Dear Mr. Speaker and Members of the House of Representatives:

I respectfully return House Bill 1185 and pursuant to Article IV, Section 4 of the South Dakota Constitution, I exercise a LINE ITEM VETO on the same.

House Bill 1185 is entitled, "An Act to appropriate money for the ordinary expenses of the legislative, judicial, and executive departments of the state, the expenses of state institutions, interest on the public debt, and for common schools."

I am exercising a line item veto within Section 12, subsection (8A) to remove the following sentence from Page 17 of the enrolled bill: "The moneys appropriated by this subsection shall be distributed on a one-time basis to the technical institutes based on FY2012 actual student F.T.E."

I have no objection to the Legislature's intention to distribute these funds to the technical institutes. However, I believe this sentence is in error because it relies on old enrollment data from FY2012, which equates to data from the 2011-12 school year. That is inconsistent with the technical institute funding formula, which is established in administrative rule 24:10:42:28 and which would use more recent data.

The Legislature can clarify its intention to distribute these funds according to the technical institute funding formula through a letter of intent, and it is my intention to instruct that these funds be distributed according to the letter of intent.

I respectfully request that you concur with my LINE ITEM VETO of House Bill 1185.

Sincerely,
Dennis Daugaard
Governor