, bless their hearts.

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