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PIERRE, S.D. (AP) — Education advocates plan to use an extra handful of days pressing lawmakers to support Gov. Dennis Daugaard's proposed half-cent sales tax hike for increasing teacher pay after House legislators postponed a vote Wednesday on the bill.
The chamber briefly took up the sales tax measure before a group of legislators used a procedural move to delay further consideration until next week. Spectators had packed the House chamber's upper gallery to watch the debate.
Momentum has been building to raise South Dakota's teacher pay, which a state task force studying education funding said is the lowest of the 50 states and District of Columbia.
Education organization representatives, members of the Daugaard administration and teachers sporting buttons decrying South Dakota's standing among other states spoke with lawmakers much of the day before the planned vote.
The bill faces a substantial political test in the House, before potentially treading an easier path through the Senate. It takes two-thirds support in each chamber to pass a tax hike.
Daugaard's office said he is "optimistic" about his proposal's chances. The governor stepped out of a meeting to talk with a group of teachers and advocates in the state Capitol rotunda, asking them to return next week if they can.
He told them not to give up.
"This just gives us more days to continue to take that message out, and so we'll be out in the communities this weekend talking to people," said Mary McCorkle, president of the South Dakota Education Association, a professional organization with more than 5,000 members.
Lorrie Esmay, superintendent at Jones County School District, said she plans to use the time to contact lawmakers and will return to the Capitol next week for the vote.
Her son, Jordan Esmay, is a teacher in Belle Fourche. Esmay said he used a personal day to be at the Capitol for the debate.
"Like normal, we don't see anything happen," Esmay said.
Republican Rep. Jim Stalzer, who made the procedural motion, said he wanted more time to digest proposed amendments to the legislation. Stalzer said he supports an increase for teachers, but not necessarily a tax increase.
Tony Venhuizen, the governor's chief of staff, said the administration sees the delay as a sign that opponents "know that they don't have the votes to kill it."
Meanwhile, Americans for Prosperity South Dakota State Director Ben Lee said in a statement that lawmakers should use the time to figure out how to reprioritize existing funding for teacher pay rather than raising taxes.
Republican Daugaard's sales tax increase would raise more than $100 million in the upcoming budget year, most of which would be put toward helping raise the state's target average teacher salary to $48,500 per year.
South Dakota's average teacher salary of $40,023 in 2013-2014 lagged an average of six states that border it by $11,888 a year and was $8,643 behind the next lowest neighbor, North Dakota, the state task force found.
About $62.4 million from the sales tax hike would go toward teacher salaries and about $40 million would go to property tax relief, according to the governor's office.
House Republican leader Brian Gosch is pursuing a teacher pay hike without increasing taxes.
"I think it would have been really close, one way or the other," he said of the vote.
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