South Dakota Inaugural 2003

SOUTH DAKOTA INAUGURAL 2003
GOVERNOR M. MICHAEL ROUNDS
INAUGURAL ADDRESS
 
Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you very much.  You may all be in trouble—I think I remembered my speech. 

 Let me begin, first of all, Father Barber was very gracious today, and I will be gracious as well.  I know he has a sermon to do tomorrow.  He probably doesn't have it done yet.  I'll get all of you on time so he can do the sermon tomorrow, or at least get it planned today so that he can do it tomorrow.  Mr. Chief Justice Gilbertson, members of the Supreme Court, constitutional officers, Army/Air Color Guard, the Lite Springs Singers, Shawn Cable, wow, Bob Sutton, Father Hal Barber, Francis Whitebird, and especially to my wife, Jean, dad, Rosemary, family, to all friends and supporters that are here with us today, I just want to say thank you very, very much for all of the help and the support.  It is truly, greatly appreciated.

 What a fantastic welcome on a kind of brisk South Dakota day.  And, yet at the same time, even though the little bit of a breeze—they tell me that the hot air balloons may very well be able to make it up yet today anyway even with a little bit of a northwest breeze, and yet the sun shines, it's a beautiful day in South Dakota.  When I came in today I noticed on several different flag poles that once again our flags are no longer at half mast.  In Pierre, just like across the rest of South Dakota, they've been flying at half mast to allow us to honor and remember a fallen comrade, a person who many of us looked up to, former Governor Joe Foss who died just recently.  Joe, as many of you may have known him, I knew him as the guy who brought my dad to Pierre back in 1958.  When we came to Pierre, dad came in as the State Highway Safety Director after Joe Foss hired him.  A lot of other people around the country knew him as a war hero, they knew him as a Congressional Medal of Honor awardee.  He earned it.  And when the President provided that to him, it put him in a special place in American history and also in our hearts.  I thought about this for awhile and I asked some people to pull for me what Joe Foss had said during his Inaugural in his first time in office because back then we had 2-year terms.  So I went back to look and I read—as a matter of fact I probably took too much time reading—what Joe had to say on his Inaugural.  It was surprising because in 1955 they had just gone through one heck of a tough year in 1954.  By the way, that was the year that I was born—maybe that's part of it.  The part of it also was that was the year of drought, and farmers and ranchers had to sell off part of their herds.  At the same time, the government was spending more than what it was taking in.  And so Joe's message was something very similar to what I could have taken.  In fact, I actually thought about taking part of his speech and reading it today and then wondering whether anybody would catch on to the fact that it wasn't mine—but it was Joe's from 1955.  Because what he warned everybody was is that there were folks out there that are hurting, and the rest of us in South Dakota are going to have to pull together.  And, in fact, he really said and the part that caught my attention because it rings so close to what we need today, the newly sworn Governor Joe Foss in his first Inaugural said, "If we are to measure up, we must work together.  The members of the legislature and people connected with state government, with one thought in mind, what is best for the people of South Dakota."  And his entire Inaugural went on to talk about what he believed was best—what was right for the people of this state.  And so today as I have an opportunity to address many of you including members of the legislature, I offer a hand and an opportunity to sit down and to visit and to talk about what it is that we have to do as elected members of government to make South Dakota better than what it is today.  And, yes, as I've said before, it's not too bad off right now. 

 At the same time, I think back on Joe Foss and where he comes from—what happened to him.  You know, he was a farming family—he was part of a farming family—hardy stock.  They came here to build a life just like many of you, just like many of your parents and grandparents.  We are a hardy stock here in South Dakota.  We made it through the tough times, the blizzards.  What we have to do today isn't tough compared to what they had to endure.  And yet these folks who came out here, they wanted something which is very similar to what we want—and that is something better for ourselves, and for our children, and for our grandchildren.

 Today we talk about the same principles that they talked about back then.  And when you think about it, it brings out the way that we look at what government is responsible for doing.  Some of you have heard it before, I believe it truly is a guiding part of our principle in what we do in government.  We protect those who cannot protect themselves—the very young, the very old.  We protect society from those who would do us harm, and we provide quality education for our children.  And when we talk about where we spend the tax dollars that we ask people in this state to deliver to us, those should be the places where we spend that money because no one in this room, regardless of your political beliefs, can argue with the need to do all those three things—those guiding principles that we should look at.  Also, as we move through and we talk about the things that we want to accomplish—we do it during the primary and then through the general election, and then afterwards sometimes as everything gets pushed in front of us, and we worry about the day-to-day activities, let's talk about what's important, what we have to do for our children.  The important things that in a campaign we talk about, let us not forget that once the election is over.  Things like economic development and what we are going to do for our country and for our state.  In South Dakota today we have an ag industry which I truly believe needs to change.  In South Dakota today, we have people that live on the land and yet at the same time what they sell is commodity and other people take it and turn it into a product which has more profit in it.  It's time we change that.  It's time that we begin part of a marketing process of delivering our ag products as a food and as a finished product to a consumer, allowing more of the dollars which we consider profit to stay in South Dakota.

 And who can talk about South Dakota without talking about the value of the visitor industry and tourism and the opportunity to bring people in and to brag and to show off this beautiful state of ours.  In South Dakota we have to have people working on a day-to-day basis to improve a tourist industry in this state that does what local groups want to do—what local communities feel is most right for them—and in the Black Hills where we have some of the most famous faces in all of the world.  We should be promoting it, and allowing that industry to expand and to grow.  We should celebrate our diversity.  Within 7 miles of those four great faces on Mount Rushmore, is another face, that of Crazy Horse.  Two great cultures showing off their finest—within 7 miles.  What a great opportunity for this state.  We will see that it becomes an opportunity for the rest of the country and the world to experience the diversity of our state. 

 We have people in this state that do business with health care and they do business with financial services and those are opportunities that people have found to make a living.  But in our state, it's because in many cases our laws and our culture are set up so that they can continue to grow and prosper.  We will work with members of those industries to see that they continue to grow, and that they continue to provide quality jobs—jobs that will bring our children back to South Dakota.  You see, the rest of the world has found something out.  We grow the best here, and I'm not talking about ag products, even though that's true.  I'm not talking about beef. 

 I'm talking about our children.  And, right now, they are an export that we should not be exporting—we should be keeping them right here.  And we do that, we do that, by providing them with an opportunity for a good job, a job that we would want, a job that they would come back to South Dakota to enjoy.

 Along with that, when we talk about good jobs for our children, we have to recognize that education is a critical part of the component that we, as South Dakotans, have always believed in.  We're going to talk and we're going to argue to some extent about where the dollars should go, how we split the money that we have available to us, whether it goes to these schools or those schools and whether we do it on a per child basis, and whether or not we allow for special programs that we believe to be important, such as advanced reading opportunities, and so forth.  But make no mistake, I've been in the legislature for 10 years.  I know a lot of the legislators that are here today.  I know the other elected officials.  There is not a single one among them that doesn't understand the importance of education, and I know that I will be able to work with them to see that our education is improved, even though today we produce children that the rest of the world comes and competes for.  The rest of the world has figured out how special our kids are.  It's time we recognize it as well, and we go after them, and we don't let them get out of this state.  We keep them right here because they are our future.  I think back—APPLAUSE—I think back about how we talk of education and some way the dollars get involved.  But let me put a face to it.  I'm fortunate to have been able to live in Pierre with my wife, Jean, and our children as they were born and have grown up.  And I've watched the type of a quality education that they have received.  And it isn't something that happens just because of dollars and cents.  Granted you have to have good facilities, and granted you have to be able to provide the materials, but along with that, you have to provide the quality teachers.  I look out here and I see a lady here who is special because she taught along I'm sure with other people in here, but one in particular that taught all four of my children when they were in St. Joseph's School—2 blocks.  She's special to me because she was their second grade teacher and I knew that they had received a good education.  I know because she was also my first grade teacher when I went there, and I would just like to say a special greeting and hello to Sister Jeremy Sitter who I see sitting right over here.  APPLAUSE.  You see, it's quality people working with our kids that we have to recognize and we have to keep, and so I want to work with members of the legislature to see that those good, quality teachers that we have in South Dakota are respected, that they enjoy, and that they are properly compensated for the work they do.  Working together, we'll make it happen.

 Along with that, and along with education, we talk sometimes about health care.  Think about it for just a minute.  How often or where can you go where if you don't have your health, you're happy.  Truly, if you want to enjoy a quality of life that we have in South Dakota, you also have to have your health.  In South Dakota today, we have a quality of health second to none.  We have people that come here to South Dakota because they want to live here and they want to provide their services.  We also have problems.  We have a case of where we have a large number of senior citizens in this state that don't have anybody looking out for their health care needs when it comes to prescription drugs.  Until such time as Congress is prepared to do it, I think South Dakota can put together a program, and I'm ready to work with the legislature to do it, on an interim basis until Congress comes through to help reduce the cost of those prescription drugs so that seniors can have the same types of discounts as those individuals who are part of a state employee plan or who have private health insurance.  And we'll be able to make that work, and we'll be able to do it, I'm sure, within the budget constraints that everybody's aware of.

 But once again, I want to come back to something else, and that is that if we want people to come into our state and to work here, one of the opportunities that we have is to provide a special different approach to health care than what other states do, and that is that if we can work with our health care industry, it becomes a marketing opportunity to bring in the businesses that may find health care elsewhere more expensive or more inefficiently delivered.  So I see it is an opportunity for our state to grow and to compete with other states in our region.

 Something else that I learned and I thought about this just a little while.  You know, Joe Foss, I think, was one of those individuals who looked back at the Native American population within our state and he talked about them in his Inaugural address, and he said he wanted to work with the Native American people, with the tribes, and he said you know the federal government has made promises to our tribes and we should do everything we can to see that those promises are kept.  But he's like a lot of other people in South Dakota, east and west, farm and city, these people that live on our reservations, these Native American people that move from reservation out into our communities and back to where their families because they are so family oriented—these people, along with us, people from every race in our state all believe in the same thing.  They want things better for their children, they want things to be better than the way that it is for them, they want a safe state and a safe nation, they want a place to raise their families, and they want an opportunity for their children to have a better way of life than they do.  I believe it's time, as many of you know, to talk again about that particular issue.  George Mickelson was the governor when I first became a state senator, and I remember in his Inaugural address, his second Inaugural address, he talked about the need for reconciliation, and I, it stayed with me just like it did with many of you, he talked eloquently about that need.  He talked about communication between the races.  Today, I want to build on that.  I want to build on what's been done in the past, and I want to put a new emphasis on cooperation between the races.  Let's put aside that which divides us and concentrate our energies on where we can agree and work together so that everyone, regardless of their race, wins.  It's time to APPLAUSE.

 On an election campaign, you learn a lot of things about yourself and about the people you meet.  One thing that stands out throughout the entire year was that in South Dakota we are much more united than we are divided.  Now the divided part creates news, but the united part is what moves us forward.  And that's what we have to concentrate on—building together so that all of us achieve and make things better for this state.  We have a history behind us of over 200 years of doing business with one another and doing business peacefully with one another.  Today is not just a celebration, a changing of authority and responsibility from one person to another, you see it's different than that.  It's more important than that.  It is a celebration of our country's belief that the transfer of that authority and responsibility shouldn't be with tanks rolling in.  It shouldn't be with guns and with bullets.  It's with the ballot box.  It's with the vote.  It's a recognition that we are all better off because of a process that was put in place over 200 years ago.

 I thought about this for awhile and I went back looking to see about those individuals who had made that special decision back there, you know it started with the Declaration of Independence.  And I wondered about those 56 individuals—56 individuals who signed the Declaration of Independence—these people who had decided that they were going to leave the security of an established government and create a new one so that we could enjoy the fruits of our own labor and the freedoms that we do today.  What happened to them?  What did they risk?  Remember what they said—remember what on the bottom of the Declaration of Independence that they signed?  What they asked?  And can we ask nothing less from ourselves than what they did, because what they signed after everything—when in the course of human events, but the way that it ends, "For the support of this declaration with firm reliance on the protection of the divine providence, we mutually pledge our lives, our fortunes, our sacred honor."  They meant it.  Of the 56 people that signed the Declaration of Independence, five of them were captured, tortured, and killed by the British as traitors.  Twelve who lost their homes, ransacked, and looted, and eventually burned.  Nine of the 56 fought and died in the Revolutionary War.  What they gave is what we have today—the freedoms that we as people in South Dakota and as Americans enjoy—which we sometimes take for granted, we move from one state to another in these United States—no pass, no permit, from border to border, coast to coast.  These borders that we have, they aren't meant to keep us in, they're meant to keep other people out.  Everyone of us has the opportunity to choose the job or the profession of our own choice, but to succeed in it or to fail.  I can stand up here in front of you as a governor or as a common person with a belief that I want to speak and say it freely with no threat of being jailed.  Each of us can worship God the way that we see fit, whether it be kneeling in a church, synagogue, mosque, or cathedral.   And yet all these freedoms, they weren't free.  You see these freedoms were fought for by people who came before us.  These people that came before us who understood the needs of these freedoms that we recognize and take for granted, that we should honor and we should cherish. 

 When you look around town, you will see that wherever the governor's name is established I've shortened it a little bit.  I use Michael or Mike or M. Michael, but when I took my oath today, I took it as Marion Michael Rounds.  I was named for an uncle that I did not know.  He, we'll I'm not exactly sure because I don't know a whole lot about him to be honest, but let me tell you what I do know about this guy.  I know that they tell me that he was about halfway tough, and that he didn't mind getting into a fight once in awhile.  I know that during World War II he was a volunteer, and that he was a Marine, and that he fought and he died on the island of Okinawa in May of 1945.  What I don't know about him is whether he was a Republican or a Democrat or an Independent.  Because you see he died before he ever got the change to vote.  Now, we can't repay to him or to the other young proud men and women like Joe Foss or the other people that are here of us today that were veterans, what they've given to us, but we have an obligation to honor and to cherish their memory and we do that by doing our best to make this country and this state even better and the way that we found it.  And, ladies and gentlemen, it's already the greatest state and the greatest nation in the world.  And the only way that we'll ever know whether or not we have accomplished our task is when our kids—our children—our grandchildren—and maybe for some of us if we're fortunate enough, our great-grandchildren.  When they come back to us and they tell us that they are just as proud of this state and this country as you and I are today.

Thank you, very much.  APPLAUSE.