Notes From the Floor

Never Personal

This is the annual struggle: not taking the battle personally. For each of us when we must oppose a bill we know we may offend the sponsors. Even though each of us is doing our best to serve democracy, struggling to represent different constituencies, sometimes I know it feels personal. What is hard is not to inpugn the intent of the sponsors. That is hard. I try to focus on the policy but there are times that criticism can stray to something that feels like a question of motivation. This year has been hard for all of us because the lines are drawn with so much at stake and so much pressure because of the magnitude of the impact of the bills. I recognize the pressures on others. My words are far more mild than those I get in letters every day. But I do have a duty to be sure my own words are not personal. This is, for me, what makes a blog often incompatible with policy making. I try to represent the experience here. But to be honest about how I feel sometimes puts my ability to do this work and to pass policy at risk. I've blogged little this year because of that. The balance is hard. I apologize and wish I walked that delicate line better.

Gavel Will Fall

The Senate floor is warm and, with all the hours we've spent here now, the place seems somewhat homey and a bit less like working in a museum. The brads on the chairs have dug notches into the wood desk and the pages have had to pull the red curtains back to expose hidden vents so we have more air. We are settling again into the place, good or bad, just as we are about to leave for real for this legislative session, this election cycle.

We are going into the amending order to change some bills, then out to pass the Department of Administration's budget. Why we are waiting I can only imagine. Perhaps someone is hoping to put a bit of fear of god in Mike Gwartney. I don't know. The budget has some pretty nifty strings in it. It directs him to stop cutting state employee benefits and shoving the savings into the $100 million or so in reserves he is now sitting on. Still the budget gives out the whole $3 million to the Idaho Education Network scandal mess. While we have set up new legislative elements to the oversight, depending on who those individuals are it may or may not simply allow Qwest to proceed in spending dollars they were inappropriately granted as they were neither the lowest nor the best graded bid in the contract to build the high tech network for Idaho public schools.

But we are winding down, debating more law suits in the endless stream of those we are inviting, taking up and simply subjecting ourselves to by passing glaringly poorly drafted legislation. I would wager we might set a record for money spent on law suits this coming year, at the same time we will not give $150,000 to pay for life-saving medications for people with Cystic Fibrosis, some of whom will be hospitalized. Some could face life threatening consequences or even die. But this legislature has its priorities. Law suits. Defending and Initiating law suits. Lawyers. Huge legal fees.

Out With a Hiss

The Idaho legislature is about to evaporate into thin air. Monday, the 105 of us likely will vanish with a lingering anti-climatic hiss… having cobbled together some fiction of a budget, some duct tape and pine pitch plan to make the nightmares we are brewing stay quiet until after the elections. 

I do not recall a session this short in my six years in the legislature. The primary election is rolling toward us. May 25. Like many of my colleagues, I face a tea party opponent this year, but mine I do not face until November.

With the many May primaries, the Republican party will start to consume itself as soon as the gavel falls. Moderate Republicans face the worst of it and seem frustrated. Some have suggested that if it gets much meaner they will be joining us on the "D" side. If enough came over, and the House or Senate were then fairly evenly split, they'd have a good chance at more power and at not being marginalized as they are by more conservative leadership. But all these are just thoughts said many times before over the years. How long does it take to grow few up? I don't know. If Democrats continue to bash Walt Minnick I suspect our moderate friends will be highly disinclined to feel welcome in our party. If progressive people want more power over policy, over health issues, the environment, education and human rights, I know it is unpopular to say, but we will have to be more accepting of a wider range of political perspectives. We will have to learn to hold on to the gains and the points of common ground without dividing ourselves over the things about which we don't agree.

Finding My Way in the Senate

Yesterday's debate on the Public Schools budget was the perfect day to feel the true character of the Senate. Dean Cameron in carrying the bill on the floor spoke kindly of the process and the participants. Before I debated against the bill, I complemented the process and the sponsor as well as the hard work and long hours that went into the very budget which I was soon to say was a poor choice and simply was not the best we could do.

Republicans whose daughters and wives and relatives are teachers debated about how hard teachers work and how they will just work harder with less in the year ahead, how they are not in teaching for the money. In Senator Cameron's closing he thanked the minority, said kind things about those who debated against the $128 million cut to schools and then he went on to say how lucky we are and how much worse things are in other states.

The Senate is about civility, about decorum. We say kind things before going to battle, draw a flower and a sword at the same time.

Even while we Democrats made a motion to change the bill, to send it to the 14th order to take out the part that dismantles teacher's security, their contracts, the one thing that keeps politics out of the classroom — even while we debated this cruel language we were kind. Edgar Malepeai debated eloquently that the language on contracts cut to the very soul of teachers. His tone was even, strong and yet kind.

There is a sum of meaning, even said kindly, that implies that we Democrats feel that Republicans had a choice whether or not to cut this deep… and that they choose the easy path, choose not to challenge the house so that they could go home soon, all because it is an election year.

We Democrats asked the Senate to join us in adding $35 million back into the budget from the grocery credit, election consolidation and school facilities fund. But instead they chose to pass the bill intact, cutting teachers, growing class sizes, eliminating tutoring, saying good bye to crisis counselors, hours of
paid work, programs that help struggling students, academic materials,
text books, all the tools that we try to use to make sure kids
succeed…

After debate, Dean Cameron came over and gave me a hug, for that is his character, and that is the character of the Senate. After session yesterday we went and played pool together, House and Senate, Democrats and Republicans. You have to spend time here together outside the highly charged environment of policy. That is what makes it all work, reminding ourselves that regardless of the blades hidden inside the cordial debate, we are human. I've long known that.

Hidden Agendas

Sometimes our co-chairs Dean & Maxine have to balance and mediate very different agendas. Not an easy task.

Friday, twenty of us from the House and Senate met at 7 am on the 4th floor in a brand new conference room made for 20. This was the second of our early morning pre-meetings for the budget committee. We will have many more in the weeks ahead. We do not vote here since we are supposed to make public policy in the open, but we do ask questions and discuss consequences. Reporters come but the TV cameras are not there to watch us as we struggle to ask questions and come to grips with the language and process that often hides underlying agendas and grim hidden consequences.

Friday on a 4 to 16 vote those state agencies that the Governor had not already cut by at least 7% were put on the chopping block to be sure their total cut equaled at least 7%. A few like Public Education were, in a sort of slight of hand, given our last special chunks of reserves or stimulus money to make up for the cuts and to leave them "whole" or, for now, unharmed.

If you were a fly on a wall in that room or if you were listening on the internet as we went downstairs and voted on the cuts or holdbacks Friday you needed to listen for the word "permanent" or the word "ongoing" since this means something very different from a cut that is "one time." You can imagine the difference. What we did Friday the motion makers called "permanent" meaning that soon, when we start working on the 2011 budgets, the starting numbers or "base" will be a dire one. The 2011 budget will begin at the eviscerated level of funding already at least 7% below where it was in 2009.

So, so soon when we start voting to set the coming year's budgets, we will have no stimulus money and next to no reserves and, because what we will call the "base" already hides a huge cut, we will be making cuts on top of cuts. And worse, should we vote to eliminate a tax exemption, delay the grocery credit, raise beer or wine taxes or put in place a one time income tax surcharge enabling us to restore money to a budget, there is a conservative anti-government faction that can rejoice at the idea that we will have to ask for what looks like a budget "increase" just to bring an agency back up to the funding level it was at before the economic crisis.

This legislature does not increase budgets or staff positions lightly. It will be a struggle now just to put all this back together now that we have torn it apart.

You might say that for some law makers this recent vote is a dream come true. They have, in one year, undone decades or even a century of progress creating mental health and substance abuse programs, agencies to remove barriers in the lives of people with disabilities, entities that ensure that our drinking water is clean and our air is not toxic. How we put it all back together for the people of Idaho is anyone's guess.

Taxing Risch

Senator Jim Risch spoke before the Idaho Senate this week, telling the same jokes and using the same props he used a year ago. Democrats and Republicans noticed this. His address ended up sounding like little more than a tired partisan stump speech, void of substantive policy or real thought. The senator has been in office for a year and has little to say but how awful a place it is. Senator Crapo could have said the same but did not and chose to focus more on issues and on Idaho.

One has to wonder how completely U.S. Senate was Risch's fall back since Otter was then the one in line for governor. Risch shows little or no passion for issues of any kind. He is not a policy maker. A year later no solutions for how to better regulate insurance companies, how to save struggling small businesses or make it so that Idaho families are no longer going bankrupt over medical bills or the down economy. 

And worse the Senator spoke to us in a context where he addressed a state and legislative body facing the grim error of having bowed to then Governor Risch's very forceful persuasion to pass a huge tax shift that now clearly has put Idaho public schools in a dire position. Millions of dollars in property tax cuts went to out of state entities, huge corporations and speculators while schools lost over $100 million net and the security of more stable property tax funding evaporated. Yet worse families picked up the tab for millions in business tax reductions.

You can hear the buyer's remorse in the voices of those legislators who resisted the shift, voted no to stop what they knew was poor policy until given no choice in that one summer special session of 2006.

It was a less than sweet homecoming for the man who did not acknowledge the part he played in the budget mess our schools now face… the man who seems even to have forgotten or chosen not to care which speech he gave us just last year.

Bureaucracy

The Department of Administration is here today and they seem nervous. Mr. Gwartney started by talking about consolidating phone services. I
have to question my ears but I'm pretty sure he said: "The
Governor has to dial 12 digits to get my office –and that's OK as long as he doesn't forget them." Not a helpful comment from the Governor's best friend given the difficult political environment the Governor faces. One has to wonder if there isn't a bit of friction there.

Gwartney's staff described to us the huge lovely technology bureaucracy they hope to create where state agencies lose their IT staff and those staff positions go to build Mike Gwartney's empire. Even our good co-chairman of JFAC expressed less than enthusiasm. "Candidly," he said, "I have a lack of confidence in the ability to deliver services –based on past experience." It seems that the Department of Finance and the Department of Insurance have not gotten what they were promised in retaining the specialized technology they need to do their work.

In case anyone has forgotten, Governor Otter & Mike Gwartney initially proposed eliminating the Department of Administration to improve the efficiency of Idaho Government. That plan was revised. The Governor and Gwartney decided instead it would be more efficient for the state not to eliminate it but to make it really huge and all powerful.

The discussion turned to creating "IEN" or the Idaho Education Network, an empire in school broad band connectivity run by, as the Governor has introduced them, his good friends at Qwest. All the little providers whose infrastructure could be improved with state funds will instead be replaced by Qwest. A few medium providers I think stay in place. So far no mention of the law suit that challenges the Department of Admin's rejecting a lower bid proposal to go with Qwest. We are told the ongoing costs of the project — the millions in state and federal dollars to Qwest — is sustainable because the state can apply for grants to cover its part. I recall the Governor telling state entities not to rely on or even apply for grants because grants often vanish, leaving programs unfunded.

But we are supposed to be excited that we can fire math teachers and not worry about the field trips kids don't get anymore because there are virtual field trips and people and programs far off on computer screens who will teach math.

Call me odd but I know I've always had students who needed to learn something in a different way, where I as a teacher had to be creative and ask questions to figure out how they think and how they might best understand something. How will a computer program know when that needs to happen? How will the screen know when a kid's eyes are filling with tears because she is confused or overwhelmed or scared because she knows she doesn't understand and someone needs to stop, take her by the hand and pick up an arm full of blocks, draw circles or draw pictures on paper to help her through it — to make sure kids don't fall behind or give up or melt down. Not all children think or learn the same and we will always need multiple ways to teach and a real person there to look the kids in the eye.

I think of our experience here with the keys to our office doors. The statehouse was opening and we were moving in but there were no keys for our office doors. We were putting files and photos and things on and in our desks and people were filing through the building day and night. Some creative high school kids even had a party somewhere in a senate room. We couldn't get Admin to send us keys. Secretaries for the ProTem and Majority leader couldn't lock their offices and files. It took forever. The Department of Admin was far away and didn't see that it mattered. Time passed and passed.

How about the part time employees, who, with a Mike Gwartney pen stroke, were required to pay hundreds of dollars more in health insurance premiums? Who was there looking in the eyes of those Idaho employees? Who was thinking about the consequences of this to those families and to the economy and state? The state is not a business with no other interest than advancing its own personal fiscal well being. We are also charged with advancing the Idaho economy, bettering the lives of Idaho families, making sure we retain and respect skilled and valued state workers.

But no, here we are today contemplating allowing Governor Otter to create this huge, impersonal and uncaring all pervasive entity, an empire of administration. Is this the future of our state? Is that Butch Otter's vision of government?

The Unlovely

The 20 of us on JFAC, the budget committee, sit in a tall cream and white room with vaulted ceilings, columns and a big clock. We sit at banks of huge desks, far from each other so that at best we can see only the two CoChairs, maybe one of the Vice Chairs and the people next to us. Clearly I got too got used to the courthouse where last year we were packed tight and I could swivel in my seat and look any committee member in the eye. We could pass notes to two thirds of the committee with ease and were never so far away as to start getting impersonal.

For several weeks now agency after agency will come to JFAC to explain how state directors have held it all together these past two lean budget cutting years and how existing budget cuts are impacting families, jobs in the agency and workload. Yesterday we talked about the Department of Health & Welfare –a big agency dealing with a lot of crisis and complexity. Children with disabilities, adults needing mental health treatment, suicide prevention, drug treatment, victims of abuse, kids needing adoption, foster care; health care for those with urgent special needs, the very poor; hungry families, doctors, hospitals, psychiatrists, social workers, clinics, home care providers, crisis intervention specialists. Thousands of people reel, losing jobs, scrambling for life lines as we cut again and again at services which more and more people need — and the economy settles like a ship in the dark depths of what seems to be the bottom.

And later in the day a different 18 of us law makers sat underground at the huge high desks of the new statehouse auditorium in the west wing. We picked a number out of a hat — the magic target we will cut all budgets to for next year, for 2011. It was a low number. As last year's queen of picking sadly accurate low budget numbers, I'm usually the first to admit when things will be bad.

But the numbers some chose today were so low I had the distinct feeling that a twisted game was being played.

What kind of a time is this for games, for trying to cut the base of our budget so low that when the economy recovers — just a little — Majority Leader Moyle and his house wrecking crew can call any money above their target number a surplus and turn it into the corporate tax cuts they so desperately want, but realistically can't put into law this year.

I wonder if the Senate prayer delivered under the grand Senate dome in the morning anticipated the day. It told us to be kind to the unlovely. I wondered who unlovely were. I feel a little unlovely sometimes but I think it is relative and means those harder for us to love, people different from yourself, people struggling in unfamiliar ways, to us the ones that don't sit under domed ceilings or shake your hand in a suit and tie.

But we were not kind. Our legislative bodies are on the verge of being cruel. If we plan to cut even deeper next year, if we claim we have no option but to cut more budgets deeper and deeper till everything bleeds, then we are cruel. We are willfully forgetting that some families, like mine are still doing fine, still have jobs, and though we might be a bit skittish, we could and would pay more — just to be sure that the whole burden of balancing the next budget does not fall like and ax on the backs of schools, kids, and the state's most vulnerable, trying so hard to get through this alive.

End of the Endless

We are done. Senators are Standing up to say thank you and good bye. Soon the Lt. Governor will bang the gavel and we will go Sine Die for the year.

I will write more later.

Juggling

In these last hours of a legislative session, stuff flies, errors are made and leaders juggle the timing of bills flying from one house to another. What order are we in? Do we have to read that across the desk again before we can pass it? You will hear us skip from "order of business" to order of business, trying to move things forward at break-neck speed.

Fourteenth order is for amending or changing bills. 13th order is 3rd reading or final consideration where we vote on them and . 12th order is 2nd reading or a place where we can suspend rules and pass bills if we want but usually where they season on the calendar for public absorption for another day before we vote. 11th order is first reading where bills arrive from the amending order, the house or a committee which has passed them.

Right now the caucus leaders Senator Davis and Kate Kelly along with the Lt. Governor are trying to time how legislation that will have to pass the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee soon will get back to the floor of the Senate here for a vote and over to the House for a final vote and passage. We are close. It feels like it. After five years in this place that final juggling is what gives away the end.

Earmarking Road Funding

We are at ease for the hundredth time today. Thankfully there is actually a bit of a ruckus over two amendments to the GARVEE bonding road building bill. Senator Keough and Senator Davis both are trying to obligate future borrowing for specific projects in their districts, in spite of the fact that the Idaho Transportation Department is supposed to objectively determine the most needed, safety necessary, urgent roads to build and repair.

Seems always in the last hours that the pork slides into the appropriations bills. Quietly, greasy and a bit acrid. This one smells none too pretty. We'll see if behind the closed doors here behind me in the Senate Chambers if Senator Cameron prevailed in putting his foot down and questioning this idea. Or if the pig will be all the better greased and slide on through when we come back to order.

……….

Greased in the Senate. Look for a bit of Oink in the next round of millions Idaho borrows for roads.

P.S. It the amended and earmarked GARVEE bill passed the Senate but the house killed it later. So the Senate amended a different House bill and the same initial GARVEE funding was tacked onto that bill (near as I could tell without all the two previously added earmarks). While I am not a fan of GARVEE and its millions in highway borrowing, (I always try to vote no,) I ended up voting yes because the Design-Build bill that the GARVEE borrowing got tacked onto seemed worth a try as a cost containment measure. These are the quandries we end up with at the end. Things get packaged together in ways they are not quite supposed to and it all moves quickly, often no time to read every word of the bill. I think this time mostly because that was the quickest way for Senate leaders to get us home.

Rogue

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.

Time Bends at the End

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

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

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.

Steelhead Whispers

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

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.

Games at the End

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.

Really a Bill

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

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.

To Ask, Debate or Explain

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.

An Un-Do

Yesterday morning Senator Keough, a soft spoken, well respected long
time JFAC member and co-chair, made a motion that we re-open the budget
for the Office of Species Conservation. She explained that she rarely
supports doing this. She doesn't support "Un-Dos."

Last week
I'd joined Rep. Ringo and 8 Republicans in voting for a substitute
motion to cut two staff from the Office of Species Conservation. The
move was wildly unpopular in my district since the office mostly
administers grants to private land owners to help them comply with the
federal Endangered Species Act. My childhood home of Custer County is
one of the largest beneficiaries of these grants. There in the
mountains, ranchers and farmers along the many forks of the Salmon
River get funds to hire local contractors to install fish screens and
other contraptions on irrigation ditches along the river banks and
tributaries where endangered salmon spawn and smolt often swim and face
sudden death in pastures and alfalfa fields.

So, yesterday,
Senator Bert Brackett made a motion to restore staff to the Office of
Species Conservation and as I did last week, I seconded his original
budget motion for the office. Bert looked sad and apologized to the
committee for not explaining adequately how important the office is so
that the committee might have supported his earlier motion. He owed no
apology.I told him so and apologized to him and the committee for
abandoning him to vote for Senator Siddoway's motion to cut the budget.
There is a respect we owe each other to let our colleagues know when we
change our minds having said at first we will support them. It is about
your word. I take it seriously. Not all do.

Ironically the
Director of the Office of Species Conservation got up after the motion
and before we voted nearly unanimously to add two new staff back into
his budget. I think he hoped to persuade the committee that he is a
good guy and that his office deserves the existing attorney and 7 other
staff. In any case, he, the director of the Office of Species Conservation, whose work it is to help protect endangered species, smiled at the committee in anticipation of our
vote, proclaiming the Endangered Species Act the most draconian law in
the nation.

Leading the Senate in Prayer

The Constitution aside, every day before the Senate we are led in Christian prayer. Hank Webb is our Chaplain. He has a wonderful accent, warmth and gentle kindness which makes me smile every day.

Our Democratic leaders have asked that the prayers be more universal to all faiths and at very least ecumenical in nature, but it seems still that the Chaplain has been instructed to give a Christian prayer which ends with "In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord." While Chaplin Webb is gone this week, a few Senators have led the prayer. I was asked by my caucus to lead the invocation this morning. Those of you who know me may think that is funny. But how could I pass a chance to speak to the body of the Senate about values, belief, humanity and what we as a state should aspire to.

Please join me in a moment of reflection or prayer.

Let us be thankful for the kindness of strangers, their compassion and generosity.
Let us see abundance not only scarcity.
I ask, let us see in this difficult time the strength and beauty in one another’s eyes, the pain in the story of the man we would condemn, the suffering of the woman we would judge, never having walked in her broken shoes.
Let us love this land, its expanse of tilled soil, pungent, its farms aging, tilted sage-covered hills, canyoned deserts and peaks of cold granite and snow.
Let us love the beauty of its wild as those whose ancestors first set foot here loved and respected the land as the source of all life, food and spiritual strength.
Let us seek the difficult path of judgment to discern whether there is freedom without justice, liberty without restraint, whether the pursuit of happiness is afforded equally and we have been judicious in the exercise of the powers we are given.
For what great society can celebrate the freedom to amass riches while others starve?
What people would not extend the tithing and generosity of our faiths to the world at large?
What exalted leaders in good conscience can choose which brother or sister, son or daughter is worthy of justice and freedom from prejudicial acts –and which is not?
Let us look up from our day, as we as a nation and state face the difficult months or years ahead:
May we choose the path that helps those who will struggle in loss. 
May within us we find compassion and the generosity that makes us a nation strong enough to endure the greatest hardships as one, as a people who refuse to be divided by petty politics, generous and gentle, unified in purpose and in strength.
May we seek that all will prosper.
……..Peace be with you.

Ayes and Nays

When the Senate secretary reads the roll for a vote, typically if you are listening in on line or through the television, you will hear a long stream of Ayes. The controversial stuff is killed in committee, never introduced or stuck in a drawer. What gets to the floor, has jumped through a lot of hoops, made it by many gate keepers and has enough of a force behind it to be considered by the whole body.

When a Democrat brings a bill to committee, there is a bit of a disadvantage. We have possibly not had much of a chance to chat with the committee chair about the bill at functions over the summer. We may have co-sponsors but this year we can not longer list them prominently so that anyone would know anyone but one of us is supportive. We may be asked to get an attorney general's opinion or feedback from Governor appointed department heads.

We rely on the kindness and respect of our colleagues to be allowed to have a bill printed, to get a hearing on the bill or to have it sent once printed to the committee where it is supposed to go. Lots of things can happen to a bill. It can indeed be sent to hostile committee, on purpose or inadvertently.

I had a bill that simply makes it an employer's, not an insurer's decision to allow a business' employees to buy health insurance for their unmarried partners, boy friends of girlfriends and other family members if they are not married. The bill is a benefit to the state because it increases the number of people and their children with access to insurance. This improves preventative care, reduces emergency costs, catastrophic fund costs and other taxpayer funded health care costs.

The bill went to State Affairs Committee, not Commerce where insurance related legislation usually goes.

Top Ten About the Stimulus

I know the stimulus plan puns are getting old. Stimulating conversation. Less than stimulating conversation. In any case, our Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee today spent the first of three days discussing Idaho's share of / potential for/ obstacles to / failures related to / and deadlines for…. the federal stimulus. Hoping eagerly for something that will help the 50,000 Idahoans looking for work.

Top ten things I learned:

10. This money is from Idahoans, past and future, to be sent via Washington DC via federal agencies, grants, direct appropriations and requests which many pray are going to be made by the Governor…

9. Goals include avoiding job losses and lay offs in state government, avoiding state tax increases, creating new jobs, making the nation more energy independent and preventing the immediate implosion of a hand full of Governments in states from one coast to the other.

8. It is true the governor can reject this money. But we as a legislature can override his objections, as long as he doesn't veto them. (Of course 2/3 of us could always vote in favor of a veto override and that would be that.)

7. If you have an idea, you need to apply to a state agency and the Governor's Department of Fiscal Management (DFM). These budget analysts have some flexible money to use for creative economic development, energy and job creating ideas. Can we put the money in to fill all the holes in our state budget? No. Might it free up money we now spend on Medicaid to prevent the deepest of state employee pay cuts? Possibly yes, for now.

6. People can have ideas. Non governmental entities can come up with shovel-ready (can be permitted and ready to grind into motion in 120 days) job producing ideas as long as they do not involve: casino gambling, aquariums, zoos, golf courses or swimming pools.

5. The governor is asking other governors, including Democrats for help. This is good.

4. If you have ideas that use American made products or resources (steel, iron, some manufactured goods), that is encouraged.

3. Everyone's ideas have to be turned in by noon on March 4.

2. Not until March 19 will the Governor's advisory committees have their reports done.

1. The legislature will sort of be sitting around until then. Sitting around for this body, and especially the body across the hall there, is not a good idea. Legislators can hatch crazy ideas when we are bored. Bad ideas generally. With the exception of the Napoleon Dynamite Resolution which was one of the best bored things anyone ever passed through the legislature.

Read it if you need some cheering up. 
http://www3.state.id.us/oasis/2005/HCR029.html

Who is the Governor?

Some days, Butch Otter is the governor of Idaho. The guy in the tight jeans with the big hair and million dollar grin. The guy who recently has become virtually bionic with hip and other joint replacements. The guy who shuns his city roots and clings to a young cowboy image like a life raft.

But on state employee policy and who knows what else, Mike Gwarney runs the state of Idaho. The well groomed, sweet faced man, with perfectly manicured white hair. He calls the shots. He has spearheaded this "run government like a business" (some might say "like a sweatshop") mentality that has cut benefits for employees and retirees, increased workloads, cut health care, cut jobs, cut leave, cut protections, all without bringing state employee pay up to the level of the private sector which the Governor says he emulates.

This morning the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee gave-in to the Governor's office and passed language that gave him the sole power to decide how to cut 5% out of Idaho's budget for state employees and personnel. We let him decide whether State Agency Directors will use layoffs, pay cuts or furloughs (mandatory days off) to cut $32 million from what Idaho pays to and for agency employees and another $47 million from what we spend on teachers and school personnel.

"Any across the board pay reduction shall be determined by the Governor and shall affect all classified, permanent, temporary and seasonal employees." Our language went on later to say, "Any remaining reduction in funding shall be managed by the respective agency directors, with approval by the Governor…by keeping funded positions vacant, by the use of furloughs, and if necessary by a reduction in force." Layoffs.

I asked questions before and during our committee meeting. My sense was that we as the budget writing committee wanted to protect the economy and state employees by using means other than lay offs. Foolishly I let that give me comfort.

I know furloughs are by far the preferred method of cutting costs, especially from state employees' perspectives. To some extent then employees get to determine which paycheck will be short.

It has taken a long, long time for the legislature to give state employees any reasonable cost of living pay increases. It is very rational for employees to fear that it will take a long, long time before the legislature would give back any 5% base reduction in pay. The trust is not there so I'm sure that furloughs sound far better than pay cuts.

Near the end of the committee meeting, Mike Gwartney came to us to talk about the state insurance fund. Out of nowhere he said that Idaho could expect an increase in insurance spending because, he said, 'When there are layoffs people get their teeth fixed.'

Layoffs? Who had said anything about layoffs? Especially layoffs massive enough to affect the state insurance fund's tooth fixing budget? Hadn't we just spelled out in committee that layoffs were the last resort?

In many cases, especially on the front lines, people are already doing several other people's jobs. 

I looked at the man with the perfectly groomed white hair. We had just given him the power to execute 5% reductions in personnel spending. He had cover finally to help Otter "Find efficiencies." "Reduce the size of government." "Starve the beast."

Does he not realize that, to some people, he and the governor are synonymous? What a cavalier way to wear that power, not know what a warning he would send by tucking the word "layoffs" into what he came to say.

Often at Ease

The statehouse was empty when I made my way through the snow and dark to the doors this morning. Several times this week I've been dead tired but not able to sleep. This week is the deadline for us to finalize and turn in our legislation. I find myself drafting new language and working out problems in half sleep.

Most the day, the floor of the Senate tends to be sparsely populated. We will call a "Bless you!" across the room when someone sneezes, call out a good morning or good bye.

Even when we are in session with all 35 of us at our desks on the floor, the place is roomy. The ceiling is tall and as much less space as there is compared to the old Capitol building, we still rattle around pretty well.

We are, just this week, starting to really hear and debate bills. Yesterday actual debate started around educational neglect and a bill that was supposed to prevent people from saying their kids were being home schooled when no schooling was really going on. Rather than making sure they were providing educational content, the legislation instead created an exemption from the existing neglect laws for anyone who said they were home schooling their kids.

I was home schooled for a while. Many parents do a great job. A one point though the wrangler on our ranch was our teacher. I'm pretty sure my sister and I and the two LDS boys who often made up our "school" were a bit much of a hand full for her. We were lucky. We loved to write. I loved science and could still drill my dad for information on physics and biology.

Some kids are kept home with parents because they are being isolated intentionally. The bill would have made it law that, if their parents said they were being home schooled, that would be good enough. This is not about standardized testing or nosy government. Under this legislation no one could ever call them educationally neglected, even if they were never taught to read or given paper and pencil to work with.

It is so noticeable here in this old courtroom, now a Senate chamber, the feel of the debate is strikingly different from that in the bustling and chaotic House chambers across the hall. In every one of the last three days when things even started getting heated, leadership would call the body at ease and a little huddle of Democratic and Republican leaders, bill sponsors and others would gather. When they would disburse again, they'd have a plan for trying to work things out, amending the legislation or pulling it back to committee. In the House we would often battle for hours over things like this, there with the cameras on and a good portion of the 70 members standing up to their microphones red raced, colorful and lively.