February 2008 - Cole / Nicole LeFavour

Radiation

February 28, 2008

This morning the House Revenue and Taxation Committee took the cake and put lots of green icing on it for a French manufacture of nuclear reactor fuel. Forget that this deal comes with as yet unspecified quantities of radioactive waste landing in Idaho to be buried as "low level waste" in pits and trenches and yet more to be stored in some sort of container awaiting final disposal with the bi-products of so many other projects which have kept the desert busy for decades north of Pocatello.
The Idaho National Lab is a leading research facility in military nuclear fuel production, disposal and clean up. I say clean up because not only has the production of nuclear fuel for military submarines left volumes of often highly radioactive materials in the desert over the Snake River Plain Aquifer but wastes were brought to Idaho from weapons plants and reactors including the Three Mile Island power plant after its nuclear accident those decades ago.
The DOE’s track record on promising to remove or find disposal or neutralization technology for radioactive wastes it brings to INL is poor to say the least. Some long lived less "hot" TRU wastes have left the state but highly radioactive spent fuels have remained here along with acre after acre of "low level" wastes which keep mounting in the desert with each additional research project which graces our sage brush and cactus deserts.
Some of this we might evaluate as worthwhile. We might say that some of this research has advanced science and produced progress in our ability to deal with the deadly wastes we continue to produce. But at what point do we stop and ask whether continuing to produce more wastes with no final location or process for disposition, at what point do we note that our state might be digging itself into a hole and asking for greater harm than good from these deals? Are we to quietly become the nation’s defacto disposal site?
By locating Ariva here and producing fuel for nuclear power plants on our own soil do we not simply fall back into a trap of paying all the cost and getting so little benefit in this deal. Even worse how do we put a price tag on the risk that these wastes will stay in Idaho forever? And why would we break what is very well understood principles of tax policy to incentivize and attract a company with a questionable track record in other nations?
We have no promise in the text of house bill 562 that we will have any jobs after construction of the plant is complete. We have no guarantee that after the city and county extend services to the facility that it will not close down or leave town because the nuclear industry in the US does not reach a state of revival because communities do not trust that they will not be left to live with radioactive wastes indefinitely. There are no clawbacks, no job or wage or benefit targets in this legislation.
In house bill 561 we extending to one company an exemption which was designed for a production process which produces a taxable product like food, fishing poles or widgets. The production exemption was designed to avoid duplicate taxation but nuclear materials are likely never going to be "sold" to any entity in Idaho. In fact these nuclear materials are technically not owned by Arevia, the manufacturer, but by the Department of Energy, which, by locating the plant here agrees to take the radioactive wastes the plant produces while we, the tax payers, foot the bill through our federal taxes and any impacts to our air water or local health from the toxic gases and byproducts of this production process.
Is this reasonable and consistent tax policy? Is this even an industry or company we want to work to bring into the state?
Why is it that again and again our tax principles fly so quickly out the window when huge dollar amounts are tossed before us?

Digital Lawmaking

February 27, 2008

…..

In the Idaho House of Representatives, 70 of us sit today on the floor of our two story house chambers where we have our lap tops open and screens lit in front of us. You can hear keys tapping and chairs squeaking in the moments between the speaker’s low rote progression through the calendar and procedures of the floor session.
Set in curving rows downstairs and two long, unbroken rows upstairs, we review the legislation we are to vote on by going to the state website where the bills are kept in electronic form. http://www.legislature.idaho.gov/sessioninfo/hcal.htm Our voting pad pops up on the desk top when debate is done and it is time to vote. In the old statehouse we had a set of buttons on our desk, a green one for yes and a red one for no. A bell still rings when a vote is called but it is an electronic replication of the old ear splitting metal one in the Capitol building house chambers. At the start of the session this year we had to listen to the many ring tones the staff tested to try to replicate that metal on metal sound.
While we sit on the floor with the bills on the screen before us and access to all of Idaho code, every law, statute and act right there before us as well, http://www3.state.id.us/idstat/TOC/idstTOC.html we might have an instant message window open on our computer and be chatting with someone else on the floor below us or be using our cell phones to text family about our schedule or where we left the truck keys.
In preparation for debate we can visit a web site to help us calculate a lethal dose of arsenic for a bill on water quality standards. When we rise to present a bill, those on the floor below us see us by looking at a TV screen set in the high corners of the room near the ceiling.
It is like we are in many places at once now, like light bends and physical space gets compressed into a black-hole-like space inside this plastic box with plastic buttons which now contains worlds of knowledge and the ability to impact people far, far away in the time light takes to travel. It can be surreal. In a month we will all be home pulling weeds and in many cases standing on ground far from a computer screen. Still, there in our pocket, as the wind blows and the sky turns, a cell phone might ring and in a second we are here again, talking to the Speaker about a bill or agreeing to a schedule for a committee meeting. Lawmaking continues now digitally beyond the reaches of the statehouse. We send digital drafts to agencies, even view revisions on a hand held phone while the dry grass waves and the earth thaws pushing up green into spring.

…

Just Like Me

February 25, 2008

I was struck today while we debated a bill to stiffen penalties in order to protect domestic violence victims, how very colored our values are by our experience. I see in debate that what we’ve never experienced we really genuinely might not understand.
The committee was hearing two bills from the prosecutor’s association. Both allowed for a felony charge if a person is found guilty of breaking a domestic violence protection order or a no contact protective order for a third time.
In debate, Phil Hart was concerned that his ex wife’s own past behavior and accusations would land him a felony charge even if he did nothing wrong. Raul Labrador thought that it was too easy for people to get a protection order just to try to get custody of the kids in divorce proceedings. Lynn Luker moved to kill both bills because he says that judges can put people in jail enough already under the existing law.
None of these legislators I suspect has ever experienced domestic violence or stalking. None has spent long months with every day feeling like a dreaded test of your will to live. Every day a question of whether you can survive psychologically long enough until you are no longer followed, no longer haunted by phone calls, impersonated, no longer tired of having the police on auto-dial, filing report after report, no longer exhausted waiting for your stalker to maybe snap and kill you with a gun, a car or fist.
How many of my colleagues have lived in fear? Have some of the older ones been to war perhaps? It seems that those who have been in combat might know even better that I do just what living in fear of violence does to a person’s life.
` I look around the room in judiciary and rules and it is like many committees. Three women on a committee of 16. What are the chances that the law will often not reflect our unique needs in areas like domestic violence?
We all seem to value what we know, and fear what we know to fear. Today by the skin of our teeth and with Raul Labrador’s help eight of us passed just one of the two laws to allow women who are victims of systematic harassment or threats to seek some additional help from the court.
Still many women will wait in agony, enduring repeat offenses for a year or more while three charges slowly reach convictions and the felony comes to play. But it will be well worth it I hope for the sake of those few women who now will find safety sooner or get a rest from fear for a year or two while their perpetrators are in prison. I have hopes that prison will work better than jail time because it provides actual treatment for that sort of obsessive control and gives offenders and a better chance that psychological healing (if not the deterrent) will make more Idaho women safe and prevent even a few deaths by violence or the suicide that can follow despair.

Places to Talk

February 24, 2008

In the absence of offices and because even a whisper can be heard from anywhere on the house floor, places to talk strategy or call home are hard to come by. Some spots include: the benches in the stairways. The echo is fantastic but the lobbyists are becoming experts in acoustics. Ah privacy. Note the mural and interpretive sign placed here in cooperation with Idaho’s tribes.

The Supply Closet. Too symbolic. But my favorite.

The Elevator. Drawback is the door which pops open on its own.

One of the many rest rooms which now force the house and senate to mix. Lots of small restrooms mean many places where we meet on close quarters. This one is one of the roomiest. Note the nice stone walls. Some feature hot water in the bowl. There actually is an antique phone booth on the ground level, four stories below my desk on the floor. It has an antique phone in it and one of those beautiful old sliding doors.

Election Whispers

February 23, 2008

Whispers. Lots of them. Who is running for what, challenging whom, giving up the ghost, moving to the Senate, finding family again, sauntering off into the sun set. Sometimes we legislators save these tidbits of information for the last moment, seconds before 5 PM on the day of the filing deadline, the 21st of March.
"What is he going to run for?" "Is she retiring?" "Will someone file against me?"
It is the eve of election season and the hour of speculation.
I know well that there will be some surprises out there and some which are probably no longer surprises. We will lose some good people, a few to higher office, maybe gain some harder working or younger legislators, maybe lose some friends in both parties, maybe see some who have earned a challenge get challenged. While many of the seasoned ranks serve in here quietly and comfortably for years or even decades, there can come a time when even the kindest or hardest working have to look over their shoulders at the secretary of state’s web site come filing time. For those less diligent that day may come sooner. For Republican feather rufflers and outliers sooner yet. There will be primaries we all know. But some of the less than warm and fuzzy of the 105 of us seem to stand the test of elections again and again, often to the dismay of colleagues and the policy we long for.
This year there will be some shifting around within the body, even within Boise districts. The Senate I suspect will gain some Democratic seats. It could be a good year for Democrats there if voters steel themselves and stay engaged through all the swiftboating and low partisan slander that’s sure to come. We have to remember that there are humans behind those faces on the TV screen.
In Idaho, if you are a watcher of politics, March 10th is the day to put the secretary of state’s web site in your browser book marks… and watch races begin to unfold here from the Tetons to the Owyhees and all the way up the rivers to the deep lakes south of Canada.
Thirty five districts each representing almost 37,000 people. Your state legislature taking shape. Think you can do a better job than some of us? Chances are you can. That’s what we wish of democracy. We are a citizen legislature. There is not a lot of glory, but guaranteed a lot of work. Ordinary folks: farmworkers, soccer moms, teachers, small business owners, social workers, artists, farmers, assembly line workers, waitresses and college students. At its best this place should look like Idaho. We can do better at looking like Idaho. I know we can.

http://www.idsos.state.id.us/elect/eleindex.htm

Triumph of Cynicism

February 21, 2008

….

Wednesday: I feel like this sinister force is pressing down on this place, like our ugliest, most fearful natures are lurking at the surface, scratching the eyes out of our collective conscience.
The bean counters are stuffing our ears with starch, pulling the alarm on sirens which have deafened our sense to what is possible. It has driven us into isolation, frozen us spineless in our big, black leather chairs.
The Darfur divestment bill is dead. Created with the authorization of congress and the president as part of a coordinated strategy to impact the genocide and violent and systematic extermination of a people in Sudan.
The one chance our nation and state has to make a difference and we fall, believing the whispers that this will be but one of a series of divestment requests — as if national efforts are coordinated through federal legislation every year and as if the genocide of a group of people is acknowledged by world leaders and our own president each year.
PERSI, the Public Employee Retirement System, insists we are powerless and thus we became so.
PERSI insists it has no role in public policy yet invested hundreds of hours in defeating this bill, organizing public employee organizations, the Idaho Education Association and Firefighters to oppose Divestment.
PERSI knows that only one third of one percent of its holdings would be divested and that the list of companies it must avoid is created nationally, yet the managers claim a great burden in having to comply with this divestment legislation. In fact the burden and cost has been their hours spent fighting Divestment itself.
They insist we should have no role in the world, as if our actions are monetarily and materially isolated. This is the ugliest cynicism. I know because I sat in a college amphitheater in 1986 and listened to Reverend Desmond Tutu’s thanks for my work and the work of thousands of students to bring down the Apartheid government in South Africa through Divestment and the public awareness and international pressure which Divestment created.
Tutu was a man who spent his life struggling to end the rule of white government which made him, as a black man, a second class citizen with no right to work or pursue freedom and or participate in his country’s political process as an equal. The Apartheid government was condemned worldwide. This was arguably the only other major Divestment movement in the US in the past three decades. Tutu knew the power of dollars and the power of coordinated international efforts. I know that power and I know that as a state we have that power, and with a small action like adopting this legislation we could have been a part of something larger, part of a strategy carefully targeted to place pressure where it is most needed to end violence and bring down a government which is not just cordoning off an ethnic group within its borders, but killing them, to the best of its ability, trying to kill all of them. And do we really feel we have no choice as a state but to stand by and watch?
I think we know better. I think members of the State Affairs Committee, especially McKenzie, a former co-sponsor, knew better. With this vote, what really have we become?

At the Movies

February 19, 2008

Last night was Skip Smyser’s Movie night. Smyser is a former legislator and long time lobbyist who holds an annual legislator and legislative staff Movie Night at the Egypitan Theater. People come dressed down. The house and Senate mix, sitting in seats right next to each other (unheard of.) And we sit back, eat popcorn and get transported together somewhere far away and usually long, long ago.
I admire Smyser for his choice of movies. He often has a sort of transcending message he feels we need to hear, about the integrity of the law (A Man for All Seasons), racism (South Pacific), being different (To Kill a Mocking Bird). I look forward to these nights not just because so far they have all been movies I’ve never seen, but also just to look into the eyes of my colleagues afterwards, to ask their thoughts and see what they saw in a film. It gives me hope and re-affirms what we often have in common.
One Hundred and five people from around the state, gathered each year to make law. We are not quite ordinary people. We had the ego to run for office and believe we could win. We had to have the means to give up a job and do so. We had to be elected by a majority and so the majority in the state is better represented than it might be if we just drew lots.
I like nights like last night because we step away from the issues that divide us for a few hours and become ordinary people again. In my heart I hope it helps the process. I also hope the words of the song from South Pacific about being taught prejudice, it not being born in you, ring in 105 ears when we discuss immigration or gay people, when we talk about people who live in poverty and in wealth and about hard work and worthiness. We have a long way to go together. I always hope that nights like last night rub a little armor off of each of us and inch us one step closer.

Words to Avoid

February 18, 2008

There are words one might want to avoid when one comes to the legislature to testify in favor of a bill. Of course if you want to kill a bill you might want to use these words liberally, while sounding appropriately conservative.

CASINOS. This morning, presentation of a bill was proceeding nicely until a Senate sponsor mentioned how this particular bill would appeal to Casinos. Let’s just say that a Democrat last year was able to kill an appropriations bill for the Idaho State Lottery Commission because children were pictured on the Lottery annual report materials apparently exploiting children for the sake of gambling. Suffice to say, we are not a pro gambling body.
COMMUNISTS or SOCIALISTS: It is probably not good to mention any avowed socialists who are co-sponsors or to mention Communist countries with programs upon which your bill is modeled.
WOLVES: It would be unwise to say that your bill benefits wolves, even if it remotely might do so.
CAMELS: This just makes people think of the proverbial camel’s nose under the tent. Slippery slope and, as Lenore Barrett mentioned in response to a claim that a bill took "baby steps" toward a certain goal: "Baby steps? What happens though when this infant really starts to walk?"
ATTORNEYS: While the last election added many attorneys to our ranks, some of them like Ruchti and Luker being most fine upstanding citizens, it is likely unwise to laud how your bill benefits any group of attorneys or any individual attorney (unless it is Perry Mason.)
ENDANGERED SPECIES: I wouldn’t try getting overly scientific mentioning species of any kind, especially not endangered ones, no matter how cute and fluffy (or long pink and slimy) they are. (Well actually the endangered Moscow giant earthworm is white and slimy. Rep. Shirley Ringo says it is quite docile.) But you get the point. We tend to be suspicious of the motivations of scientists. No species.

Cursed by Gingrich

February 17, 2008

I have a beef with Newt Gingrich. He’s a very smart guy. I’m not sure exactly what he said to some of my favorite Republican colleagues, but if one more member of leadership smiles at me and says, reassuringly, the words "cheerful persistence" I’m going to have to borrow bigger teeth, grow pig tails or start wearing pink.
How do I convey this? I think Newt can hear the morris code in my heels clicking and the bounce in my step on the stairs of the Statehouse Annex now as I run one more time to the Senate to find that last vote I need for that bill. Cheerful Persistence. I’m pretty sure he feels the Braile in my smile as I look up from my computer getting one more email of frustration or anger from a person far off in some corner of the state to whom government is far away and abstract and for whom the idea of "wait" could mean a meal or even prison vs a warm bed and a space in a detox facility. Cheerful Persistence. I hope Mr. Gingrich hears my keys tapping to the far recesses of our state, sending smiley face thanks and encouragement to friends in Challis, pen pals in Lewiston and fellow non-profit organizers in Idaho Falls. Cheerful Persistence. Perhaps he can turn on his transistor radio and tune in to my thoughts as I run the frozen foothills ridge trails contemplating better debate strategies, rehearsing conversations with committee chairs and planning to set up meetings with cosponsors to keep things moving forward if not legislatively then at least in terms of people’s understanding of the issues for next year. Cheerful Persistence. That’s me. Newt Gingrich’s biggest fan.
My Question is this: if we are the cheerful sort and we do persist, does that mean this all works out in the end?
I’m afraid it was Gingrich who also started this kinder, fuzzier, new conservative "Yes if" thing which is meant to make us feel as if something we want is attainable when in reality our committee chair just sat through this Gingrich pep session and was instructed to use a nicer set of words to say "No."
Don’t tell them "No," tell them "Yes, if…"
Maybe this was the month for unfortunate advice from out of town. The National Federation for Independent Business (well known for their less than upstanding representation of their own survey statistics) had a lunch speaker from somewhere who went on for quite some time about unintended consequences. I missed the end of the talk (they lost me when sprawl turned out to be the fault of well intentioned environmentalists.) And so I’m not quite sure what direction they were going with the consequences but ever since this lunch talk, when Pete Neilsen or Russ Mathews don’t like a bill in committee they use phrases like "I can see this will have unintended consequences." Or "I’m very afraid of the unintended consequences of this bill." It is usually said with some gravity as if we will all know what dreaded outcome will befall the state for this particular bill should pass or even be printed in committee.
So if anyone has the Gingrich speech or the book by this consequences guy, I’d like some help decoding this stuff. And if I’m lucky, other phrases which are haunting my daily life in the statehouse will turn out to also be in code and I’ll be fully enlightened.

Friday and the Stones

February 15, 2008

It is Friday. Just Democrats left in the upper house. I’ve got my head phones on rocking out to a mix of Stones, Catie Curtis, Traffic, Amee Mann and Warren Zevon. Don’t ask. I’ve discovered this as a good way to transport my self in time and place, get work done and cheer myself up now that bills are falling, stumbling by the side of the marble race track, falling out of windows and finding themselves buried deep in storage closets. The budget is constricting like a corset just as we start setting state employee pay. My desk is struggling to stay orderly under a weight of notes passed in committee, secrets told behind hands and echoes falling through cracks in closed door meetings. Mid wives stop me in the hall. People streaming in this morning to speak so eloquently about our bill on Divestment from the Sudan. The place feels simultaneously like a benevolent father and a ticking bomb.

Fighting Words

February 14, 2008

Debating Dog Fighting. Donna Boe brought a bill two years ago and it was killed in the Jud & Rules committee on a party line vote. This year the Chair of Jud & Rules wouldn’t even let Donna Boe be the lead floor sponsor or let her be listed as a co-floor sponsor on Senator Brad Little’s bill. Floor sponsors are people who are assigned to present an agency or senate bill on the floor of the House for passage by our whole body of 70 members. I was assigned to floor sponsor a bill to adopt the Federal Tax Code (it actually slightly lowers state taxes) this year and will be presenting another exciting bill to adopt uniform mediation policy for attorneys in the state. I try to pick and choose what I floor sponsor. None of us is typically assigned to carry a piece of legislation we hate. Though it can be funny when that happens. Carrying a bill which was controversial in committee usually falls to the person who made the most debate in favor of it, or if the Chairman likes the bill, to the person who seems to have the best chance of getting it passed on the floor.
The dog fighting bill just passed unanimously with Rep Harwood saying he was holding his nose while clicking his mouse on the green YES button on his computer screen because the bill says dog fighting could carry a five year prison term — not because he wants people to train dogs to tear each other apart of course. We’ve come that far. Pete Neilsen in committee actually relayed a story about when he was a boy and how it was typical that he might urge his dog to fight another boy’s dog when they passed in the street. He was very concerned as to whether this bill would mean he would have gone to prison for that. The Prosecutors said it all rests in the word "organized" and how much anyone would agree he organized those fights. In committee Pete tells quite the stories of his boyhood. I know we all measure the law to our experience, but some do it more verbally than others. Pete must have been a wild one. Now he is renowned for outlandish questions which themselves tend to be ten times longer (and more slowly and dramatically delivered) than the answers.
Jud & Rules is my next committee this afternoon. It is tense just now because our chair is in a less than happy mood. He told Rep. Labrador, Rep. Luker & Rep. Hart and I that we need to get an AG’s opinion, need to have the Courts, Department of Corrections, and the Commission on Pardons and Parole willing to state support before we will even get a hearing on our alternative sentencing bill.
So far we’ve got 5 of the committee’s 16 members signed on a co-sponsors and many more expressing interest in seeing the bill pass. That’s one of the powers of a chairman. You can hold bills in your "drawer" and never give them a hearing if you want. I suppose that is particularly appealing when you think there might be the votes in your committee to pass something you don’t like.

Not At Ease

February 14, 2008

When the Speaker banged the gavel and boomed "The House will be at ease," today the pages stormed out of the nooks and crannies and hung the "Back Benchers" banner on the wall behind the Speaker’s desk. They did the traditional end-of-page-term skit about their time in the legislature. A new crop will be arriving soon. I’ll miss some of these. There are some good genes in the Moyle and Lake families.
Funny though this year for the what feels like the first time, not a single Democrat appeared in the skit. It is kind of like what is happening with our legislation this year. If it is at all substantial and has a Democrat’s name on it, it seems to be vanishing, typically for "technical" reasons. I’ve not checked with all my colleagues to see if this is universally true, but normally good bi-partisan efforts have a chance. I think the looming election year is taking its toll on the legislative process. I hope I’m wrong. That is the ugliest of partisanship — important policy being killed simply because the legislator belongs to the wrong party.

Today while we were at ease we also had the Marriage Ambassador award which recognizes a married couple who exemplify traditional marriage. It went to Rep. Donna Boe and her husband Roger for their amazing work locally and internationally and for their fifty year plus marriage. Roger came from Pocatello to be here with Donna and accept the award.
It is Valentines day, and someone in the award presentation used the words "those who choose marriage." I have watched this award presented every year for the past four years. This year was the first year I got teary. Something about the words "choose marriage" really got me. It seemed cruel even if it was not intended to be so.
It is Valentines day and I send love to my partner Carol as a legislative spouse, for all she endures in long hours, stress and putting up with my months of pre-occupation with policy and strategy and the daily drama of the legislature. To Carol who doesn’t get to attend the legis-ladies meetings and outings or have the camaraderie of others who live so close to the periphery of this often all-consuming place.
It is valentines day and I wish for all couples who, like Carol and I, can’t get married — I wish for you all a more compassionate world, a more compassionate state and a day when all our families will be as respected and valued as others.

Giving License

February 13, 2008

Sitting on the floor in my big black seat with my electronic voting board on my computer in front of me. We are beginning debate on a long list of bills. This is the first day since Rep. Lake’s stroke that we will begin again to tackle our backlog of legislation and send substantial numbers of bills to the Senate.
The chair of JFAC, our Budget Committee is arguing we don’t have the money to make misdemeanor probation a priority. This is the kind of argument which has filled prisons. It is also a bit of a turf battle for JFAC as they don’t want to have funding detour around the Budgeting process and come automatically from liquor funds. More successful probation and support for minor offenders will lead to fewer serious offenses, especially for substance abuse and mental health related crimes which make up a large portion of the crimes which fill costly prison cells.
The other key issue for saving long term prison costs at more than $50 a day would be helping the children and families of Idaho get kids off to the best start in education so they find meaning in their lives, success in school and positive experiences and support to stay off drugs.
We should be looking to find what every student
has a talent for, what every student is good at, what will motivate them to become engaged. That is the best of education. That is
how we can finally address the root causes and finally be successful at keeping them motivated to learn, keeping them strong emotionally
and out of the state of despair which leads to drug use, depression, suicide
and juvenile crime.
It amuses me looking at today’s agenda, that Idaho law appears to require a license for caring for plants but I know does not require one for the caring for young children in day care centers. http://www3.state.id.us/oasis/H0392.html
We graze a huge range of issues today. Fertilizer, trucks, colleges, health care, juries. I just voted no on a bill to release the state from a requirement that Idaho based contractors be included in those who are hired to work on the state Capitol restoration. It seems foolish not to hire as many Idaho based contractors as possible since that is the most sound policy for our economy, keeping state tax dollars in state to re-circulate.

Stressing Treatment

February 12, 2008

It has been a long road. I’ve found that legislation that is going to survive this process, requires that.
Yesterday House Judiciary & Rules Committee introduced a bill
I’ve been working for months with co-sponsors to negotiate and
finalize. The bill allows judges, in certain cases, to use drug
treatment focused alternatives to Mandatory Minimum Sentences.
Specialists with the Department of Corrections have told our committee
that prison
sentences of six months to a year coupled with supervised parole which
includes
treatment is the best way to ensure people recover from meth addiction
or addiction to
drugs.
Prison is a pretty
violent place. Violence can be contagious, like desperation. We have
struggled as a state to offer women and men a chance of recovery and
better chances of returning
to their families as productive members of society. It is becoming more
clear that, for non-violent offenders, whose main issue is addiction,
more than eight months in prison can be counter productive. Our system
struggles to ensure that offenders leave prison less likely to
return to drugs or commit other crimes. Treatment and parole
supervision with random drug testing and resources for re-lapse are
important for that. With more hard work, Lynn Luker, Raul Labrador,
Phil Hart and I will try to make this change to allow judges to use
these types of treatment focused sentences where appropriate. We are
now joined by co-sponsors Dick Harwood and Eric Anderson. Having Senate
co-sponsors would have been wise as the Senate Judiciary and Rules
Committee is where the largest hurdle may be.

Childhood

February 11, 2008

Republicans on the Senate Education
Committee today blocked introduction of a proposal I drafted to allow school districts to offer optional all day
Kindergarten in Idaho public schools.

Currently
there are 21,778 Kindergarten students enrolled in Idaho Public Schools. The
vast majority of these attend half day Kindergarten classes either in the
morning or afternoon part of the day. Typically, a single teacher instructs both
the morning and afternoon class.

According to the education Commission of the States, full day
Kindergarten produces higher math and reading scores.
Offering parents access to more extensive educational programs which improve
reading readiness, and advance social, emotional and cognitive development,
reduces the need for remediation and speeds the development of important
skills which help students excel in elementary and secondary
programs.

Currently, for the portion of the day when children are not in public
Kindergarten classes, parents are paying for childcare in a variety of types of
day care programs. In Idaho none of these programs is licensed and required by
law to meet state health, safety and educational standards, though in a few
areas, some are required to meet certain local standards imposed by city
ordinances.
Ten states offer full funding for all day Kindergarten programs. These
programs save tax payer dollars by reducing the cost of daycare, providing more
solid educational content and by ensuring more children enter elementary classes
ready to learn.
Idaho ranks 46th in the nation in
per pupil spending for education. Our lack of funding for all day Kindergarten contributes to
the low ranking. This legislation was intended to begin the discussion over how
to more effectively spend Idaho tax dollars to create a strong education
system which focuses on readiness and skills rather than expending large sums of
tax payer dollars in efforts to correct early failures in our system. All day kindergarten is one way we can use preventive means to fill the need for
remedial programs, to lower drop out rates and address the corresponding issues which
relate to juvenile crime and the cost of Idaho’s over burdened corrections
system.
In my mind, together with lowering class sizes for students of all ages and extending the school day for some students, improving early childhood education is one of the most powerful and effective changes we could make to strengthen education and help Idaho’s young people reach their full potential.

Home Working

February 10, 2008

I know I am not the only legislator home working late on this Sunday night. In little apartments in basements and condos, in high rises and simple hotels we work or sleep tonight. Outside it is dark and in my neighborhood the air smells of wood smoke. Like me, some legislators labor now over bills, researching, gathering co-sponsors, pulling in agencies and opposition to create consensus or compromise. Some come ready with years of experience debating legislation, they vote, work gently on their own strategies and issues and go home after the receptions and dinners at night to sleep. Look at the bills we sponsor and you can tell a great deal about us. As Democrats our bills may have other ambitions than just passage. We may have to use them to educate for a year or two, but already in my two terms I’ve seen several good ideas that were politically unpopular work their way to passage.
Tonight as the ground warms and thaws and the capitol stands like a broken shell across the street from our temporary quarters, the wheels of the process are turning faster, starting to grind in doing the real work. This is the week the debates begin.

What We Fear

February 10, 2008

If you pull back and look at us from a distance,it is interesting what we as a legislature would seem to be afraid of.
1. Wolves: not for their teeth but for the fact that, to a sizable number of us as legislators, they embody the Federal Government. They represent that struggle locals feel as the back country is designated wilderness and federal law changes to reflect coming population demands, pollution and contamination and human health problems already urgent in cities. It is a struggle over change and over power. Some fear the wolf because we are accustomed to being almost invincible in the wilderness. We are accustomed to grazing sheep and cattle and making of wild places what we will, not what another creature wills. Even if we implant birth control devises in wolves and see their populations level, there will be tension. Even if we watch them strengthen elk herds, culling the weak and making wild game meat lean and strong, there will be those who still will wish wolves exterminated. Even if we are able to use federal dollars to pay for losses to ranchers, pay to cover investment and the future market value of calves, there will be some who will never see a wolf as magnificent or sacred, only scary.

What else might we as lawmakers fear?
2. Being without a gun. Unless recent legislation is only about the politics of gun rights, then I suspect that it is frightening for some of my colleagues to picture their own son or daughter on a college campus without a gun. Let’s set aside that moments of passion and drunkenness are perhaps the greatest threats to public safety, even for those who remain sober, and to insert guns into such an environment might not help make it safer. Never mind that suicide by a fire arm may be one of the higher risk factors of allowing concealed weapons on campus. I suppose too we had best set aside the notion that a concealed weapons permit is an adequate test for emotional stability or any indicator of its owner’s ability keep that gun out of the hands of others on a small campus with shared dorm rooms, open doors, and many parties. This week, as the legislature debates prohibiting colleges from banning concealed weapons on campus, we will contemplate what we fear and what we don’t fear. Will a change in the law create more fear or less?

Low Wage Jobs

February 8, 2008

The first term I was in office, we passed some huge multi-million dollar tax exemptions. One for Micron which we were told would keep the critical Idaho Tech Manufacturer from leaving the state. Micron has layed of thousands anyway and soon will likely be gone from the state. The other incentive we passed that year was for Idaho based Albertsons headquarters, who also threatened to leave the state if we did not pass their legislation. They too have sold and now belong to an out of state entity, SuperValue.
I actually helped create some of the "tax accountability" provisions in the Albertson’s bill. With the help of a tax commissioner, Judy Brown from The Idaho Center on Budget & Tax Policy, and a few republican colleagues we created a wage floor and beefed up requirements for employers to offer health insurance benefits because we wanted to create an incentive which guaranteed a return to Idaho’s economy in exchange for the cost of the tax incentives, which ultimately the taxpayers of Idaho would have to fund.
Understandably some rural law makers were concerned that the incentive would apply to giant corporations whose headquarters would be located only in urban areas. Mike Moyle and others crafted the Small Employer Incentive act which mirrored many of the tax accountability provisions of the Albertson’s bill. A little group of small business oriented members of Rev & Tax worked to ensure we did not give away tax dollars to entice a company to come into the state and create low wage jobs which do not benefit but may actually be a drag on the economy as they provide no benefits employees can afford and may leave families in need of food assistance, indigent health care and other state funded services. In essence employers are welcome to create low wage jobs, we simply should never in my opinion be giving tax incentives to companies who do so.
So this week we saw a bill to remove some of the wage requirements of the Small Employer Incentive Act. The change will require a company to first create ten jobs with salaries of almost $20 and hour and then require that all remaining jobs average $15.50 an hour (with no job over $48/hr being included in the averages.) If you do the math an employer could create almost 8 jobs at minimum wage and only two at $47.90 and hour and qualify for major income tax, sales tax and property tax incentives under this bit of Idaho law.
With this mix of wages, how can we be sure this incentive is worthwhile for the tax payers funding these breaks? How can we be sure that our economy and state of Idaho will see a net benefit from this incentive? How much tax revenue will the wages generate to offset the incentives or will this just be a shift to other tax payers?
We better ask these questions. And, in my opinion, need to ask them of every tax incentive we offer. Further, I think we should ask whether the company in question is spending its funds for goods and services in the state of Idaho or has contracts and purchasing agreements mostly out of state. The benefit to Idaho is hugely different in each case. It is time we ask. And with the failure of this summer’s interim committee on tax exemptions to produce any willingness to really examine the economics and costs to tax payers of some of our exemptions, I’d say it is well past time to ask.

Suspended

February 7, 2008

We have suspended debate and have an ambulance here for Rev & Tax committee chair Dennis Lake who collapsed in the heat of debate. He is conscious and fine, but headed to the hospital. There has been a collective intake of breath and a somber nodding of heads as we pass in the hallway. Dennis is the fearless leader of the committee which once was run by Rep. Delores Crow of Nampa. Lake has made his mark on the place with his fair hearings, level head and the half smile he slides into sharp debate.

Being Quiet

February 6, 2008

One of the hardest things in legislative policy making strategy is knowing when to be quiet. On some legislation we have a delicate balance of Democrats and Republicans who agree on an issue.
In committee it is often a matter of who makes a motion. We have to think about who will be most persuasive to the opponents of the bill. Always for Democrats, because we are in the minority now, on tough bills we need to work carefully with our Republican colleagues to strategize as to which co-sponsor or supporter will make the motion to send a bill to the floor.
Someone making a motion at the wrong time or when they have just made a motion to kill a key swing vote’s legislation, is obviously bad strategy. Two years ago I made a motion to kill a bill in the Judiciary and Rules Committee right before I got up to present my own bill. (It was legislation to provide mental health and substance abuse counselors to High schools and Jr. Highs.) Needless to say I had to wait until the following year to pass this bill through committee and eventually through the House and Senate and into Idaho law. Hard lesson learned. I now know that there are times to sit quiet and pass a note and ask someone else to make a motion.
In the House where we have 70 members, right now we need all 19 Democrats plus 17 Republicans to pass or kill a bill once it comes out of committee onto the floor. Most bills we see pass unanimously and many which are contentious do not fall on party lines. If anyone in Republican leadership is voting with the Democrats on an issue, things are easier.
When we debate close bills we are careful as Democrats not to get too enthusiastic so that it feels to our colleagues like Democrats are the only ones who feel strongly about an issue. I guess you could say, we need a comfort level here for those voting with us so that they don’t feel like they will be accused of being RINOs (Republican in Name Only.)
And this does happen. Republicans can be divided within themselves. The issue of closing their primary elections to Independents and Democrats is very much dividing Republicans here with leadership leading the charge against moderates to close them.
Republican leadership in the House on the Republican side is very assertive. There were days last year when a delicate alliance will fall apart just because a member of leadership stood up to assert that leadership had an opinion on the issue. I guess you might say there is a measure of fear at crossing leadership. I don’t know this year how often that will be evident. It is yet to be seen.
Being quiet isn’t easy, especially when you want to debate against a bill because you passionately oppose it and you have something to add that’s not been said. Yet if a lot of members of our caucus have already debated with no Republicans debating with us, we have can lose the bill. I had to sit quiet for a long time the other day and it killed me because I didn’t want a single one of my constituents to think I did not oppose the bill. I stood up briefly at the end. The speaker called out as he does, "Good Lady from 19?"
I answer as we are supposed to, "Mr. Speaker to debate against the bill…." But still I felt I did no justice to the issue.
There are people like Senator Edgar Malepeai who have mastered silence. Edgar holds his words close and so, on the rare occasion when he speaks, people listen. I think of him often. He is home in Pocatello and has a substitute this session because his wife is battling cancer. I miss him. I think of him when I sit quiet. I could sit quiet more often but am often torn between the value of words and the value of silence. Silence when used correctly is powerful. So far I have spent time mastering words.

Torturing Freshmen

February 5, 2008

The Idaho legislature has a very mild form of hazing. No wedgies, no dunking anyone in anything. We keep a good distance in fact and, from the comfort of our seats on the floor, just vote a Freshman legislator’s first bill down. Of course we wait until the speaker says "Does anyone whish to change their vote?" and we do change our votes. You might call it a charming rite of passage. Even after the years and long ranks of new law makers, it seems to make us laugh every time. Today, to set up Rep. Thomas from Emmett, there was some debate about what the meaning of "is" is in the bill she presented. If you watch on IPTV live at 11ish each day you’ll see our antics. We are typically as lively as slime mold but on occasion get moving. This is the time of year where we are actually beginning to debate issues so it might be worthwhile.

IPTV Live aprox 11 AM, Mon-Fri House and Senate. The schedule will vary more and provide for longer debate as the session progresses. http://www.idahoptv.org/leglive/

Bootstraps

February 4, 2008

Some days committee is just depressing. Today a stream of Idahoans testified eloquently to the overly punitive nature of Rep. Bayer & Senator Fulcher’s grocery credit bill (it says no grocery credit for any month a person gets any food stamps — even if the amount of food stamp assistance is small and they have paid tax on the remainder of their groceries for the month.)
Just as I was feeling good about the day, Bryan Fischer got up to testify as to how the Idaho Values Alliance aims to "Make Idaho the friendliest place in the world to raise a family." According to his testimony, it will make Idaho friendlier if we make sure that no grocery credit at all goes to families struggling to feed their children and getting even $50 a month in food stamps.
But that wasn’t the hardest part of our committee meeting. Next, the discussion digressed into an estimation of which form of tax policy more effectively keeps "illegal aliens" from benefiting in any way from a grocery credit to the income tax (which many pay when they have taxes withheld from their wages using made up social security numbers –trying to do the right thing mind you by paying their income taxes.)
Never mind that many of the 30,000 or so people in Idaho who don’t have proper documents may have lived here for decades. Never mind that many parts of our economy depend on them or that they are frequently wives of legal citizens or others who have struggled for years to maintain legal status or were at some point in the long, long, sometimes ten year long, impossible waiting line for citizenship.
It was a depressing day. On the floor debate stayed just short of ugly on a bill to further complicate driving for those who do have legal status. If a person’s legal papers lapse (which happens frequently due to the nature of temporary visas) they must wait six months for a new drivers license. In the mean time how do they drive for work, for taking children to the doctor in rural Idaho?
Some work places will have the resources to help employees keep up with the new requirements so that they do not lose their drivers license and insurance. Others will not and this will become just another hurdle to working in Idaho if you come from India, China, Britain or Mexico.
For a state trying to bring in collaborative talent to our universities for research and trying to be a safe haven for refugees, for a state struggling to maintain rural economies, we are going to find ourselves with ghost towns where once there were vibrant, bustling communities. If we are not careful we will allow our hostilities over immigration to generalize further and will only incite more of those awful incidents around the state when a student at a university, a mother with a child with brown skin and an accent is harassed or even shoved or beaten, called a wet back and made to feel afraid for her life. What kind of a nation are we that we allow our concerns over broken federal policies to spill over to hatred of people working hard to make a living, working to hold families together and make a better life for themselves. Where is our humanity? Where is the soul of our nation? A nation where the vast majority of us are immigrants.

I wonder if perhaps too few of us know someone who has struggled to maintain legal status. Maybe more of us need to sit down with someone who came to Idaho as a small child or decades ago on a work visa, married here and stayed. There are heart breaking stories out there. People who worked hard to maintain proper legal status and all their paperwork for years, getting caught at the boarder trying to return to Mexico for a funeral or birth and losing their status because as long as they wait for citizenship we don’t let them leave the U.S. Even if that wait is ten years we make them jump through impossible hoops just to stay and remain legal as they long to. No, I suspect we don’t hear these stories in person often enough.

More on Senator Obama

February 4, 2008

Campaign Organizers Kassie and TJ with Senator Obama

Kassie and Katie with Gov Andrus and Bob Kustra

Former Mayor Munroe meets Senator Obama

The Senator speaks of a united America, health care specifics and Idaho’s hopes

The Julie Fanselow and Audience on the Floor

Elected Officials Leave the Speech Smiling

………………………………….

Carol
& I woke at 4 AM and lay in bed a bit before deciding just to get
dressed and drive down to BSU and the arena. There were very few cars
stirring at 6 AM but here and there you could see people in neighborhoods scraping off ice, headed down
the dark streets to hear Senator Obama speak. We walked through the
snow with people cheerful and still warm from their cars. At the gates,
some had clearly been there waiting at the arena for hours already.

I think the idea of getting the general public inside was simple for
organizer Kassie
Cerami and the bee hive of people of all ages at the Obama office. They
have endured impromptu auditions from folks off the street and children
who want to perform for the next president. The had to turn back offers
for food, music, and who knows what else from Idahoans who have been
inspired to generosity by Senator Obama.

I have a feeling though that we
public officials were the head ache to manage. Local organizers had to
get creative with seating for dignitaries at such a huge event where a
chance to meet the Senator was almost
everyone’s dream. I’ve not been too much of a fan of sports heroes,
musicians or rock stars, though I know a few who are pretty fabulous,
still this feeling of really wanting to get to say hello, face to face
to someone I admire so much is a
little new. For some people meeting senator Obama might be connected to
their perception of what power is. Some
think power is about who you know.

Frankly I never would expect to have Senator Obama remember me,
though it astounds me both times I have met him that he seems to.
(Carol pointed out there are not a lot of lesbian elected officials
from Idaho so maybe that could be helping him a bit.) There is I’ll
admit, also something wonderful in
being able to tell good stories. I heard this same story today from
several ecstatic
Idahoans: "And then I reached out and shook his hand. He smiled at me
with his big smile, looked in my eyes and he said, thank
you for coming!"

Volunteers who made 100 calls and a mixture of other folks got green
tickets for
the standing room on the floor. We opened the doors for them at the
same time as the general admission in the seats. People flowed in like
a cold, bouncing river for literally hours. Once the floor filled, I
went inside, done with my job of directing legislators, super delegates
(I’ll explain later) candidates and other Democratic Party folks who
were supposed to go to a special section of the bleachers together. I
think it
was no small feat to be sure everyone in this section felt equally, or
perhaps I should say, appropriately treated. Remember a legislature is
a hierarchy and right or wrong there is an order of seniority and
tradition which is pretty foreign to the lives of most of us. As
forceful as that whole order may be, it was beautiful today how hard
work on Kassie and TJ’s part went so well recognized and how they and
Brett Adler and others who have dedicated their lives often without any
pay got time with the senator.

Kassie and TJ were to open the rally with chants and talking about
the caucus, but I missed it because they heroically pulled me out of
the crowd on the floor and hauled me backstage to the green room
through a maze of black cloth clad tunnels to where Governor Andrus and
BSU President Kustra were waiting for Senator Obama. I was supposed to
stay with them, my staff badge and my Obama buttons on, feeling like
I’d just been mistaken for someone important and had made it under the
rope so far undetected.

I waited and the super delegates were brought down from the special
section of the bleachers. Gail Bray explained what the mysterious super
delegates are. I think there are five of them out of Idahos 23 total
delegates. Cecil Andrus and two Tribal leaders, Chaiman Axtell and
Chairman Allen (none of whom are super delegates) came in with the
delegates so together they looked like a wonderfully dignified group
which included new Democratic party chair Keith Raork, Grant Bergoin,
House minority leader Wendy Jaquet, Gail Bray, Jeanne Bhuel and Jerry
Brady who I understand is the Idaho Obama Campaign co-chair.

Super delegates exist in all states. They are not like other
delegates and so are not bound to vote for who the caucus goers choose.
They are free agents elected in parts of our party process and can go
to convention and choose the presidential candidate they please. In my
opinion, the number of them and power they have potentially skews the
simple democracy of the process, though I am sure there is a reason for
it which relates to the power of states. In some states in fact many
super delegates have long times ties to the Clinton administration and
that has fueled speculation that Hillary Clinton, while she has won an
equal number of primary races and fewer state delegates than Obama, may
have more total delegates when you count super delegates. If
presidential primary races are anything like Idaho’s recent House
Speaker’s race, the idea that you might promise those voting for you
something in exchange for a vote is not unheard of.

So I stayed in the green room with its
TV-set-simulated-mini-living-room corner and striking photos of rock
stars and athletes on the walls, until Senator Obama himself came in.
Let me just say this, as someone who has spent far too much time at
caucus-watching parties getting my photo taken with a card board cut
out of the senator: he is about as tall as his card board cut out.
(Which went missing last weekend from the Bouquet on main street where
a music event for Senator Obama was taking place. Let me know if you
have it. Jerry Brady, who carried it everywhere for a week, is heart
broken.)

The Senator came in the room talking casually with Kassie who has
met him several times now I think. How can he not be grateful and
pleased by Idaho today? He seemed it. Cassie, TJ, Brett and others came
together last year spontaneously as soon as he announced he was
running, some even before, and put together a grassroots campaign
determined to organize Idaho for the senator whether Idaho was a
targeted state or not. That Idaho now does matter only makes those
efforts more amazing. With staff here now there is groundwork, and
networks, and a base of volunteers in place ready for the caucus on
Tuesday.

The local Obama campaign created a community, one of the few things
I suggested early on and which I’m sure this group of warm, passionate
young people would have done anyway. It makes being involved feel good.
It reminds you how much you are part of something greater. If Change is
the operative word of 2008 then may Idaho politics look like this day
for decades to come.

One arena filled beyond capacity with more cheering bodies than
probably caucused statewide for Democrats in Idaho ever before. For
Democrats everything has whispered to us that this would be a great
year. This day today yelled at this sleepy state that if we work at it,
this will be a year where our hope sees strides rather than simple
steps. Senator Barack Obama is giving voice to something we all feel.
We tire of so much of the same leaders who look and sound and limit
themselves to what they have grown accustomed to limiting our nation
to. We can be more than a nation which promises prosperity and
equality. We can inspire change in a nation, ask ourselves to give a
little more to make this place grow closer to the dreams those leaders
generations ago had for us. Why would we give up on hope for that?
Compromise is an option after all else fails, but where lives are at
stake, no other skill is as valuable as rolling up our sleeves to
persuade, bending down to listen and ask for consensus, knowing how to
look into the eyes of others to change minds and change what is broken
in health care, in energy production and consumption, in poverty, in
overcrowded classrooms, in our bullying relationships with other
nations and our wordless relations with each other. We don’t ask enough
of ourselves in terms of what we can give others in need. If we did,
what might we accomplish as a nation? What might we finally be?

We are ready Idaho. Tuesday is the day that matters. The votes at
caucus are proportional, and are not "all or nothing" so every vote for
Obama could mean another critical delegate.

The Line Stretches Across Campus

Inside Where it Was Warm

Senator Obama Arrives

The Green Room with Super Delegates and Dignitaries

Arena Full to the Rafters

Senator Stennett Looking Good After Surgery with Chief of Senate Democratic Staff Marie Hattaway

…………………………………

Obama in Idaho

February 2, 2008

The Line Stretches Across Campus

The Green Room with Super Delegates and Dignitaries

Senator Obama Arrives

The Senator speaks of a united America, health care specifics and Idaho’s hopes

Senator Stennett Looking Good After Surgery with Chief of Senate Democratic Staff Marie Hattaway

………………………………….

Electric. Amazing. Who believed there were so many Democratic inspired
people in Idaho. Thousands had to be turned away because the place was
filled to the rafters. What a powerful, genuine man. He looks in your eyes and seems to reserve nothing. I thought, meeting him in person for the second time, how real he is. So many people laud his intelligence, his ability to articulate what our nation is missing and what we need. I see in his eyes a President I trust to be true to his words.

…………………………………

………………………

Senator Barack Obama is giving voice to something so many of us feel. We tire of so much of the same leaders who look and sound and limit themselves to what they have grown accustomed to limiting our nation to. We can be more than a nation which promises prosperity and equality. We can inspire change in a nation, ask ourselves to give a little more to make this place grow closer to the dreams those leaders generations ago had for us. Why would we give up on hope for that? Compromise is an option after all else fails, but where lives are at stake, no other skill is as valuable as rolling up our sleeves to persuade, bending down to listen and ask for consensus, knowing how to look into the eyes of others to change minds and change what is broken in health care, in energy production, in poverty, in overcrowded classrooms, in our bullying relationships with other nations and our wordless relations with each other. We don’t ask enough of ourselves in terms of what we can give others in need. If we did, what might we accomplish as a nation? What might we finally be?

Credit for Food

February 1, 2008

Monday is the day we start to delve into the issue of grocery taxes, asking whether or not you should pay a the full sales tax on the food you buy. Philosophically, food is an essential item which people have no choice but to buy, so it should be taxed minimally if at all.
The only bill which the committee will hear on Monday is a grocery credit bill, not one to remove the tax on groceries or food. The grocery credit is that same $20 you get to take off your income taxes. Some of our Republican colleagues propose to increase that to $30 for all tax payers, except to $55 for all those over 65 or earning less than $1000 Idaho taxable income. They propose that the credit on your income taxes would increase in $10 increments over the years and so could eventually climb to $90 or so depending on how much food costs and what rate the sales tax is set at.
As Democrats we have a bill to actually take the tax off of food at the cash register over six years, one penny at a time. The grocery tax brings in about $180 million dollars which we spend on education, prison programs and staff, health care, state employee salaries and other budget items. If we eliminated the tax on groceries all at once we would have to come up with $180 million in other money to fix this hole in the budget.
I personally am curious if many people out there would be willing to exchange paying a tax on services for not paying a tax on food. It probably depends largely on your income and spending habits but people living on modest incomes tend to spend more on food, in fact a huge portion of their incomes is spent on food. As more and more of our economy shifts from goods to services, we tax less and less of people’s purchases. Even in feeding themselves, people in higher income brackets may eat out more and spend far more on attorney fees, hair cuts, tax preparation and a whole host of other services, none of which come with a sales tax the way food and clothing and other items do.
In what seems like a cruel twist on the idea of relieving the cost of the tax on food, the grocery tax credit bill we will hear on Monday doesn’t let people have any grocery tax credit for the months in which they get any food stamp assistance at all. Even someone getting $25 a month in food stamps will get no grocery credit. While there are some good provisions in the bill, like letting people donate their credit to our state heating assistance program, I believe the food stamp provision is a major flaw of the bill.
If you pull away from the statehouse, up through the many snow covered trees into the sky, you look down and see in our three legged stool of a tax system — sales tax, property tax and income tax. You see that the income tax is the one place we try to take into account how much people earn and adjust the taxes to account for their ability to pay. To give away $30, $50 or $90 to all tax payers within the income tax part of our system is potentially irresponsible. This is the one place we are even able to consider people’s income when we tax them. It is the one place we can try to make up for the fact that lower income people pay a higher portion of their incomes in sales tax paid on taxable essential items like food.
Philosophically I know I pay my income taxes hoping that my money will go to pay for urgent needs like education and providing health care or housing to those who can’t afford it. I don’t want my tax dollars given back to me or to someone driving a hum vee. Fifty dollars can be hugely meaningful to people in lower income tax brackets, but in the upper incomes, this expenditure of state funds will cost the state over a hundred million in a few years without making much of a difference in those lives. Should we choose not to charge the tax in the first place the debate is different. We can ask ourselves how would we rather pay that tax? What is a more fair way to raise that money other than taxing something which every one has to have in order to survive?

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