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UV Eye Opener, Week of Mar. 24 - 28, 2008

UV Eye Opener, Week of Mar. 24 - 28, 2008	3791 Views
posted on Wednesday, April 02, 2008

The winding down is never pretty. Last Monday, it looked like the legislature might complete its work by Friday if the majority leaders in both the House and Senate put petty differences aside, worked across party lines and worked with governor to resolve the final issues. But that was too much to ask. Senate and House majority leaders had a lot more turf battles to fight. This past weekend they’ve been contemplating whether doing nothing on such things as highway construction, community drug treatment and small business property taxes is preferable to giving in on the positions each has staked out. They also seemed to be nonplussed by the fact that they have killed legislation on child safety, human rights, ethics reform and a host of other issues without actually voting on them.

Letting the potholes get bigger. With so much focus on giving away tax breaks to powerful special interests, the majority in the legislature has yet to take responsibility for the need to invest in public infrastructure. The governor is particularly frustrated that the legislature has not come up with a way to raise most of the $240 million he says is needed to fill the huge hole in the states road maintenance budget. He said last week that there is a shortage of vision and political will within the Legislature to do what needs to be done this year. His preference is for them to just go home rather than to waste time coming up with only a quarter of what he says is needed.

Small businesses finally get out from under IACI’s shadow. Ever since the legislature started hearing concerns from small businesses about the administrative costs of the personal property tax law, lobbyists for the states biggest corporations (Idaho Association of Commerce & Industry IACI) have used the issue as an excuse to completely repeal the tax. In last weeks UVEyeOpener, we urged you to call Senators to oppose the bill unless it was amended. The Senate heard you. The logic of focusing the repeal on small businesses became so obvious that Senators adopted amendments that exempted 86% of Idaho’s businesses from the tax and reduced the impact to the public from $120 million to $15.5 million. (These were similar to the amendments that IACI got the House majority to reject). Senators also fixed other problems that would have forced counties to shift the impact onto homeowners. On Thursday, the amended House Bill 599 passed the Senate unanimously. Senators pulled the rug out from IACI’s argument that big corporations deserve another tax break, even if it cost the state nearly ten times more. In fact, Sen. Bob Geddes (R-Soda Springs and the leader of the Senate) said that a representative of one of the states big companies told him they would rather pay the tax than push this onto the back of our employees. Undeterred by the sound rebuke in the Senate, IACI’s lobbyist indicated on Friday that he will try to get his friends in the House to kill the amended bill rather than help small businesses.

The pen is mightier than the p.c. Last week, the governor vetoed funds in two bills for community-based treatment for substance abuse. This week, the Senate overrode one of those vetoes. On Thursday, the saga of one-upmanship continued when the governor used his veto pen to delete funding for the legislatures new laptop computers. Ostensibly, this veto was to punish legislators for not joining his administrations program to consolidate computer purchases. Others saw it as payback for the Senates override of his substance abuse veto. Either way, it got legislators attention and there have been no more override votes. Instead, legislative leaders apparently intend on printing, hearing and passing a new funding bill for substance abuse programs in the final hours of the session. Of course, a veto after the legislature adjourns cannot be overridden.

Taking a paddle to the board of education. Remember when the board of education also referred to a paddle to discipline unruly students? When the Idaho Department of Education was run by a Democrat, many GOP legislators refused to acknowledge her administrative authority and opted to expand the role of the State Board of Education to administer public education programs. (Board members are appointed by the governor). Gradually, the boards inability to live up to its added responsibility became apparent. Legislators could no longer ignore the problem and this year they spent many hours taking testimony and discussing the boards lapses. Problems the Senate Education Committee uncovered included board members' penchant for truancy, for ignoring Idaho’s open meeting laws and for sloppy management of public funds. The paddle, however, took the form of a letter to the governor that sounded a lot like a letter a parent might get from a teacher. It included such recommendations as enforcing minimum attendance standards. Without admitting much of its own culpability, legislators asked the governor to return the board to its constitutional mandate to supervise education policy rather than try to administer programs directly.

Taking the plank out of their own eye first. Not only have legislators been critical of the state board of education this year, they have scrutinized the conduct of the transportation board as well. It is a role they relish. Yet, they seem oblivious to the way they conduct their own committee process. This week, we heard about some of the legislation that has disappeared in the drawer of committee chairs effectively killing them without public input. For example, on Wednesday, citizens gathered outside the statehouse to decry Sen. Curt McKenzie’s refusal to hold a public hearing on a human rights bill (see last weeks UVEyeOpener). Sen. McKenzie was under fire again in the Senate chamber when sponsors of Senate Bill 1302 invoked a rule to hold him accountable for refusing to schedule a hearing on the bill. It has been in his drawer since January 21. McKenzie demanded a vote of the Senate to excuse his conduct. It is a loyalty thing. All the other chairs were expected to line up behind him and so were all the other members of his party even if they might actually support the bill in question. In this case, SB 1302 was a modest proposal to protect the publics investment in high level public employees who leave to lobby on behalf of a private interest. Sen. McKenzie admitted this was not the only bill he is has in his drawer and on a party-line vote the Senate backed his position to kill the bill without a public hearing.

Unexpected death of a bill to help prevent the unexpected death of children. Harking back to an era when children were treated as chattel and their deaths were nobody’s business but their parents, Sen. Patti Anne Lodge (R-Nampa) voided her own committees approval of a child mortality review bill. House Bill 511 had passed the House by a 63-5 margin, passed her committee on a voice vote and was scheduled for debate before the full Senate on March 20th. The bill would have removed Idaho as the ONLY state in the US without an official process to review unexpected child deaths. In the past, processes created by executive order led to parent education programs to prevent sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), better child seat belt laws and improved safety of canals. How did House Bill 511 unexpectedly die? As Senators were distracted by the rush to adjourn at about 6:15pm before a 3-day weekend, Lodge asked for unanimous consent to have the bill removed from the calendar and returned to her committee. No one objected! The next day, realizing Lodges maneuver had extinguished the life of the bill without a final vote, its House supporters including sponsors Margaret Henbest (D-Boise) and Russ Mathews (R-Idaho Falls) were angry and its Senate supporters were chagrined at being asleep at the switch. An attempt was made this week to pull the bill from committee but partisan loyalty to a committee chair again took precedence.