Cole / Nicole LeFavour

Notes From the Floor

Former Idaho Senator Cole / Nicole Legislative Blog

Rogue

April 30, 2009

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Morning. Sitting at my desk on the Senate Floor. The trees outside the Senate chamber windows now have leaves. The House has shut down. House members wander the hall in jeans. Republican Majority Leader Mike Moyle has on a striped shirt with his. Senators sit at desks, reading the paper, chatting and answering e-mail while Republican leaders decide just how we proceed. Senate Republican Majority Leader calls Mike Moyle into the back and we sit and wait.

Yesterday the House half of the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee met alone and passed budget bills out to the House floor. Idaho's budget system is praised nationally for its efficiency and cooperation. The 20 member committee with ten house member and ten senators, four Democrats and sixteen Republicans, has, for decades, crafted balanced budgets for the state and kept our process smooth and consensus driven.

Yesterday's break from that practice is no small thing. This year with Moyle's penchant for running his 52 member caucus like a boot camp, and with him positioning to run for Speaker after Lawrence Denny retires, the stakes in these battles seem to have been raised. There is an assertion of power that is palpable in here to all of us. If we ever wondered if one man could hijack this process, we may have an answer.

On JFAC this year, Moyle and House Republican leadership got their 8 Republican members voting lock step on several issues, schools, state employee pay. They strong-armed the House co-chair Maxing Bell and she was caught between the House, Senate, Governor and her long and honorable place in Idaho's budget writing process and its history. But House Republicans control only 8 members of the 20 member committee. Shirley Ringo, our senior Democratic member and Wendy Jaquet serve there for House Democrats. So on those instances when all or nearly all Senate Republicans supported smaller cuts to state employee pay, and all four Democrats also wanted smaller cuts to state employee pay, Mike Moyle could not get his way.

I have no doubt this frustrated him. I sense he very much worked to find other leverage points. Maxine may have been one of those. I don't know. Not to get his way is not something he might not be used to now.

So to have the House yesterday have its half of the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee (JFAC) meet alone and pass budget bills, and then for the House to preemptively bang the gavel, adjourn and go Sine Die for the year should be a resounding message to the State of Idaho. That gavel sound was the sound of one man seizing power.

Even if I agree with Mike Moyle in opposing Otter's $80 million in new taxes and fees for roads in a year like this, the sound of that gavel falling last night sent a chill down my spine. It should send a chill down the spine of any Idahoan who cares about Democracy, ballance of powers, and the integrity of the legislative process.

Cement Booties

April 28, 2009

It is not like anyone seems to have a plan for how the Republican House, Senate and Governor will agree on anything and go home. Senate Republican leaders are trying to help Governor Otter save face. So polite. But at what cost? And why take the fall for him pouring himself such an oversized pair of cement booties? The House says it is going home with or without us. I agree, we should go. But Senate Republicans have closer relationships with the cement and engineering industry lobbyists who must be camped in Otters office. They say they wouldn't dare override the Governor. So how does this end? Cement booties for all?

Traveling in Sheep Clothing

April 28, 2009

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Carol and I got a puppy from the Caldwell pound, a husky mix, white, seven months old. I slept in the living room with her last night while she settled in. She has kennel cough so we are walking her at night and in the early morning so she doesn't touch noses with all the other dogs which she so very much wants to meet. With bird flu mixing with swine flu and all of us mixing in airports, schools and at concerts from here to the tip of the nation to the south of us, it is hard not to feel for Bighorn Sheep in their canyons across southern and central Idaho. They meet a wooly domestic sheep and wet noses touch and its all over, potentially for entire herds of what is left of the bighorns. Viruses and bacteria hitch hike from one of us to the next across the globe. DNA mixing and then multiplying until the microbes run out of habitat, like bighorns coming up over the canyon rim when rafters set up camps below and the jet boats roar. And so under a bill we just passed out of the Senate, someone will load up the roaming bighorns who touched noses with the wooly sheep and send them off in trucks elsewhere, perhaps to infect a different herd than their own. The wooly sheep, with their own germs, stay, migrate out of the hills in the winter to pick up more disease and come back in the spring. And here in the statehouse, more than anywhere, we all shake hands, touch noses, move on.

Dumb Ideas

April 23, 2009

With some certainty I can now say that sometimes, with repeated attempts, legislation gets worse, not better. The recent idea of spending general fund dollars on roads is about as bad as it gets. Proposing to increase budgets for roads out of the money we would be
spending on schools, when we have cut budgets for every part of state
government, including schools, is beyond unbelievable.

Rep. Marv Hagedorn has a great break down of ITD/road funding on his blog. He estimates that, counting stimulus and GARVEE and all the dedicated and carry over funds, almost twice as much money is available for roads in the 2010 budget as there was in the 2009 budget we passed last year.

But if someone thinks that I and others are going to vote for a gas tax increase this year, just to avoid a really stupid idea like taking from schools to build roads, they need to have their heads examined.

I don't hate gas taxes. I live in an urban area where things are not
all that far away. I am guessing that my friends in Challis and other
very remote rural areas might like them less. But if you want to charge
people for how much they impact roads, gas taxes are still pretty fair.
Fuel efficient cars tend to be lighter, less impact. Driving more means
more roads impacted. Pretty fair.

But it is true, voters don't want their taxes raised this year. Conservative voters especially. And they will probably never, not in any year, like the idea. Some voters, and it is no small number, are more concerned about the economy and see it as the reason we need to go home now and stop pretending we want to accommodate Otter's urgent desire to pass $80 million in tax and fee increases now in the depths of the most severe depression in modern history. Still others are bothered by the priorities demonstrated by cutting education budgets while raising taxes for roads. They might accept some kind of tax increase when the economy and state budget is in trouble, but not for roads.

Perhaps those many Republicans in the house who don't care about public schools are thinking this spending general funds is a great idea because it gives more funds to roads without raising taxes. Brilliant. Except that again and again, polling in Idaho shows that Idahoans care A LOT about public schools and education. It consistently ranks number one in spending priorities. If Republicans want to do this, and I hope they don't, voters are suddenly going to have uncanny insight into what really matters and doesn't matter to the Idaho Republican party. I suspect such a revelation might be a great gift to Democrats in the 2010 elections.

If having Idaho stuck down in the lower third in the nation on many indicators for the quality of our public schools was not enough, maybe we want to ensure we are at dead bottom in the years to come and that our kids have no option but to stay here to work in Walmart and all the chain stores that will represent the last of Idaho's increasingly narrow and stunted economy. 

But I hope this dumb idea fails and that we all look around and find ourselves at the end of our ropes very soon. I hope we get annoyed and finally vote to
override the Governor's frenzied vetoes tomorrow or Monday so we can stop wasting millions and go home.

Bloody Gashes

April 22, 2009

The Senate floor is nearly empty. The few left are answering e-mails on the stand-off and sharing u-tube videos of British singers and snakes. In one video a rabbit bites a snake on the tail and chases it across a lawn away from its burrow. In both videos the most unlikely prevail.

This morning Carol and I went running in the foothills. Cool air, early, quiet. Sunday there were sheep grazing and loose cows on the trail. It is astounding to be able to get so far from the Capitol by running out the back door. Boise is amazing, still rural at its edges, wonderfully so. Owls are nesting, our fruit trees are blooming.

When, on the way home, I tripped and fell on a rock and gashed my knee wide open, I was worried first that I would not make it to the Capitol in time for session. I had three appropriations bills up today and we were convening at 9:30 am. If we can't be in we can let leadership know and get a letter drafted for an excused absence. I don't think we had such formalities in the House.

Carol helped me up off the trail. We tied a bandanna below my knee to keep the blood out of my shoe, ran down the trail, showered, dressed, drove to the doctor, got seven stitches and made it to the Senate floor literally just in time to stand up and present the substance abuse appropriation bill and not miss a single vote before the Senate.

Time Bends at the End

April 21, 2009

This late in the session, time compresses. A meticulous and formal process that ensures bills get hearings, public airings, readings and time for debate, gets compressed into a Dali-like distortion of days or weeks. Weeks become days or hours or minutes. Clocks bend and the sound of voices requesting unanimous consent to dispense with the rules speed and rise in pitch until our words become like the drone of mosquitoes singing in a hollow granite drum.

So when the Governor's veto stamp falls, some things run backward while others speed and in a flash what was undone is redone. The veto, so dreaded, is just red ink on now meaningless paper.

This morning in the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee we re-did 8 vetoed bills in a few minutes. No debate. On the Senate floor, while we amended horrific education cutting bills from Goedde, Nonini & Luna, the House killed Otter's $70 million road tax and fee increase which Senate Republicans passed yesterday.

Like space squashed, stone and bodies and wooden desks warp like silly putty, we trade place on sides of votes, rearranging chairs while the mosquito voices hum. Republican leaders return from the Governor's office. Deals have been cut on more sides than any players may realize. There are millions of dollars at stake and they, like a magnet or worm hole, bend flesh, squish us all in fast forward through these last few days.

Dealing with Vetoes

April 20, 2009

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Apparently, the governor decided to send a stronger message. Here on our desks after lunch we got a xeroxed letter listing eight more bills the governor vetoed. I'm sure he didn't like the idea of us chuckling. But perhaps really this isn't a problem he can solve with vetoes. Sometimes you just don't have the votes. Sometimes law makers just don't feel they can go home and justify to voters raising their taxes to increase budgets for roads when we are cutting schools and health and everything else.

So what do we do when the Governor vetoes something?

We have several options. 1) by a two thirds vote we can override and pass it anyway. 2) we can run the bill again, even quite quickly with a long series of "unanimous consent" requests. All the rules of the house and senate mean nothing in the face of a unanimous consent request. If no one objects, its done. If someone objects it takes a majority vote. If we run a new bill, even an appropriations bill, it can be done very quickly. It has to be slightly different. We may increase or decrease it by $100 and change the "intent language" which goes with it and directs how or when or conditions under which the money must be spent.

The governor says in his letter, "I tried to be diplomatic and respectful of the legislature … yet it seems my efforts left many confused and questioning my resolve. So to eliminate any doubt about where I stand … I am vetoing these appropriations here bills before me immediately." He says also that he will continue vetoing appropriations bills, "until an adequate transportation bill is approved by the legislature."

What adequate means is a frightening thought. I do think there comes a day when the public tires of this, when the $30,000 a day seems just as excessive as the huge registration fee increases and gas tax hikes, all after a session filled with millions of new state and federal dollars for roads.

Odd Vetoes

April 20, 2009

If Governor Otter thinks his two vetoes have the legislature quaking in our boots, he might want to peek in the Senate just now. More laughter and head scratching than anything. An early childhood education bill with Democratic sponsors and a bill on security breaches and identity theft with bipartisan support. Neither controversial enough to fail an override vote. Neither will send us back to work as a legislature because the state can't function without it — as a veto of an appropriations bill would have. If a veto is a message, this one might be a whisper.

Alien Planets at War

April 20, 2009

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While it might seem that sitting in the statehouse would be the best vantage point for up to the minute news on what is going on in the statehouse, it's not. As legislators, we might be in committee when something big happens. We might be the last person on the Senate floor working away at an inbox of 5000 emails. We might be meeting with a constituent in the hallway and miss the great conversation in the lounge, where Senators who do not have offices sometimes sit on old furniture to drink coffee or read the paper.

If you really want to know what's going on you probably read Betsy Russell's Blog or you wander around the state house and ask questions. Sitting in one place is the last best way to learn anything. Bathrooms surprisingly are excellent ways to catch up. That's because the House and Senate share bathrooms and they are one of the few places law makers from both Houses mingle. The chambers may be 40 feet apart physically, but in every other way they are light years distant from each other.

The Legislative Services office on the first floor where bills are drafted is fascinating for news. While, by rule of the legislature, they can't and won't tell you anything about who is drafting what or what is being drafted, you do get to watch who walks in and out and chat with them about what they know and why they are there in the dark reaches of the statehouse.

If you are not in legislative leadership, which I am not, of course you would want to visit the Majority and Minority leader's offices. But They are on the second floor in their offices and we don't see much of them. Honestly I've gotten more info out of my Senate JFAC Co-Chair, Dean Cameron, than out of my leadership this year. Dean is often happy to help me figure out what at the moment is going on amongst the factions and who is behind which budget proposal for the next day. Sadly though what he says is has usually changed by the next morning when we vote, so I've made a note to chat with him next year right before our morning JFAC committee meetings.

Republican leadership in their dark back hallway will tell much in sarcasm. Ask a direct question, get a very telling cryptic non-answer. Often very helpful if you know the language and facial expressions. Of course you can not walk right into a Republican caucus meeting because those are still closed meetings with secret handshakes and rituals of consensus I wouldn't like to know. Our Democratic open caucus meetings, as open meetings, do not usually reveal anything anyone did not already know. That is why they are open. We don't say things we don't want the media to hear. Fortunately the media will share the gossip with us when they visit. Which is handy but odd but useful.

Of course this open caucus thing got a bit out of control this year. In the House, Dan Popkey, whom I like, apparently sat in on an open Democratic strategy discussion and then went off and asked a Republican chair woman what she thought of the strategy before the strategy could be put to use. Call me wierd but when I was a reporter I think I did see myself a bit like the starship Enterprise exploring the galaxy under the prime directive. Report but don't interfere or do anything that would change the outcome of the news.

So, this morning, I think it is fitting to consider the legislature an alien planet, this place with foreign rules, pomp, circumstance, odd language and traditions. Surely though the House and Senate are separate planets, or alien races stuck on one planet with starkly different languages, beliefs and diets. The governor's office would be yet another alien race at war with the first two. And if we continue our century-long planetary war, the people of the galaxy will go hungry or roadless or unstimulated. Perhaps they will grow tired and invade the planet of state themselves, bang the gave and call it done for the year.

In any case it is hard to know what is going on in here unless you travel and speak several alien dialects. I suggest Betsy's Blog. She seems to travel light speed and have the best universal translator in the universe.

Steelhead Whispers

April 17, 2009

The Senate Chamber is empty but for Dean Cameron and Shawn Keough sitting down at the other end by the open windows talking about the staff upstairs. They are trying to produce the final appropriations bills to legislate various compromises and deals that will close out the session. It is all sticky because two education bills are still hanging in limbo on the Senate Calendar. These affect the education budgets by cutting school programs. Adult cystic fibrosis funding also is still in limbo, as are school facilities matching funds, gas taxes, and the details of what is to be done with the Governor's $44 million in discretionary stimulus dollars.

So the chamber is quiet as the sun warms the world outside. My colleagues are cheery in their good byes. We wish each other a good weekend. Monty Pearce comes to ask me if we Democrats are holding firm on not raising taxes for roads while we cut education budgets. The words steelhead caucus have echoed on Republican lips today. This is a bit like the days in years past when the Democrats together with blocks of Republicans worked together to accomplish much in the legislature.

Some day, when moderate Republicans and Democrats get together, Mike Moyle and his conservative house leadership will finally have a problem. They will no longer be pulling the governor and Senate around by the nose. It will likely be hard on those moderate Republicans in the House at first. But if enough were brave, it would, at some point, become hard for Moyle to punish them all. From day care standards and education funding, to state employees, energy conservation and healthcare, things might change.

Ode to the House

April 16, 2009

Oh House of Representatives with your two tiered chamber,
With your multitudes and chaos
Your skits and singing
I miss your humor

Oh larger body of elected ones, Majority like sheep you follow your leaders
As the caucus doors close and thumbscrews turn
Down hill you trod, the state, its schools,
Its economy in tow

Oh disciples of the temple of Moyle when will you finally gather and stray
Retribution against the few is easy,
Against the many is foolish.
Organize your multitudes.

Oh larger Minority with your 18 members, I miss the difficulties of communication,
The instant messages,
The frustration and joy of meetings where all was not decided in advance,
The meals together, the laughter.

Oh House of Representatives you are a fractioned, contentious body.
In your eyes there is life,
In your voice there is song,
In your pages there is theater.

As the trees leaf in this late session it is time to say goodbye, yet we remain.
From one great stone building to another we shall soon drag our cardboard boxes and folders.
We are done here though your draconian ways keep us longer.
Farewell oh House.
Farewell.

Gauntlet

April 15, 2009

While here the Senate quietly debated the Governor and Department of Administration's budgets, across the marble hall, on a party line vote, with every single Republican in the House of Representatives voting no, the bill to undo deep cuts to state employee pay just went down. A vote like that says one thing. Republican leadership, Moyle, Bedke and Roberts have decided how their caucuses will vote. I say this because hurting state employees with a 5% funding reduction that includes a fixed 3% pay cut is NOT a partisan issue. Is it?

We are about to go into the 14th order where we amend or change bills. The 14th order is a time on the Senate floor where great mischief can be done. Elliot Werk and our Democratic Caucus is plotting now to "radiator cap" S1055 to turn it into a local option authority bill. And we rally can do that. In this order of business you can actually take any bill and turn it into a completely different bill…

Sadly, John McGee says he won't vote for local option unless Democrats vote for tax increases for roads. I'm sorry to see John will be an obstacle to Local Option when we have so few chances to move forward anything to finally fund public transportation in Idaho.

The Gauntlet is now down.
Today things should get lively and the end should start to really unfold.

Games at the End

April 15, 2009

For me home is within walking distance of the Capitol. For my colleagues it is generally not. Right now some are trying to extend leases, moving into hotels or contemplating sharing digs for what is a few days but could become a few weeks when you count the personalities involved in Idaho lawmaking.

For now the Senate's Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee members have stuck together on more mild cuts to state employee pay. Not a wholly moderate body, there seems to be a frustration on the Senate's part with House leadership for forcing votes from Republican members. The House has buckled down in its Republican caucus to make larger cuts state employee pay and to make the deepest possible cuts to Education.

With the House split on transportation tax increases and Democrats holding a block of 18 votes that the Governor has refused to negotiate with, it is yet to be seen how the Senate will vote on tax increases for roads. Our Senate Caucus is unified even more than the House's Democratic caucus on this issue. If the vote is going to be close here as well I'm a bit surprised the Governor hasn't been chatting with us much about what he wants out of this session. There are a few things he wants, like lesser cuts to state employee pay which we might agree on. In years past he has been open to local option authority and I'd hope he might consider that and public transportation in particular as a worthy piece of any state wide transportation plan.

But he hasn't really called. So we'll keep at this staring at a board full of appropriations bills someone is worried about sending him. Until things start moving no one is going to budge. Until the first bill is vetoed we won't know how willing anyone is to take the heat of making this session go longer. Every day is probably one state employees' pay, one lay-off you might say.

We won't win a waiting game, only maybe a game of public chicken.

Not About Salad Bars

April 13, 2009

Salad bars. That's the metaphor being used for seniors being assessed charges for services in assisted living centers. Senator Hill likes iceberg lettuce and dressing. That's it. He doesn't want beets and cauliflower.

H146 changes the way assisted living facilities charge elderly and disabled residents. Assisted living services for the elderly and disabled are not optional services, they are frequently critical medical services residents have no choice whether to or whether not to accept. If you live on a fixed income isn't some level of predictability important? Wasn't the previous tiered rate structure letting providers make as much as they do in other states?

Under this bill residents get a plate for roughly $2,500, a plate, no salad. A room to rent, no services. If they want salad or dressing they have to pay more. I'm sure most assisted living centers would give them lettuce with the plate, maybe dressing. Maybe not. Maybe some facilities will decide to charge for every leaf of lettuce and every gram of dressing. The bill doesn't say they can't. We will trust that accountability to a rules making process and an oversight board which I think assisted living facilities have so far ignored.

And if you know you can not afford more than a little lettuce or dressing, will you maybe then go without care you need even though it is critical to you health? Physical therapy, oxygen, travel assistance. If you are struggling with recovery or health issues, might a provider easily tuck a bunch of caviar under your cauliflower and charge you even though you never wanted it and knew you could not afford it?

And here I play with a really broken metaphor. I'll stop. The bill passed at something like two to 33. Those of us who opposed it were criticized for cruelly scaring seniors.

Once a Senator

April 12, 2009

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Last week I crossed paths with no less than 20 former lawmakers. There are hundreds of us out there across Idaho in small towns and across the valley. So many that each year we have a memorial day in both the House and Senate for the ten or so who pass away.

Sometimes alumni of the legislature retain their titles. Certainly in more formal settings some like former Speaker Bruce Newcomb do. Newcomb works in Government relations for BSU. His wife, Celia Gould is also a former legislator and was appointed by Butch Otter to head the Department of Ag. Other former law makers have become so familiar in other roles that we might forget that they were once Senators and Representatives.

Roaming the halls of the Capitol are the many Republican law makers who have become lobbyists. Chris Ellis, former legislator is now a lobbyist for the Health Care industry. Kent Kuntz. Steve Ahrens. Clete Edmundson works in legislative relations for the Governor. Kathie Garrett Lobbies on mental health issues. Former Senator, Majority leader and lobbyist, Bill Roden was invited back on the Senate floor for a tribute to Alan Dingle last week. Former Senator Skip Brandt, a sort of John McGee type rising young star
of sessions past stood at the podium in our Senate Commerce Committee trying to abolish use of
the International Fire Code. Brandt lost a primary race for congress
and is now a County Commissioner.

Lee Gagner, former JFAC member roamed the halls this week for a few days. A former moderate and powerful member of JFAC, he lost a tough primary race and went from being a fixture to being gone.

Most those Republicans who have lost primaries are moderates. Some, like Otter appointee, Curtis Bowers made foolish mistakes. Bowers published a John Birch society anti-gay tirade in the Nampa paper and was shunned by the many lawmakers who were embarrassed by his words.

Well loved, long time Pocatello Senator Edgar Malepeai's wife, Brenda, recently passed away after a two year battle with cancer. Edgar, one of my favorite law makers, is still an elected Senator but has stayed in Pocatello these past two years to be with Brenda every minute he was able. Her funeral in Pocatello was lovely and graced with spectacular vocal trios and quartets. The Senate took the day off to attend. Lawmakers present and past sat in the balconies of the ISU's huge new music hall and watched tall men in Polynesian print shirts usher visitors.

In the balcony seats reserved for legislators, sat men I might have forgotten were lawmakers, Democrats, like Mayor Chase and educator Alan Anderson. Republicans from Eastern Idaho. They came to wish Brenda goodbye, to be there for Edgar.

I looked out across the hall and realized what an unusual club the people of my district have elected me to. It is not just a two or four or six or eight year membership. For life you are in part a legislator, just as the female spouses of the male lawmakers will always be "legisladies." You can hide from it I imagine, but in a book somehow or on the walls of the capitol your name and picture remain. I suppose even if we die eighty years from now, someone will say our names and try to come up with something nice to say for the annual memorial service on the Senate floor.

It is an odd thought for me, having never belonged to a club with official members, having never been part of such formality and tradition. Once a Senator, at least on some roll book somewhere, Senators we remain.

Roads or Schools

April 10, 2009

Over one billion in stimulus dollars is flowing into Idaho over the next months. It is divided up into several different parts that can only be spent as directed.

–$90 million is dedicated to education (but schools are still being cut deeply because the money is mostly being kept in reserve.)

–$180 million in stimulus is specifically for roads and transportation.

–$400 million is provided for healthcare but healthcare is still being cut because we will pull back our $400 million in state healthcare dollars and spend it on other parts of the budget.

–$44 million in stimulus has been saved to the end. It is money that the Governor can choose to spend on anything he wants.

On the Joint Finance Committee yesterday we made a series of motions to spend the Governor's $44 million in flexible stimulus funds. In a fiscally and economically prudent motion which is bound to anger the Governor, Wednesday we broke the glass on these funds and used what is now about $7.2 million of the $44 million to restore part of the huge state employee pay cut.

The remaining millions could have restored a statewide vaccination program we cut from Health District budgets, it could have restored therapy hours for people facing mental health issues, restored services to people with disabilities, paid for school field trips we are eliminating statewide, put back huge cuts in teacher pay the Education Chairs are making, paid for teacher aids for teachers with huge classes of students, kept the lights and heat on in some districts or even put back an early teacher retirement program Tom Luna is eliminating…..

But no. We sat in the temporary Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee room, here in the old cement and marble Courthouse and, after Shirley Ringo and I moved to send $19 million to schools, the motion failed on a party line vote and that last of the flexible stimulus money was spent on roads.

Good News

April 8, 2009

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Sometimes good things do happen. This year it is pretty rare but a few good things did happen in the past few days.

1) This morning we reduced the cut to funding for state employees from the deep 5% cut to only a 3% cut with no mandatory pay reduction. For the record, Senator Cameron and Senator Keough are my heroes for today. It is extremely worth noting that the proposal that passed did not put budgets at risk should the economy worsen because it used just over $6 million of the governor's $44 million in flexible stimulus funds which he again insisted that he wants to use mostly on roads. (To be clear that's on top of the other tens of millions in stimulus he got from the feds specifically for roads.) The House Republican caucus is clamped down hard. Not a single House Republican voted for the proposal. I wonder what they tell their districts when they go home? Yes, I voted as party leadership told me even when I thought it was wrong?

2) Yesterday the Senate Commerce Committee which is a frequent bane of my existence for its very great deference to insurance industry lobbyists wishes, that committee did something good and on a 5 to 4 vote actually killed a bill I disliked. The bill would have allowed the State Insurance Fund to skate from under a judgment of the Supreme Court. The sponsor, Senator Goedde, it turned out, is a member of the State insurance Fund Board, and was a named defendant in the Supreme Court case.

3) Senator Kelly, after years of work on ethics issues, passed a bill to require some disclosure of personal finances for candidates for public office in Idaho. Yep you might know a little bit in advance about the many conflicts we may have in voting on legislation in Idaho. As to a preview of my own disclosure, I'm pretty sure I don't own single share of stock or have investments in anything anywhere. I'm hoping someday I might make enough to have something to disclose but for now I'm going to be really boring.

Really a Bill

April 8, 2009

The following is really the real language of the actual bill brought by the Chairs of the Legislature's two very real Education Committees, Representative Bob Nonini and Senator John Goedde. The bill really does eliminate actual state funding for actual educational field trips statewide, and cuts actual funding for transporting actual kids almost only in the Boise School District. Really.

(7) The state department of education shall calculate the amount of state funds lost in
41 fiscal year 2010 by each school district as a result of the decrease in the state reimbursement
42 from eightyfive percent (85%) to fifty percent (50%) of certain eligible costs, including the
43 reduction calculated for districts that contract for pupil transportation services, and excluding
44 any reductions made due to the limitation on reimbursable expenses, all pursuant to subsection
45 (5) of this section. The amount so calculated shall be distributed to each school district in fiscal
year 2010. For each fiscal year thereafter, the amount distributed pursuant 1 to this subsection (7)
2 for each school district shall be determined as follows:
3 (a) Divide the amount distributed to the district pursuant to this subsection (7) in fiscal
4 year 2010 by the district’s support units for fiscal year 2010;
5 (b) Multiply the result of the calculation found in subsection (7)(a) of this section by the
6 number of support units in the current fiscal year;
7 (c) Determine the percentage change in statewide transportation reimbursements as
8 provided for in subsection (5) of this section since fiscal year 2010;
9 (d) Determine the percentage change in statewide student enrollment since fiscal year
10 2010;
11 (e) Subtract the result of the calculation found in subsection (7)(d) of this section from
12 the result of the calculation found in subsection (7)(c) of this section;
13 (f) Adjust the result of the calculation found in subsection (7)(b) of this section by the
14 percentage result from subsection (7)(e) of this section….

I'm sure it wasn't easy coming up with a formula that hurts only one district.

We spent more than an hour debating and fighting through various amendments to this bill yesterday and will again work on amendments today or tomorrow since those quite inadequate changes that we did pass yesterday "have problems." Democrats will again try to amend the bill so it does not retroactively cut all field trip funding or gut transportation funding for Boise schools. Fun procedures Senator Kelly and the rest of us may use include deleting the enacting clause, which renders the bill null and void.

In the Realm of Politics

April 4, 2009

Do the Co-Chairs of the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee, Senator Dean Cameron and Representative Maxine Bell really decide how much to cut Idaho education budgets or how much and in what way to cut state employee and teacher pay? No.

Wednesday night Dean Cameron and Maxine Bell sat on the stage in front of more than 600 teachers and parents and had to defend cuts to education and teacher pay because Governor Otter and House Leaders Mike Moyle, Ken Roberts and Scott Bedke didn't feel obligated to come defend their own parts in really deciding how these budgets will be set.

Wednesday night Dean Cameron sat in the middle of a huge line of silent law makers under the lights and read from a script. I know he didn't relish it. He is a kind, reasonable man who I believe tries hard to do the right thing in a place that has changed much over the past five years. He said he had no choice but to cut education. In the realm of politics he did not. In the realm of the real world there are ways to keep education budgets whole for 2010 and 2011 even if the economy worsens.

But some Republican leaders refuse to put education higher than roads or business tax cuts in their set of priorities. These people ran on smaller government platforms and if it means cutting schools, laying off teachers and state employees and cutting pay till it all unravels, they will do it.  They have done it. Privatizing broken government services puts our tax dollars in the hands of businesses, which may or may not do a better job than government.

These leaders, along with Tom Luna, Bob Nonini and John Goedde I believe would privatize education, like we've privatized health care, even if such a system would benefit only those with enough money to pay for a good education. Even if those with less money would get something less for their children.

Wednesday night Governor Otter didn't come and defend why he will not spend his $44 million in flexible stimulus dollars to keep our schools whole. Representatives Moyle, Roberts and Bedke in the House did not come and defend their work to force their 8 House members on the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee to try to cut education and teacher pay even deeper than we actually have.

In the realm of the real world, Republicans in the House of Representatives have elected leaders who now decide how the House will vote on certain issues, local option taxes and public transit funding being one of those issues and education funding and policy being another. 

In the realm of politics, Republican legislators in the House of Representatives do not get to vote their conscience or in the interest of their their districts. To keep committee assignments or avoid a Republican primary election, you do as your leaders say.

You have no choice.

In The Words of Teachers

April 2, 2009

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Boise High Auditorium is cavernous. It is like an old opera house, with a big balcony, hundreds of lower seats, and a large, deep stage. Almost 40 Senators and Representatives sat on that stage under bright lights in the dim hall. We sat in a big semi circle behind tables set with table cloths and silent microphones. Dean Cameron, Chair of our Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee, gave a long and very incomplete rational as to why we cut the public school education budget by 7%, cut teacher pay, froze pay advancement and eliminated much of the state's reimbursement for educational field trips and busing. Tom Luna was cut off from going on longer on the same subject by a bell operated by three women stationed in front of the stage. I am guessing they will long remember getting to ding this Superintendent of Public Instruction into silence.

After the introductions, teachers from all over the state stepped to the microphone one after another to tell stories of what it is and has been like in their classrooms these past years. They described their students or trying to pay their bills. Together the 30 or so of them gave the most amazing State of the Schools I've ever heard.

–One male teacher described his school without walls, how for years they saved up to buy walls to make actual classrooms. He said that was before the budget cuts.

–A local teacher, the only one from Boise, described her work with at risk teens. She was inspiring. You could feel how much she cares, how talented she is with these kids. She was just laid off.

–One woman teaching in a school near the Wyoming boarder said she pays over $1,500 to buy classroom supplies for her kids. Otherwise they have to write letters explaining why they need them. She has tried to save them the embarrassment. She could make $20,000 more dollars a year more, an hour away in Wyoming.

–A teacher who has been teaching for decades and still works 11 hours a day, told a talented scholarship student to get certified in Washington not Idaho because the pay and the teaching conditions are better.

–One teacher described teaching for 19 years, feeling undervalued and underapprecaited. She said we could spend dollars when the kids are young and it's easier, or when they are older and it is intolerable. Schools or prisons. Our choice. Clearly young and energetic, she said she has had it, and may not teach again in Idaho.

–Others reminded us that we are 41st in the nation for teacher pay and have the 4th highest class sizes in the U.S.

–One teacher said she does not need Tom Luna's expensive programs and
technology, his reading and math "initiatives," she knows how to teach.

–Some described being parents as well as teachers and worrying or even moving to keep their kids out of some of the more underfunded districts. They talked about crowded classrooms.

–Some described schools where art and science and civics has been cut and what might spark some kids to stay in school or be inspired to learn is lost.

–One powerful speaker challenged us as lawmakers to come to her class room and watch her teach.

On that stage, squirming in the hard chairs, lawmakers sometimes looked uncomfortable. Split almost evenly between Democrats and Republicans for once, it felt odd that not a single member of Republican House or Senate leadership was there, not the Chairs of the education committees John Goedde or Bob Nonini, yet all six members of Democratic leadership for the House and Senate were there. The only one allowed to speak was Dean Cameron. He was tasked to speak for all of those whose hands are dirty with this mess we have made of so many schools. And he conveniently neglected to mention the $44 million in discretionary stimulus dollars that Governor Otter has and wants to spend on roads and sewers, over and above the stimulus dollars Idaho was given specifically to spend on roads. Otter can spend that $44 million on anything.

No we didn't have to do this to teachers or schools or kids or to State employees. Someone chose this course. Dean, you can stand and say we had no other options, but you know better. We do not have to cut schools when we've already starved them to the bone.

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To Ask, Debate or Explain

April 1, 2009

In debating a bill on the floor of the Senate we have a few options for speaking or making a point in opposition or support of the bill.

1. You can ask a question (usually of the sponsor.) To do that you ask of the Lt. Governor, Brad Little (or of the Pro Tem if he is in the chair running session), "Mr. President, will the good Sponsor yield to a question?" The Sponsor can choose to yield and answer the question, or not. On Monday Senator Kelly chose not to yield to Senator Davis. That is the first time I've seen that in the Senate. With Bart Davis it may be wise not to yield because if he gets that look in his eyes, he may be up to mischief and the result may be that he makes you look silly.

2. You can ask the President permission to debate the bill. "Mr. President to debate against the bill." That in the Senate is far less common than in the House. Frequently if someone here has a problem with a bill they ask questions, or if they are powerful, and the sponsor is reasonably powerful, we go at ease to work something out. Otherwise if the body is divided and nothing can be worked out by sending the legislation to the amending order, and going at ease can no better determine the fate of the legislation, then we proceed, debating to persuade our colleagues to make yes or no votes to the best of our abilities.

3. In the Senate, if you did not debate a bill, you can explain your vote. This is a 60 second chance to debate yes or no, right in the middle of the verbal roll call for the vote itself. It can be a useful persuasion technique if your name is somewhere in the first part of the alphabet or if there are many people who have passed or declined to vote in the roll call, giving themselves more time to make up their minds or just passing to wait and see how others will vote.

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