March 20, 2013

The Honorable Brian Gosch
Speaker of the House of Representatives
500 East Capitol Avenue
Pierre, SD 57501-5070

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

I respectfully return House Bill 1137 and pursuant to Article IV, Section 4 of the South Dakota Constitution, I exercise a LINE ITEM VETO on the same.

House Bill 1137 is entitled, "An Act to impact education in South Dakota, to make an appropriation therefor, and to declare an emergency."

I am exercising a line item veto to remove two sentences. The first sentence appears in Section 1, which deals with funding for the technical institutes: "The Secretary of Education shall distribute this funding based on actual full time student enrollment in fiscal year 2012."

The second sentence is in Section 2, which deals with funding for K-12 schools: "The Secretary of Education shall distribute this funding based on actual fall student enrollment in fiscal year 2012."

I have no objection to the Legislature's intention to distribute these funds to the technical institutes and the K-12 schools. However, I believe these two sentences are in error because both distribute funds according to FY2012 actual student F.T.E., which equates to data from the 2011-12 school year.

For the technical institutes, the language in the bill 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. For K-12 schools, more recent data is also available - the actual student F.T.E for FY2013, or the 2012-13 school year. These approaches to allocating funds would more closely align distribution of these funds with current enrollments.

The Legislature can use a letter of intent to clarify its intention to distribute the technical institute funding according to the funding formula, and the K-12 funding according to the FY2013 actual student F.T.E. 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 1137.

Sincerely,
Dennis Daugaard
Governor