Um, would you want to increase the amount of South Dakotans taking advantage of existing property tax relief programs, and how would you promote them?

Uh, I've been doing that on the campaign, uh, trail th- th- this entire time.

I've been the only candidate that's been talking about the programs that already exist for veterans, people with disabilities, and seniors.

We're not promoting it.

We're not talking about it.

You can say that you want more people to do it, but we haven't seen anything, uh, from the state letting people know about these programs.

We advertise all kinds of things in this state and spend tons of m- uh, uh, marketing dollars trying to promote, uh, different programs or vacationing, but we don't do enough public service announcement when it comes to this aid that's already available.

What do you think that the state's role in economic development should be? Um, and if elected, how do you plan to establish or continue that role?

What are some real measures you as governor can take to ease affordability pressures on South Dakotans? We'll start with 90 seconds.

Thank you for the question.

I think one of the most important things we can do if we just wanted to look at one area is investing in education.

If we just followed our state statute and fully funded education, which we don't always do, and there was a record of it even when I was in the legislature of not doing it, we haven't the last couple of years.

If we do that and we fund education at the state level the way we're supposed to, your property taxes will go down.

When we don't fund it at the state level, it's made up in the local effort.

We could also be funding school lunches.

Mr. Ahlers, your two-minute closing statement.

You mentioned this child care assistance stuff being cut as an example of that.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

So we've had all these different working groups and studies on child care need in South Dakota.

Right.

We know that it's there.

We have the most people.

Talking about endorsements, too, have you thought about searching for a Toby Doden endorsement?