Notes From the Floor

Madam President

Senator Kate Kelly served as Senate President yesterday. There are only seven democrats in the 35 member Idaho Senate. Senator Kelly is the state's first female Senate Minority leader since Mary Lou Reed in 1994. Kate will be retiring from the legislature this year and so Republican leadership asked her to take the honor of wielding the gavel and running the lot of us through the orders of business and the hugely formal process of running the Senate floor process where we meet as a group to vote on legislation that has come to us from the Senate's ten committees. It was a delight to call her Madame President. Some on the floor stood fro recognition just to do so. She got a standing ovation as she left the diocese.

Losing Kate from the Senate means losing the state's most hardworking proponent of ethics reform. It means losing a legal mind with a strong background in environmental issues. It means losing a classmate and friend I have served with for six years, someone I have laughed with, prodded to eat more, talked of family with, respected for her frequent kindness and firm integrity.

It means likely that Branden Durst, brilliant, hardworking and on occasion religiously conservative, will run now to come here to serve with us. Kate and Branden could not possibly be more different. Branden brings to us though a sharp eye like Kate's, a voice that cracks and breaks like Kate's, but one that will surely learn (like all of us slowly must) to blend with it the kindness and deference to the proprieties of the Senate.

It feels like nothing next year will be the same here, especially without Kate. It never is though. This place is like water, ice, steam — year to year, day to day, minute to minute.

Standing up for the Chickens and the Cows

My legislative district is amazing and unusual. I grew up in and lived for many years in Custer County, land of mountains and farms and ranches scratched green in desert along flat spots by rivers. A place of very few people. I understand conservative, agricultural and small government perspectives.

But here in the legislature I represent a district containing far more vegetarians than cows or chickens. My district rests beneath the statehouse and surrounds it like a sea of trees and buildings, rivers, cyclists, sage covered foothills, trails. Ours is a place where people often walk to work and grow gardens and I think perhaps understand the Idaho legislature as a hostile occupation of our progressive turf.

Today we debated oversight of facilities that raise animals for food and meat. Senator Siddoway debated, saying that the bill made him nervous, even if it was as some said intended to pre-empt attacks by animal rights groups to make the state of Idaho look bad.

In the debate here below the red velvet curtains, nothing was said of the animals, the chickens and the cows, so I did stand to debate that the proposed advisory board was skewed, giving barely two votes of ten to speak for the animals and not those whose business is to make money selling their parts to the non-vegetarians of Idaho.

I reminded myself that humor is one of the few ways for me to make my way here without constantly being an unwelcome voice of dissent. So I stood and spoke for the chickens and the cows. Someone has to.

Cement Booties

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?

Disgusted

Some days I walk myself to the statehouse in the dark, sit attentive
through long committees, ask unwelcome questions, end up the sole no or
yes vote on a bill, look at the long list of evening events we are
supposed to attend and wonder what I am doing.

I forget how many
kind people have written to tell me how much better it makes them feel
that I am here. I forget that on occasion I do make a change that
affects lives, I give voice to what isn't heard or those who will be
harmed. And that is something.

It is hard though.

Today
when we heard a simple bill to mandate that insurance companies cover
"elemental formula" as if it were medicine so that kids (whose lives
depend on eating this formula instead of food) can afford it and can
stay alive.

So that you know, some kids can't eat regular food.
At about two months their bodies reject their mother's milk and if they
are lucky their doctor figures it out and puts them on special formula
and then about 1/3 of them get better quickly, another bunch get better
in a year or two and a very few need the formula for life.

But
Idaho insurance companies don't cover this stuff. And after today's
vote they still won't. The companies promise though to try harder and
we believed them. We don't like mandates I guess. This is something new
for me to know about the Commerce Committee. It governs health
insurance. Or, I know now, doesn't govern health insurance. All the
things we COULD do to make health insurance companies do a better job,
stop denying claims, be more accountable for making people wade through
so much red tape to get something covered they know should be
covered… we don't do that. We trust insurance companies instead.

I
sat there today and listened to those parents' stories. I can only ask
what kind of nation makes people lose everything because someone in
their family is sick? What kind of government tells them to get a
divorce so they can maybe qualify for Medicaid so their child does not
die? What kind of state makes people go through this? Run up tens of
thousands on their credit cards, sell everything? What kind of people
refuse to do anything because the insurance company lobbyists are
really nice people and they promise us things if we will only agree not
to make them do what they don't want to.

I'm disgusted because we
have no backbone, because I work in one of the few places where we
COULD fix some of what is wrong with healthcare and we won't. I'm
disgusted because I work in one of the few places in the state where
the people I work with mostly don't seem to think there is anything
wrong with insurance companies or the way health care works. Or worse,
they use how broken the system is to agree to do nothing at all.

On a similar insurance coverage issue, Lot Watts, social worker from St. Als Hospital testifies as to how some cancer patients are unable to pay for a chemotherapy drug because insurers classify it as a pharmaceutical rather than a cancer therapy. Watts and the chemotherapy bill's sponsor Senator Joyce Broadsword are opposed by not fewer than seven seated insurance industry lobbyists.

Why we run

Whether I am just one voice, or we are four or seven or 19 or 18, we will be there. To say what needs to be said sometimes… on the house or Senate floor, in committee or halls of the statehouse. I am asked again and again why I'd want to serve in the Idaho Legislature representing a party that makes up only 25% of that law making body. I love the issues and also know that just being there to say when something is not right or to speak for the Idahoans who don't win the floor debate or the Committee vote. That's part of why we run. We, the fewer. The minority.

John McGee is a Republican law maker appointed to the Senate the same year I was first elected to the House. He is a moderate and a kind person. Speaking with him at College of Idaho last week, I felt how different are our experiences as legislators, his and mine even though in many ways we play somewhat parallel roles in our respective parties. We were chosen by our local presidential campaigns to debate together three times this election season on KBOI radio, each giving our rational as to which candidate won each of the Presidential and Vice Presidential debates.

But John serves as chairman of a the Senate Transportation Committee. He's been a possible appointee for Lt. Governor and the U.S. Senate. He cuts ribbons when new sections of freeway open. This year I will be a freshman in the Senate, the second to the bottom of the order of seniority there, bringing with me four years in the House, visible and often a lead voice on the issues, but never with a formal title, never a chair vice chair.

As a member of the Minority, by virtue of the process, I often speak for what does not pass, what never gets printed or even heard.

Most the battles on the House and Senate floors, the ones you see on Public TV are not partisan battles. Those bills we debate on the floor and the issues attached to them have made it out of committee with the support of the Majority, or at least some portion of those on the committee who serve in the Majority. I speak alongside republican colleagues in those debates and the legislature becomes a deliberative body where the partisan minority and majority lines blur. I will debate with John McGee this year in the Senate I am sure, on issues that have nothing to do with our political parties. We will make law together, Democrats and Republicans.

But listen to what issues Democrats raise. Sometimes only we will say what never got a hearing and what the Majority has decided is not going to be heard. 

…………….

We, the minority (and the majority,) will be sworn in Thursday December 4th at 9AM to the Idaho House and Senate. You can watch it on line or on Idaho Public Television. http://www.idahoptv.org/leglive/

Democratic Conclusions

Democrats came to the Capitol ready to make progress on issues of
importance to the people of Idaho. We listened to the Governor’s state
of the state speech, set our own budget priorities and gave our own
response in which we said we agreed with many of the goals set by the
Governor, not necessarily the means toward them.

They ignored the advice of several statewide coalitions and
working groups. They ignored "Moving Idaho Forward" which came offering
public transit solutions. They stood in the way of the Farm, Ranch, and
Forest Preservation working group which came ready to save Idaho lands
from development. They set aside the principles developed by the
legislative interim committee on tax exemptions.

• They chose this year to fly on a private airplane to a fund raising
  dinner, fly back to Boise, and the next day vote to pass a bill
  that is bad for working people but favorable to the owner of the airplane.
• This year again they catered to special interests at the
  expense of ordinary Idahoans, nearly shifting over $100 million dollars
  in big industry taxes onto the sales tax which families pay.
• They have opposed reforms that would clean up politics at the state
  level including ethics legislation that would end lobbyists’ revolving door to politics.

As the majority party since 1990,
Republicans chair every legislative committee in both houses. This year
when we challenged Republican leadership to hold hearings and discuss
issues; when we called for real cooperation and consideration of
sound solutions, they refused.

• We worked to start removal of the sales tax on food at the register; Republican leaders opposed it.
• We crafted legislation to limit how much health insurance companies
  could raise premiums on Idaho families and small businesses;
  Republicans refused to hear the bill.
• We supported conservation easements to protect Idaho’s vanishing working farms and forests; Republicans killed that bill too.
• We supported systematically reviewing special interest tax exemptions; Republicans would not consider it.
• We supported affordable housing legislation; Republicans would not consider it.
• We
  proposed residential sales price disclosure to put more accountability
  into how we set property taxes; House Republicans would not hold a
  hearing.
• We wanted to provide Idaho’s teachers with the needed level of pay
  increases; The Governor’s plan for education penalized Idaho’s teachers
  and included disastrous proposals like Tom Luna’s iSTARS. 
• We supported creating treatment focused alternatives to mandatory
  minimum sentences to make communities safer and prisons less costly and
  crowded; Republican committee chairs would not give this bill a
  hearing.
• We supported adequate and reasonable state employee pay increases;
  Republicans ignored the needs of state employees and their families and
  took a hatchet to retirement benefits.
• We supported protecting children in child care by requiring
  criminal background checks on child care providers; Republicans refused
  to hold a hearing on this bill.
• We supported early childhood education programs to improve quality of life
  and success for Idaho’s kids; Republicans opposed this effort to
  strengthen families and improve education.
• We supported measures to expand children’s health insurance;
  Republicans opposed providing 6000 children in need with essential
  medical care.
• We led bipartisan efforts for human rights, successfully
  introducing fair employment policies for gays and lesbians and
  strategies for divesting state funds from companies supporting genocide
  in Darfur; Key Republican leaders blocked consideration of
  these measures in Senate.
• We supported building energy efficient schools and public buildings
  to save money, energy and prevent climate change. We encouraged the use
  of global climate change studies to protect Idahoans health and our
  precious resources. Senate Republican Leadership killed or watered down
  these measures one after another.
• We supported open, deliberative and inclusive politics and decision
  making; Republicans at the end of the session proposed a 93 page bill
  on election consolidation and another on closing Idaho primaries
  without including input from voters or dialog with the county clerks. 
• We supported local option sales taxes to allow local people to vote
  to fund urgent local needs including public transit and roads;
  Republicans derailed the process and stood in the way with a
  restrictive and unnecessary constitutional amendment.
• We proposed providing a $50,000 exemption to the personal property
  tax to help small business; until their special interest version of the
  bill nearly died, House Republican Leaders would not consider our proposal.
• We supported lowering property taxes by making growth pay for
  itself and by allowing local governments to more easily charge impact
  fees on new development; Republicans would not even consider the bill.

The bottom line is, Democrats worked hard this session to provide
solutions and make progress on issues of importance to ordinary
Idahoans. We continually seek to protect the interests of our citizens,
and have stood up to the special interests who seek to warp the state’s
democratic processes. We are committed to standing up for Idaho’s
middle class and small businesses, preserving Idahos quality of life
and access to public lands. We support transparency and ethics in
government.   

The Republican Majority has been an obstacle to
progress on those same issues. They have pursued their own ideological
goals and partnered with special interests to rob Idahoans of the kind
of representation they deserve. Under current Republican leadership and
with government so very unbalanced, the changes that Idahoans care
about will never be accomplished.

However, we will not give up. We will not stop laboring to make sure your voice is heard.

With
your help, we will continue to make progress issue by issue. And, with
your help, we will make progress this year by electing more Democrats
to the legislature. Our goal in 2008 is to bring democracy, balance and
better policy to the Idaho Legislature by winning more seats in both
the House and the Senate. No matter where in Idaho you live, you can
help us.  http://www.idaho-democrats.org/

Competing Motions

…

Minority Leadership approaches the Speaker’s desk to debate whether a motion by the Minority will be allowed. The motion was not allowed on a party line vote of 13 to 37. 20 members were missing since House State Affairs Committee was in meetings.

The Speaker moved the bill to the Rev & Tax Committee where we voted 6 to 10 to not concur with the Senate amendments and instead go into a conference committee. Sadly, the conference committee gives IACI cover to kill the bill or amend it to start the elimination of the whole $120 million personal property tax. The House will vote on the move to send the bill to the joint house and senate conference committee when we re-convene at 1:15 PM.

Republican Caucus

…
Before the door closes it is possible to visit republicans in their caucus. Here Representatives gather for what was announced on the floor as an hour and a half meeting where some have come braced for an arm twisting.  This will be less than fun for moderates or small business oriented legislators who want to "concur" or agree with the Senate amendments to H599.

Friday the Senate turned the big business bill into a more modest $75,000 exemption from personal property tax which will be more focused on small businesses without shifting over $100 million in taxes to families.

We are going back on the floor at threeish and now in our caucus are strategizing about how to concur with the $75,000 exemption. The Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry wants to kill the bill now so they can get the whole $120 million tax break next year. They seem to know  that the public will lose  sympathy for their cause once the sponsors can no longer hold up examples of small businesses like the hot dog lady and the burden of her paying her personal property tax (which it turns out was grossly misrepresented in Jim Clark’s stirring floor debate.)

So our caucus is done and the door on the Rev & Tax room where our colleagues meet is still closed. I think that before they went in we probably had the votes to pass the $75,000 exemption. When they come out, who knows.

Caucus

We debate strategy on tough issues including passing local option taxing, public transportation funding and proceeding with a small business focused $75,000 exemption for the business personal property tax.

Margaret talks about substance abuse funding as the caucus takes a position against the Governor’s veto.

Bill Killen calculates fiscal impacts.

….

House Democrats caucus. Our door is open and so you could walk in to the legislature and come in and join us. The Republican majority party does not hold open caucuses so I can’t post a photo of their caucuses. But maybe one of my good Republican balcony colleagues will get me one next week.

Alternative Solutions

House Democrats’ "Flying M Six" (Clockwise starting at left: Shirley Ringo -Moscow, Phylis King – Boise, Bill Killen – Boise, James Ruchti – Pocatello and not pictured Sue Chew and Nicole LeFavour) gather to craft a transportation funding plan.

Being Quiet

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.

Words and Power

Serving in a legislative body, one might have reason to contemplate power. There’s the kind of power where one has a title and fills the role of figurative and proceedural leader.  Usually there is a power structure associated with this authority and it can be, if it chooses, relatively absolute. There is in here the power to coerce from a titled role. By that person or group’s power, committee chairships are given or taken, bills are routed or held, authority to levy campaign dollars or sway donors and endorsers is coveted and rationed. There is the power of the majority. There is the power of authority and experience which, with simple consent or agreement, with a yes vote on an issue, brings others to follow. There is the power of persuasion, a gift for knowing colleagues, knowing the body as a whole, knowing when to speak and when not to, what to point out, what to leave out and what to simply imply. This power is delicate and can be over used or over ruled. There is hopefully too the power of organizing others to a common goal, working constantly to arrange, inform, bolster and hold others in place, together. Always, with a single word, some in a body such as this, have far, far more power, coercive and perhaps, by virtue of political party or membership in the majority, they have more persuasive power than others. Even if the electorate of the state or a district rallies later against an action, the action can still be taken. There can be consequences, but those come later. This is a heirarchical structure, bound in formality. At a word, all the organizing and persuasion in the world can come crashing down and democratic — one person, one vote — processes evoporate into whirring fans and shuffling papers. I remember this as I work. I have to. Yes, I walk delicately, gently at times, trying to help move a universe with the fickle power of words.

Running

Walking Home in the Dark

The first year I was elected, I ran in Hulls Gulch, up the street from my house, two mornings a week in the dark before heading to the statehouse. Time seems constricted now. The list of things to do never seems to finish before more items are added or other pages tacked on. I’m sure lots of people live like that. I walk to work now in the dark and it gives me time to think before the day starts. I practice debate, strategize or just listen to my heels clicking on the sidewalk. Before being a legislator I didn’t even own shoes that made that noise. It is an oddly powerful sound. Woman with a purpose, big strides because these are sturdy shoes with heels, but somehow forceful and intentional.
    Today I felt the other kind of running, the kind which has replaced my contemplative runs in the foothills where, for fourteen years, I’d talk politics or work through problems with my friend Lee and our two dogs for a full 40 minutes before work. This running now is produced by that sense that things are moving more quickly than I can hold them down. It is a sense that triage should have taken place earlier but did not because the patients are appearing out of thin air, so now it is being attempted in flight and is just not what it could be.
    This running is the sense that comes from being one of 19 in a 70 member body where there are just not enough of you yet to do it all so each is doing a lot and just trying to keep above the the snow while the avalanche is barreling toward April and Sine Die. Sine Die is what we call the end of the session, the last motion made by the speaker to send us all home. For the first time this year I feel like my eyes are already running from that date to get it all done but it is ticking really loud, like those heels of mine on the North End sidewalks, click click click click.

Minority

Democrats including James Ruchti and Elaine Smith at the Governor’s State of the State Speech

……………..

In front of an impressive bank of cameras our Minority leadership just presented our state of the state response. It is important to understand what Minority means in a legislative context. We as Democrats, because we occupy less than 50% of the seats in the house (and Senate) are a Minority. On the day when we occupy 36 of the 70 seats here we will be the Majority party. (We are at 19 now, up 6 from the 13 we were in 2005.) At 36, Democrats would nominate the Speaker of the House who manages our floor sessions and theoretically arbitrates between the parties to make us one body, one whole. We would appoint committee chairs and ourselves serve as committee chairs in every one of the House’s 14 standing committees. It is an all or nothing system where those with the greatest numbers do not have proportionally greater power, they have immensely greater power. As Democrats we debate our colleagues and propose solutions. We vote as part of the body and in committee, often forming fluid alliances with moderate colleagues or those with issue concerns like ours. Can we blocked entirely if Republican leadership so chooses? Yes. And I promise this year I will watch to see whether force or discourse will prevail as a Majority party strategy for shaping policy and leading the Republican dominated legislature in its dealings with Minority opinions and legislation.Will we be allowed to persuade and ally ourselves with Treasure Valley Republican Legislators and others from around the state to fund public transportation, ensure safety and quality in day cares, eliminate the tax on food or pass more robust ethics legislation? Or will this Majority Leadership use a heavy hand and hard power to subtly or not so subtly tell members what issues they may support and what ones they may not.