Air service, postal facility and other concerns expressed to Rep. Noem

HURON – While Huron is seeing growth and expecting more in the future, there are challenges in the areas of health care, agriculture, lending, the local workforce and air service, Rep. Kristi Noem, R-S.D., learned Thursday.

In an informal session with about a dozen community leaders representing different sectors, she was briefed on problems the city faces that she said her office can hopefully address at the federal level.

Huron has been hurt greatly by the Essential Air Service program and will lose commercial flights at the end of September.

Great Lakes Aviation is providing unreliable service and people don’t want to take a chance and buy tickets here, Mayor Paul Aylward said.

“So basically, we’re done,” he said.

The airline industry has struggled with a pilot shortage after the government passed a law that required pilots to have 1,500 flight hours to fly commercial planes.

Aylward and Greater Huron Development Corporation President and Chief Executive Officer Jim Borszich also talked about the frustration with the uncertainty of the future of the Dakota Central mail processing facility.

Borszich said the last he heard they were to close last month, and yet they’ve been hiring. But he said he has not been able to get any response from the Postal Service.

“Nobody wants to talk to us,” he said.

Noem said her office has been unable to get answers either.

Dakota Central employees are extremely concerned, Aylward said. Younger employees and their families have moved on, but the more veteran workers don’t want to transfer, he said.

Workers are trying hard to keep the plant open and running well, but aren’t getting any information either, he said.

It would cost money to close Dakota Central and move the operation to Sioux Falls.

“It will not only cost money, it will cost service,” Aylward said.

He said the issue is a big deal not only to local business owners, but also to area farmers and ranchers.

“It will affect our mail service,” he said.

The Postal Service is in deep financial trouble because Congress has mandated that it pre-funds its retirement plan. No other business in South Dakota operates like that, he said.

Noem said a postal reform bill to help fix the cash flow problem has not gained traction in Congress.

Meanwhile, the leaders also talked about the shortage of skilled and unskilled workers in town, and the fact that hundreds of jobs are going unfilled. It’s hard to attract new businesses or for existing ones to expand when they can’t find workers, they said. Beadle County has an unemployment rate of 2.4 percent.

Huron businessman Rich Bragg said the community is being helped with the temporary influx of Dakota Access Pipeline workers this year, but they’ll be gone by fall and the economy will struggle once again with low commodity prices, he said.

The city’s population once dipped to about 10,000, but is back up to around 13,000, Aylward said. School Superintendent Terry Nebelsick said the district enrollment was down to 1,900 at one point but has rebounded to 2,500 because of Dakota Provisions.

The Huron school district has a 49 percent minority enrollment, by far the highest in the state. And 33 percent of the students are enrolled in the English as a Second Language program.

Some came to Huron not proficient even in their native language because there was no schooling in the refugee camps. But now students are graduating from high school here and going on to college.

Noem said it’s been a challenge in the House because so many members represent urban districts and don’t understand what life is like in rural America.

In an update on House activities, she said the chamber has been working on appropriations bills.

“We as Republicans, especially, like to do our appropriations bills because it lets us identify funding for our priorities,” she said. “If we don’t do that, the administration basically controls the purse.”

It’s also an opportunity to get policy riders in place to address the concerns of South Dakotans.

One example is the Waters of the United States (WOTUS) proposal that the Environmental Protection Agency put forward so it would have jurisdiction over any water that could someday end up in a stream, navigable river or ocean, she said.

It would mean a new layer of bureaucracy on almost every acre in the state and nation, Noem said.

But funding to implement those regulations was stopped through an appropriations bill. It’s how bills can be used to get policies put into place when backers can’t necessarily get the president to sign a bill into law, she said.

Noem said she asked to be appointed to the House Ways and Means Committee because 80 percent of everything that’s considered in the House goes through that committee.

Tax and trade policy and the entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are all considered by members of the Ways and Means Committee.

“I really wanted to be where the work was,” Noem said. “I wanted to be able to influence tax policy, which is one of the biggest drags on the economy and why so many companies are leaving the country.”

She also wanted to work on trade agreements because 95 percent of the world’s customers are outside the United States, she said.

“You go into any store in the United States and you can see products from all over the world,” Noem said.

“But you go to their countries and you don’t see anything made in the United States on their shelves,” she said. “And that’s because we’ve done a poor job with our trade agreements.”

For the complete article see the 08-12-2016 issue.