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| published Monday, February 19, 2007 |
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. I have three young daughters, so when I walked out of the Senate State Affairs Committee hearing on a bill requiring parental consent for minors seeking abortions Monday morning, all I could think about was how much I needed to keep talking to my girls. After years of over-reaching and hundreds of thousands of dollars of litigation, it appears that SB1082, which passed the committee this week, would survive a constitutional test. Still, as Marty Durand of the Idaho Women’s Network observed, “it will do nothing to improve family communications.” Senator Clint Stennett of Ketchum raised the most provocative question about the judicial bypass that exists in the bill for minor women who cannot get permission for fear of abuse. “How will a young girl in a rural community go about petitioning the court without her family knowing?” Senator Russ Fulcher, the bill’s sponsor, suggested that it may not be possible but that was a “consequence of the pregnancy in the first place.”
. The Senate passed a memorial to Congress this week asking that they make changes in the “Real ID” Act. Real ID requires all states to develop a standardized driver’s license that will act as a de facto national identification card. At an ACLU sponsored forum on Tuesday, speakers from the Libertarian CATO Institute and the ACLU sat on the same panel to oppose implementation of the Act. The Memorial’s sponsor, Phil Hart of Athol, said the Real ID was like something out of the movie, Matrix, bringing us closer, as one of the other speakers called it, towards a “surveillance society.” Still it was Bill Bishopcheck this outthe Director of Idaho’s Homeland Security operation who made the most chilling observation. “I don’t think it’s necessary for us to become like those we fight to win the war on terror.”
Although it was barely mentioned, the Real ID Act was passed not only as a response to terrorism but also to illegal immigration. On Wednesday Senators John McGee and Michael Jorgenson joined the bandwagon by introducing two bills to the Senate State Affairs Committee that will require all adults to prove that they are legal residents before collecting any public benefit (Hey, what’s a public benefit?) and that will make employers responsible for hiring people without legal documents. It piggybacks on the executive order by then-Governor Risch requiring verification of identity documents. Jorgenson made clear what he was after. We need to “send a strong message to the public that illegal immigration will not be tolerated… Taxpayer money must not be funneled into the pockets of illegal aliens…This will ensure that jobs are available to Americans.” Similar laws in Colorado have been both expensive and ineffective.
Two bills that sought to implement portions of the new state energy plan were defeated this week in the House Environment, Energy, and Technology Committee. House Concurrent Resolution 14 would have supported the development of and education about policies and programs that reduce Idaho's greenhouse gas emissions and would have encouraged the development of clean, economical energy resources and fuel-efficient technologies. House Bill 169 would have required all new state-funded buildings and major expansions to meet high performance standards. This means the buildings would have to meet the LEED silver standard to reduce environmental impact, which would save money over time in energy consumption. Even these modest steps proved a little much for some legislators who are still trying to deny the existence of global warming.
In a surprise move, the Vote-by-Mail bill, HB94, was returned to the House State Affairs Committee today for amendment. HB94 had passed the committee earlier in the week. Proposed by the County Clerks Association and supported by the Secretary of State, this proposal is similar to the current voting process in Oregon. While it has had some success in increasing turnout rates in Oregon, the proposal has raised serious concerns among some voters. Voters with disabilities have worked for the past 20 years to achieve a system of voting that is accessible to all. Implementation of the federal Help America Vote Act has brought this diverse community closer to that goal. The Feds have invested about $6 million in technology in Idaho that makes it possible for people who are blind or have other disabilities to vote on their own. The vote-by-mail proposal threatens those gains by once again making people dependent on others to cast their votes rather than protecting both privacy and independence.
who brought the minimum wage to the House State Affairs Committee on Thursday. “We like to see the open market determine what wages are,” said Rep. Ken Roberts to the panel which last week turned down an effort to allow the minimum wage to increase with inflation. HB184 just makes Idaho’s minimum wage conform to whatever Congress does. If the House/Senate Conference Committee can come to an agreement, the minimum wage will go up to $5.85 immediately to $6.55 in a year and to $7.25 after 24 months. To Representative John Rusche just conforming to the federal “cements Idaho’s minimum wage to the bottom.” It’s easy to poo poo the minimum wage in a tight labor market. The minimum wage is needed to protect low wage workers in hard times. At this point, according to a labor analyst who testified at the hearing, the biggest concern for Idaho employers is the lack of available skilled labor. “Our real need is for training and education to increase the skill level of the workforce,” he concluded.
Alex Lebeau, the new Director of IACI, has been chomping at the bit to bring in a bill to eliminate the personal property tax at an eventual cost of something over $100 million when it is fully implemented in 2015. The personal property tax is capital equipment used by business, so can be anything from a desk to a piece of production equipment. The plan is phased in at $12 million increments each year beginning immediately and applying retroactively to Jan. 1, 2007. What more do they want? The corporate income tax is a smaller portion of revenues each year. Last August’s special session assured business a big property tax cut already. And now this. While IACI’s been promoting a study that touts the virtues of eliminating the tax, the Legislature has been steadily giving away the tax base to business, making it harder to train and educate those high skilled workers. The bill was introduced Friday morning-- much to Rep. Lenore Barrett’s “considerable comfort”. She says, “It’s a tax cut; I never met a tax cut I didn’t like.”
but it was the most direct. The Senate Local Government Committee finally repealed a law that has allowed counties to restrict participation in public hearings about siting of confined animal feeding operations (CAFO’s) to people with property interests within one–mile of the proposed feedlot. On Wednesday they voted unanimously to open the hearings up to any property owner affected.
House Transportation Chair JoAn Wood, who has supported many a tax cut for business, says we need the money from imposing the state’s gas tax on the Indian reservations within the boundaries of the state. She, along with all four members of the House Republican Leadership, introduced a bill on Monday to tax gas on the state’s 5 reservations unless the Governor’s office reaches agreement with them prior to July 1 when the law goes into effect. A similar bill brought last year created a major tussle with the tribes and led to negotiations that are ongoing with the Governor’s office. As seems to happen all too often, the sponsors ignored the legislature’s Indian Affairs Council in bringing the bill.
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