SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) - Massive federal budget cuts proposed Thursday by President Donald Trump would be felt by South Dakotans across the state.
The Argus Leader (https://argusne.ws/2ncbtOh ) reports that the president is proposing to eliminate dozens of programs that funnel millions of dollars into the state for things ranging from low-income heating assistance to medical research.
The budget is far from final and likely to undergo significant changes in Congress, but many in South Dakota are concerned about the impact the budget would have locally.
Here are some of the services on the chopping block in South Dakota:
Airports in Pierre, Watertown and Aberdeen would be forced to close if the president succeeds in eliminating the federal Essential Air Service program, which supports rural airports that don’t have enough passengers to be self-sustaining.
Cutting the $175 million program isn’t a new idea. President Barack Obama, who landed in Watertown in 2015 before a visit to Lake Area Technical Institute, suggested a cut during in his first term.
“Every president that comes in has tried to shut this down,” said Watertown Regional Airport Manager Todd Syhre, whose airport offers 1,456 flights a year to Pierre and Denver.
The program doesn’t require general taxpayer dollars and pays for itself through taxes and fees paid by airline passengers, collected and used for several purposes as part of the Airport and Airway Trust Fund.
Sioux Falls Metro bus system would lose about $3 million in annual funding if Congress follows through on proposed cuts to the federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery program, which provided a $1.1 million grant last year for renovations to the downtown bus depot.
Thousands of South Dakotans could be left in the cold if Congress agrees to defund the federal Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. The $3.4 billion program helped keep the heat on last winter for 22,175 people in the state who fell behind on their energy bills.
People who make up to 200 percent of the federal poverty guidelines can apply for help, which is paid directly to the utilities by the Department of Social Services.
Another program targeted by Trump for elimination, the $121 million Weatherization Assistance Program, offered insulation upgrades, duct work sealing and more to 186 other South Dakota families through grants through local aid agencies like Interlakes Community Action of Madison and Sioux Falls.
An energy auditor comes to a person’s home, checks for leaks and offer fixes that would drive down heating bill costs thereafter.
President Obama proposed a cut to LIHEA as well, said David Gall, program administrator for South Dakota, but funding was ultimately restored.
The search for medical cures on South Dakota campuses would be scaled back if Trump’s proposed $5.8 billion cut to the National Institutes of Health become reality.
The federal institutes funded millions of dollars’ worth of research in the state last year, including $1.17 million in grants to South Dakota State University, $6.3 million for the University of South Dakota and another $12.7 million for Sanford Research.
Such grants help fund research that can eventually lead to creating, testing and refining treatments and cures. Years of research culminate in clinical trials, such as Sanford’s recently announced trials to study the use of a patient’s own stem cells to treat rotator cuff injuries.
“Clinical trials are what lead to modern medicine,” said Cindy Morrison, chief marketing officer for Sanford Health. “When you think about chemotherapy, that was once a clinical trial. You get to clinical trials through research.”
The Avera Institute for Genetics was founded with NIH grant money, according to Chief Scientific Officer Gareth Davies. The Avera Institute now has over 40 staff members working in 20,000 square feet. The funding supplements health system investment and private funding sources, Davies said, and helps fund the work of the Institute’s partner organizations.
“It’s always disappointing as a scientist when research funding isn’t available, because medical research and breakthroughs save lives,” Davies said.
Money from a federal program slated for elimination under Trump’s budget helped pave the way for a new business park in northwestern Sioux Falls.
Foundation Park was a benefactor of the U.S. Economic Development Administration, which pitched in $1.7 million last year to help build railroad tracks in and out of the future industrial park. The White House’s budget proposal would eliminate the $221 million program entirely.
“Certainly having a park in Sioux Falls with rail access makes a park uniquely attractive to companies that have or need rail infrastructure,” said Brent O’Neil, economic development manager for the city.
The city also received a $755,000 grant from the program to help develop an 80-acre research park, also to be located in northwestern Sioux Falls. The University of South Dakota Research District is a partnership between USD, City Hall and state officials. The federal funds will go toward infrastructure, including 2,800 feet of streets.
“Having those funds allows infrastructure to be put in that in turn can help support the growth and development of businesses,” O’Neil said.
Arts programming from the SculptureWalk to the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra could feel the squeeze if Trump succeeds in eliminating the National Endowments for the Arts.
The South Dakota Arts Council gets about half its funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, using the money to pay for arts education throughout the state. All of the state council’s federal funding - $845,635 for 2017 - would go toward grants for local groups, according to Director Patrick Baker.
The money supports nearly 500 programs a year throughout the state, including an artist in residence program in schools. Locally, they include the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, Sioux Empire Community Theatre, Sioux Falls Jazz and Blues Society (which organizes Jazzfest) and SculptureWalk.
“An elimination of NEA funding would not necessarily mean complete elimination of any of our grant programs, but it would mean serious cutbacks across the board,” Baker said.
The Washington Pavilion, Sioux Falls Multicultural Center, the Bowden Youth Center and Boys and Girls Club of the Sioux Empire would all be at risk of losing funding if Congress agrees to $3.6 billion in proposed cuts to Department of Education programs.
Those programs were among the recipients of nearly $11 million in federal funding for before and after school programs from the 21st Century Learning Centers Program, now on the chopping block. Other proposed cuts would hit programs for English language-learners and kids who don’t have anywhere else to be, which troubles Sioux Falls Superintendent Brian Maher.
“Students who do not have English as a first language and need that work and care so that they can be assimilated into our schools and our culture would be at risk with a loss in funding,” Maher said.
Also at risk: The Supporting Effective Instruction Grants program, which has offered nearly $11 million to the state for each of the last three years for teacher training and classroom size reduction.
A law office that assists low-income South Dakotans in civil cases like evictions, divorces, protection orders and collections would lose two-thirds of its funding under Trump’s budget proposal.
East Dakota Legal Services in Sioux Falls is the only option for free legal aid in 33 South Dakota counties. The $396,000 it gets each year from the federal government helps it serves between 300 and 400 people a year, Director Doug Cummings said.
Clients can’t make more than 125 percent of the federal poverty level and must have an immediate need for legal assistance, such as being served a subpoena or eviction notice. The agency turns down 75 percent of the people who need help. “We are reduced to being a legal emergency room,” Cummings said.
President Ronald Reagan never put money in his budget for the Legal Services Corp., Cummings said, but boosters in Congress kept the agency afloat with continuing resolutions.
Funding has fluctuated through the years, but Cummings said legal aid has a long list of nonpartisan backers, from the American Bar Association to federal and state judges. Harriet Myers, an adviser to President George W. Bush, worked in legal aid and backed funding during her time in Washington, D.C.
Indigent funding for legal services is important to the integrity of the system as a whole, Cummings said.
“If you want your citizens to believe in your legal system, people have got to have access,” Cummings said. “If you don’t have access and people don’t believe in it, you’ve failed.”
The White House’s proposed budget cuts would take away programs that have been around for decades to help families afford a roof over their head.
The city would lose about $1.1 million a year under the recommended slashes to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, said Les Kinstad, affordable housing manager for the city. It would also eliminate programs that create opportunities for low-income families and the homeless while fixing up and replacing some of the city’s old housing stock.
“It’s easy to say, ’well, just do away with a program,’” Kinstad said. “But it will have an impact on people.”
Local nonprofit Affordable Housing Solutions is building 10 single family homes this year, including many in core neighborhoods downtown, with money from the Community Development Block Grants. Trump’s budget would eliminate the program completely as part of a $3 billion cut in funding going to communities such as Sioux Falls.
AHS uses the block grants to help pay for single-family housing, sold to low-income families. The homes act as workforce housing for parents who have jobs but still struggle to afford the costs of raising a family. The federal program has been around for 42 years and has funded $150 billion in grants.
Also on the chopping block is the city’s Homebuyers Assistance program, which offers low-interest loans to low- and moderate-income families. The city would also have to cut its Single-Family Rehabilitation program, which funds maintenance projects, and a program at Inter-Lakes Community Action helping homeless people find jobs and housing.
The nine television stations and 11 radio stations in the South Dakota Public Broadcasting system would struggle to offer local programming if Congress follows through with Trump’s threat to zero out funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
SDPB gets about $1.66 million a year from CPB, which makes up 22 percent of its total annual budget. About half of the remaining funds come from the state; the remainder is made up though fundraising. The state funding pays largely for engineering and infrastructure needed to broadcast.
The CPB money pays for SDPB’s subscriptions to national programs, but it also pays for local programming: High school activity broadcasts, live streaming of the South Dakota legislature, a 24/7 PBS Kids channel and educational programs online for use in local schools.
“I think sometimes when people say ’we don’t need it,’ they’re not thinking through all the other services we do,” SDPB Director Julie Overgaard said. “I don’t think anybody else is going to come into South Dakota and cover the girls’ basketball tournament, broadcast the Dignity statute dedication or stream the legislature. Those things would just go away.”
Overgaard sees strong support for public broadcasting in Congress, where discussions of budget cuts have been a recurring theme for decades.
Rural home buyers and businesses could have a more difficult time borrowing money if Trump manages to eliminate a group of community development and neighborhood reinvestment programs.
Grow South Dakota, located in Sisseton, is one of more than 17 economic development agencies in the state that use the programs to offer loans to borrowers who might not otherwise qualify. The nonprofit has more than 650 active loans on the books, according to chief executive officer Marcia Erickson.
Her agency received $9.9 million in federal Community Development Financial Institution grants since 1999. In total, Grow South Dakota serves 10,000 South Dakotans a year. Other rural development agencies relying in part on the targeted programs include Interlakes Community Action of Madison and Sioux Falls, Dakota Resources of Renner and Rural Office of Community Services in Lake Andes.
“Without essential funding, residents in South Dakota will not have access to resources that have otherwise driven these programs throughout the state,” Erickson said.
Lin VanHofwegen of Dakotas Resources said the cuts would leave “our country’s most distressed communities without the tools needed to grow businesses, create jobs and sustain a thriving local economy.”
Not every agency is facing the possibility of cuts under Trump’s budget proposal. The Sioux Falls VA Health System provides care to former members of the military at its 98-bed medical center and clinics in Watertown, Aberdeen and elsewhere.
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs would get billions of dollars more under the president’s plan, though local officials for the hospital aren’t quite sure how it will affect them locally.
“We can’t speculate on how we would spend it when we don’t have it,” said Shirley Redmond, a spokeswoman for the local VA. “We’re always grateful for additional funding to provide care and benefits for veterans.”
Money would go to improving both primary and specialized care for veterans, and continuing a program allowing veterans to choose between the VA and private hospitals. The Veterans Choice Program is slated to end in August.
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Information from: Argus Leader, https://www.argusleader.com
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