Airport Expansion: Necessary, Prudent?

Do we need the bills going through the legislature?

Airport funding is in the news, with major projects being discussed for Rapid City and Sioux Falls.

The Sioux Falls Airport Authority recently completed a much needed covered parking project at Joe Foss Field. This project was very helpful for people who travel in and out of Sioux Falls by air during the winter months. Since much of the eastern part of the state uses this airport, this parking garage was a welcome addition to a significant block of the voting population.

However, the Sioux Falls Airport Authority is now talking about spending hundreds of millions to expand the airport terminal and runways. The reality is most airports in South Dakota are underutilized, so extra capacity is not needed. In fact, the existing gates at the Sioux Falls airport are only used for a few hours each day.

Even the legislature was perplexed by the funding requests and did not approve money for either terminal expansion (SB 127) or runway projects (SB132). Even with the legislative defeats, the Sioux Falls Airport Authority is talking about moving forward with an $83 million terminal expansion project. And they are talking about paying for this project with savings, borrowing, and Federal grants.

People are questioning why a quasi government agency would have savings. With the high average tax/fee load load for a family of four in Minnehaha County (close to $50,000), shouldn’t the savings be used to reduce fees for everyone? In South Dakota, fee increases are a common way to tax. The airport raised parking fees recently (and to add insult to injury the city raised people’s parking fees a few days ago). People are also asking why the taxpayers (directly or indirectly) would want to be on the hook for loans and interest for something they don’t need.

Rapid City is also spending money on airports. Again there are concerns about why the modifications are necessary or prudent given the tax/fee pressure families are feeling.

There have been a string of these spending debacles recently.

First we were hit with the billion dollar prison expansion project that, if approved, would allow the state to fully enter the prison business. With this business model, the state would create more capacity than it needs and import prisoners and their families (that often have issues with the law) to South Dakota.

What is exceptionally crazy, is we have out of state prisoners in South Dakota now, when we supposedly have a space issue. Is this to trick us into believing the space situation is worst than it is? And for some reason, the state does not appear to have much interest in addressing the recidivism problem (at least 43% of the people end up right back in the prison system) even though other states, with similar demographics, have many fewer people being re-incarcerated. Could this be because they need incarcerated people to run an effective prison business?

The taxpayers would be on the hook for the billion dollar building project and the $33,000 per year for each person that is locked up. The unspoken reality is the prison support industries (hospitals, food service companies, maintenance companies, real estate rental companies, etc.) will rack in big bucks while the taxpayers are crushed.

Now we are being told there may be a $83 million airport expansion (which will likely be close to $100 million with change orders and supporting infrastructure), that doesn’t appear to be necessary. And that’s just in Sioux Falls. It sounds like a prison boondoggle 2.0. Take taxpayer money and hand it out for things that aren’t really necessary so a few people can make money while the taxpayers are crushed.

At this point most people are becoming weary of the game and just want the spending to stop!