Notes From the Floor

Triage

January 26, 2009

The ringer on my phone is broken. It buzzes on the table or in my pocket, but I seem to miss a constant stream of messages. I look down and again, someone has called and I missed it. Of course sometimes I can not pick up. In committee we get in trouble if our phones ring, like in school we are supposed to pretend we don't have phones, much less whole e-mail, texting and web browsing systems right there in the palms of our hands.

The amount of paper we get in a single day, the envelopes and folders we open, the words addressed to and handed to each of us as legislators in a single day is staggering. We get more paper each day at home. Then of course there is the e-mail. My legislative e-mail in box is so active that on a week day in the course of answering a single e-mail I may get five more. I try to answer all the e-mail addressed to me personally. It is getting harder so I get up earlier or stay up later. Still I miss e-mails. In years past interns have tucked them in folders to keep me organized, folders i didn't know existed. I find letters there, speaking to the dark inside of a server, never read, never heard.

I say all this calmly because I have to. Panic doesn't fix the stream of information that comes at you in a day. It still comes.

Like standing in an anxious crowd of people so large it does not end and you can not imagine each of you reaching your destination on time or perhaps at all. You stand shoulder to shoulder smiling in the cold air, slowly shuffling together along. I might try to learn the name of every person passing, hear the end of every story they start, let all of those more worthy pass through the gate ahead of me again and again. But I can't. I do the best I can, trying to get somewhere, anywhere productive, trying to laugh with those I can, picking up a glove off the sidewalk, offering a bit of my pocket full of food to someone on a street corner, knowing that panic does nothing for any of us at all.

Inauguration

January 18, 2009

Celebrating the inauguration of Barack Obama, our President.

See more photos on the Inauguration Photos under "PAGES" at right.

Surreal

January 16, 2009

It is hard to describe this day. It has four main parts. I will try to explain it.

The first was about cutting millions out of budgets for the next six months. Those are the "holdbacks." They take money away from what we budgeted last year for January to June or the second half of "fiscal year 09." I voted "no" on one of them, the one that took huge chunks out of several different parts of our "medicaid" health care and welfare budgets…

The second part of the day was a rally on the temporary statehouse steps where I climbed down through signs and bundled bodies to find hundreds of people with disabilities and their families gathered to protest huge pending cuts to the therapy services many depend on. They are concerned that without support and help that many there would never have had the chance to become as independent as they are. They are concerned that parents will have to ask taxpayers to foot the larger bill to put their kids in expensive homes and institutions; that they won't be able to work and care for their kids; that a traditional day care won't take them or if they do that their children will just be warehoused, not taught skills, independence and self esteem.

One man in a wheel chair who works with kids with developmental disabilities spoke slowly and, in his nervousness, almost incomprehensibly into the hand held microphone. Someone re-read his eloquent speech. In another time he might never have had a chance to use a computer to write that speech. He might have been assumed to have no intellect, no voice.

The third part of the day was where we sat and listened to Mike
Ferguson from the Governor's budget office try to talk our committee down
from the ledge. It seems we on the Revenue Outlook Committee (I sit on this and the budget committee, JFAC) are far less optimistic about the economy than the Governor. Each of us on the committee was supposed to
guess how much in sales and income tax Idahoans will earn and spend and thus pay this year based
on what economists and industry lobbyists themselves are predicting.

My number or revenue estimate was the
smallest. and even the committee "median" or middle number was $101 million
smaller than the Governor's. Again, it was $101 million smaller. This would mean that even the Governor's deep cuts will have to be deepened. We decided to go with the median. That is now what we on JFAC, the Joint Finace and Appropriations Committee, will have to spend as we set budgets this year. Hundreds of millions less than we had last year.

My number was very low. To some extent we discussed it and how low things really might go. I looked at my number and at the very low committee median and thought what another $101 million of shortfall will mean to people all over Idaho. I can only hope I am very wrong, that a year from now we can all laugh at my doom. I have never wanted to be wrong so much in my whole life.

The final part of the day was a meeting with the people from Medicaid. The gate keepers. Someone once called them the bean counters. I don't think the name was chosen by someone who thinks well of counting beans. These men and women have the dreadful job of deciding who gets help with medical care and who does not, how much, at what cost, and what will not be covered and under what circumstances. I suppose if you continually give people like this less money and fewer people to work with at lower and lower wages, what happens is they get a bit cold and hard. They learn to hate the waste and ugliness in things rather than seeing the beauty and the value.

The bean counters have to work with a system of private providers, some of who are in it because they have a passion for improving the lives of people with disabilities. Some are in it because there is money to be made. If i was ever not a fan of privatization, I really am not now. If it does not open up the most vulnerable of our society to exploitation, then at least it makes us fear that everyone providing the services is trying to exploit the system, even if they are not.

It is like the way some of my legislative colleagues have described people with disabilities, or their parents, as being able to do nothing for themselves. In this fourth and final part of the day, one person in the room said that the families who wrote to him, the very same as those families on the steps, expected the state to do everything for them.

As someone who benefited from special education as a child and who worked as a personal care attendant through part of college, I never in my life expected to hear words like those out of the mouth of someone I know and care about.

How hard is it to describe living with a single desire just to be able to do EVERYTHING for yourself. Not to need people to open doors for you, not to have more time on tests, not to need an adaptive device or to be able to afford one and have it always work. How do you describe a family that needs to pay the rent like any other but where for her entire life their daughter can not be left alone. How do you describe how hard people work just to be allowed to hold jobs or finish a sentence just explaining how they feel.

Too High to See Their Eyes

January 14, 2009

Home by the wood stove. The weight of tomorrow's first vote on budgets hangs there as I walk out of the brown marble halls and home through the fog and frost. What might look like numbers on a page are jobs, things not bought from Idaho businesses, smaller pay checks. Lives.

We had Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee (JFAC) school today. Five of us are new on the twenty member committee. Jim Patrick and three of us Democrats sat like children at the feet of Cathy Holland Smith, JFAC director, patient teacher and former wizard of prison and health budgets. She speaks slowly, smiles a lot and tucks gems into budget writing stories and seeming off-hand bits of advice.

This morning in committee we went through maybe 20 pages solid with numbers. If you drift for a second, whole parts of a page are lost and figuring it out means that you miss what comes next. And every number has something to do with someone's life. Do I grasp and picture what every number means fully? I don't think anyone knows all the lands where the parks are to be built, the people who say they need new ballistics vests, the people who have survived a bit of life because they could check in to Franklin House rather than facing a break down alone, in a cold hospital or in the very home situation that helped them to the brink? I try.

As a member of this committee we are given a book that is six inches thick, and, front to back in numbers says how more than two billion dollars in sales and income taxes flow out over the state, to hospitals, fire crews, social workers, judges, women who teach high school courses to men in one of the State Prisons.

Scott Bedke, long time budget writer, poked his head into our little class room. He is one of the brightest and is now a member of house leadership. There was a time, when I was a freshman years ago when he spoke kindly of me, said I had potential or smarts. He used numbers to say it. Now he steers clear more. I've challenged House leadership in more ways than I can count. I know it tarnishes how sweet I might have seemed and makes me into something more sinister than a young law maker who is OK with numbers. I'm graying and serving in the Senate and he is in charge of the House Republican caucus now.

Scott's advice to our little JFAC class was that we pull back to an altitude, 40,000 ft, to vote on budgets. Others have said this as well and today I know why. If you are too low you have to look into everyone's eyes as you vote.

We have to cut hundreds of millions out of next year's budget soon. How can you look in that many eyes? I think you try. You ask for understanding and you work to protect the most vulnerable. That is so relative. The most vulnerable. You might agree not build a park in order that more people can get medical care. Still the cement company owner may close down and the man who hoped to get a job there will have none. But these are the choices we make. How many people can we feed with one park?

From 40,000 feet the food line stretches pretty far and the park sits gated and empty and waits until later. The cement truck owner joins the food line. And we look out over the mountains and hope everyone is willing to step up and make a little sacrifice of their own. I will. I have a list because I know now how much others are giving up. When I come down from 40,000 feet I look into their eyes.

Asking More Than Grit

January 12, 2009

On the first day of the legislative session, the gavel falls on the wooden disk and we answer roll call, one by one, in thirty five different voices. We don't press a button on our computers as we did in the House. We pledge allegiance and then are expected to pray in the name of Christ before breaking for lunch and then loading buses to BSU for the Governor's state of the state address.

We waited in on of the Spec Center's Green Rooms like badly dressed, super boring rock stars and then filed into the auditorium in order of seniority. Unlike the house, we filed in in seniority that ignores party affiliation. To my surprise on my first day in the Senate I had three Democrats and four Republicans behind me in line.

The Governor seemed a bit off in my mind. Perhaps he was choking on his own proposal to raise taxes and increase budgets for roads of all things, while, in the same breath, proposing to cut budgets for schools. Odd priorities in my mind. Not many words of hope or sympathy for all those sitting at home on weekdays or out shopping resumes after decades at jobs or after moving families recently to Idaho hoping to call our mountains and rivers and sage brush deserts home.

I knocked on a lot of doors in Ada County, all over Ada County this past year and I know people were struggling to pay bills before the economy began to falter for real. I can not imagine the decisions being made in small businesses and over kitchen tables tonight. If we as a state are not careful, there will be no soon end to this time. We need to do more than ask for grace in girt. Idahoans have more to give than grace. We have generosity and sweat to lend to others, we have unpaid hours we are already giving at work. Some are giving up hours that make health insurance for the family possible, hours that make the mortgage payment, that were counted on to pay for a child's college education, heating bills, food.

For those of us who make more than enough to pay for basics, I think the governor, and we as a legislature, can ask for more. For those living close to the bone we have to be careful. Many are one step away form needing public assistance now and our actions could leave them desperate or needing our help in ways that will cost taxpayers and businesses more than the saving we intend. Keeping Idahoans employed, and Idaho-owned businesses working, keeping the most vulnerable families fed and strong was not a note the Governor hit. It is however a tone you will hear from me and from many others in here.

Raising taxes for roads but cutting schools, schools that already struggle to keep kids from getting lost in the crowds, the tests and the growing crises at home. Those are not the order of my priorities. I am sorry to see that they are the Governor's.

Eliptical

January 11, 2009

Normally I run in the Boise foothills to clear my head. My dog runs ahead and we wind our was along the ridge tops for 40 minutes, no headphones, just the wind and sound of feet on the trail and the dog's collar jangling. While my feet pound, my mind plays and I think a lot of strategy. It seems to be one of the rare times I do one simple thing uninterrupted, no multi tasking or talking or typing for more than 40 minutes at a time. So yes, my mind just plays. I run through issue debate, letters to constituents, ways to use legislation to solve problems, how to fix electrical wiring in the house or the best way to have a conversation with a colleague.

Like a million other Idahoans, I can't easily run right now. The trails are alternating between treacherously icy, deep slushy and simply muddy. So I've tagged along with my partner Carol to the gym. There in the gym I've found the eliptical. I cover the lights and dials and control panel with a shirt or towel, put on fast dance music and run uphill for thirty minutes until I can't run more. I go no where. It feel though like I travel through the time of the songs, the lyrics or style or beat. But my mind doesn't play. I am stuck in place with my feet spinning, sweating and working hard, but I get no where.

The legislature convenes tomorrow morning. It will be my first day serving in the 35 member Senate with my new Republican and Democratic colleagues. I am struck this year by how many of the issues (aside from the over whelming issue of the economy) are the same issues we have struggled over the last four years I've served in the legislature.

The Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry is trying again to get Idaho families to pay its taxes. Mike Moyle is again refusing to give local people to power to vote to tax themselves to fund better bus service, trolleys, light rail or other services to solve local problems. Republicans in the House are again lining up to oppose standards to ensure that day care centers around the state are safe and have solid educational content so kids are not just parked in front of a TV, left alone or confined to one crowded room all day, week after week.

The process and its two year election cycle doesn't seem to produce much thinking ahead. It doesn't produce much cooperative planning or strategy to solve problems, just a lot of gut reaction timed to play out in elections. It feels sometimes a little like, as a legislature, ours has turned into an extreme body that runs in place year after year, sweating but getting no where.

At the Doors of Justice

January 10, 2009

Nicole's speech on LGBT equality at Boise City Hall at noon Saturday, January 10th 2009.

Friends, Idahoans we have struggled for decades and millennia up a steep hill toward the doors of the house of justice….

In small towns we’ve lived quietly hoping to pass unnoticed.
We’ve been taunted, harassed and demonized.
Millions of us have cried in school hallways, alone in bathrooms and school yards.
We’ve taken our lives as teens and adults broken in half unable to bear a life alone in hostility.
We’ve lost jobs, families, churches, children.
We’ve been told we deserve hate, deserve loneliness
and only rarely from above in the house of justice has anyone shone a light into the darkness for us, has anyone tried to help us up that hill from above
—only rarely from that place of power has anyone ever even said our names.

Friends, five years ago from his speech at the Democratic Convention in 2004 Barack Obama said our names. Unlike any politician speaking to a prime time audience on a national stage he spoke to us, his “gay friends in red states,” including us then in his vision of American.

From drag queens standing up to police brutality on the shores of the Atlantic to Harvey Milk dying at the hands of hatred in a marble building in another city far away on the Pacific…… we have worked toward justice again and again only to be sent back down the hill yet further time and time again into the mire.

Friends, today as we stand here in the cold, Soldiers, men and women serving in Iraq face worse consequence for living as human beings than they did twelve years ago. They are told today that it is dishonorable to be both patriotic and honest. They are told in US law, something no American should ever be told. They are told that to protect their livelihood, their careers and their families, they must lie.

What kind of a nation holds up gay Americans as heroes in the arts, in sports, in entertainment and even politics, and then with laws tells us that in one place we can marry, can have all the rights of our straight brothers and sisters, but that on the other side of a boarder, on a different date in the same city that those rights and duties and privileges, the very keys of full personhood are not ours to have.

Friends we have climbed up the hill for a long, long time and we have slid back in the mud of hate, greed and partisan politics, but today we stand here in Boise, Idaho, ten days from the day that Barack Obama, a community organizer, state legislator, US Senator, writer and diplomat…. one who has struggled for decades beside us…. we stand here ten days from the day that he will walk through those doors of justice himself.

He will bring part of the nation with him through those doors on the 20th of January.

Friends, we are there almost to those the doors ourselves today. It may not be this month or this year that we achieve full equality but I’ve looked three times into the eyes of the man who will be our new president and I know he has a fire in him for justice.

If any man can sit in that white house on that hill and ask a nation to change not just its laws but its minds for us, it will be him.

We know he can not do it alone. All across the nation today and over the next months and year we will be gathering on the lawns of houses of justice and asking not just a man, but a nation to hear us. We will be standing here as long as it takes, with our families and co-workers, church members, neighbors and class mates beside us, now, for the sake of justice, equality and all that makes us a nation, it is time for Congress and for our state legislatures, our courts and our neighbors to speak our names in respect and in law…… and to finally let us in.

Empty Chambers

January 5, 2009

Today the Senate chambers are empty, thirty five chairs sit tucked under desks and snow falls outside. Snow is good, it means a slightly less stressful legislative session since dry hills and dry wells and ditches will not be plaguing the minds of my farming colleagues. At least perhaps water will not be as scare as dollars.

This week we begin to gather. The session starts officially on January 12th at noon. And then from Challis and Sagel, Bear Lake and Kuna we will assemble and the gavel will fall. We will begin the task of writing state law and of keeping the doors open in job training programs; dollars flowing for emergency medical care, for classrooms and doctor visits; for supervision, housing and treatment for those released from prison. We will decide who gets paid and how much, whether to cut all salaries or just those at the top. Whether the dollars saved by laying off or losing front-line state employees will be dwarfed by the increased cost of backlogs in child protection, the cost of new mental health and substance abuse crises, the cost of increased prison populations and greater demand for emergency medical care and more.

I wish I could say we will be wise and think ahead, weighing consequences with the costs, thinking about who can bear the losses and who, right now, can not. Just as more people fall on hard times, will we cut the services they need to feed their families?

With Governor Otter talking about this being a time to re-evaluate the size of government I can't help but fear that this economic downturn will be used as an excuse to gut disability, medical, mental health and substance abuse services permanently. I worry that we will lose sight of our growing understanding that it saves budget dollars if we prevent a mental health crisis, prevent addiction, prevent incarceration and offer preventative care to avoid the need for expensive emergency medical services.

The chambers feel hollow. I hope our coffers, our reasoning and forsight will not be.

Sitting Down with the Reverend

December 22, 2008

It is a bit hard listening as our nation grapples with the role of religion in government and the right of religious institutions to define marriage, or to grant or deny marriage to me or to people I love. Right now too, debate rages about how we make change and who has to be at the table to get down this last bit of road to legal equality. Do we need anti-gay religious leaders at the nation's table or will that set us back and turn progress into hate?

I don't think we can deny that if we want equality, we have to change some minds. President Obama surely knows he has to change some minds.

On most issues like employment discrimination our country is there with us in agreement that firing people because they are gay is wrong. On marriage we are tipping in a balance. Those who have lived in states where we can marry, seem to find the ominous mystery gone. In other states the level of comfort is not yet there. The conversation has not been had.

Real change is a process. As a law maker, I know well that to pass the actual laws (which community organizers and brave people for decades have worked to prepare the ground for,) we still need to remind Congress how ready our nation is for change. We need huge numbers of people to stand up with us on the issue of legal equality. We as a community need to be visible and to ask our straight friends to help.

Sadly, laws are a measure of progress long over due, but they alone can't protect every one of us in every small town from Burley, Idaho to Bangor Maine. We need national leaders and neighbors who stand up with us before we will get there.

To see real change, those who still hate or fear us as gay people have to see us as human and see our lives through our eyes just a little.

Getting there is slow. It takes time and serious patience to listen to another person's story and to hear it without judgement and make sure they hear a bit of your story as well. Remember that people are raised to hate. It is not spontaneous. You have to be willing to know you won't change someone's mind in one conversation, which means of course that if you are disrespectful in that first conversation you never get to come back and keep working at helping them see what it is like to have a government nullify your marriage or stand by when you are harassed or fired from a job you loved for no other reason than that you happen to be gay.

I would never say we can not be angry. In an era where our culture so seems to embrace our roles in art, science, politics, education, sports and the military, how can our government stand by while a very few work to deny us legal equality? I still get teary listening to NPR trying to comprehend how anyone could go so far as to intentionally hurt loving people who are just trying to live their lives and protect their families under the law.

We can't pretend we are not angry. How can we not be angry sometimes right now? But to get this last distance to legal equality, we as gay people will have to be very disciplined. We have to be calm and focused on the change we have to bring.

It may feel frightening, but if we want a seat at the table we will will have to sit down with people we don't agree with, with some who have not shown us respect in the past. We can not change every mind, but by calmly organizing and working hard to show what is lost to this culture without our contributions, to show the harm from the laws and amendments passed, and to accept that good people can have awful beliefs, we can I think help our country travel this last bit of road.

Ethics in Theory

December 4, 2008

It is a wild and wonderful thing to watch new legislators contemplate the pressures they will be under to deliver for constituents and especially for lobbyists.

Wednesday in legislator school we ran through scenarios… You are flown by an industry group to a speaking engagement and offered free golf and hotel and air fare. The industry group will have legislation for you to vote on in the upcoming session. Another: As a legislator voting on a bill that deregulates your company's industry, if you knew that the bill might pass or fail by one or two votes would you disclose your conflict and go ahead and vote as the law says you should, or is this a conflict where you should not vote? Another: your neighbor asks you to write a letter to an agency to get the director to give your neighbor a contract in an open bid
process, yet you happen to serve on the Joint Finance Committee where
you oversee that agency director's budget.

Not everyone in the room agreed on the answers. I'm not sure the legislative leaders presenting the ethics portion agreed on the answers.

Personally I see lessons to be learned: 1) be very careful what you ask from someone you have power over. It takes next to nothing to imply consequence. 2) On voting, the law says we must, regardless of conflict, vote. I'd ask, should we really if the vote is so heavily divided and there are really winners and losers in this deregulation? Isn't it possible that those who are adversely impacted are not represented in the legislature and that your representing your industry to your legislative friends and colleagues in support of this legislation has skewed the objectivity of the process?

If you hang out around the legislature and our current digs in the old Ada County Courthouse even a little, or if you go to the taxpayers conference and count the industry lobbyists mixed in with the local and legislative elected officials, it feels odd. All the money moving around can get to feel normal though after awhile if you don't keep pinching yourself. I'd disagree with the the legal experts from the Attorney General's office who said that if we report the all the gifts, dinners, air tickets and hotel stays and don't promise anyone any votes, we'll be OK. I've generally returned campaign donations from corporate or business PACs. But look at the Sunshine reports someday where all we legislators get our campaign money. It is very interesting. http://www.sos.idaho.gov/elect/Finance/2008scan.htm

We each draw our own lines and make our own claims about whether we are influenced or not. In Idaho law, esteemed Senators like Bart Davis will admit there is a difference between what is ethical and what is legal and warn us not to fall down in the court of public opinion by thinking legality is all that matters. Ethics experts like Kate Kelly have labored to create better laws. Yet the Ags office is assigned to defend that what legislators are doing by common practice is legal. As the law stands, we as legislators are supposed to decide for ourselves what is ethical and just, even if it is technically legal.

Legislator School

December 1, 2008

In the room where the Senate State Affairs Committee meets, inside the old Ada County Courthouse, about 13 legislators sat today in the over-sized chairs and met some of the staff that will organize us, write for us, train, problem solve, track, research and draft legislation for us, pay us, monitor and audit state government for us… all so that we, farmers, ranchers, consultants, attorneys, businessmen and teachers can make state law for three months.

When I was first elected and went to legislator school in 2004, it was overwhelming then for me as a teacher, non-profit community organizer and small business owner to think of having professional staff tucked away in every corner of the statehouse ready to help me accomplish what I wanted to get done. I'd had interns, hundreds of volunteers and a few temporary employees. But this was new.Today it again felt foreign but amazing.

Dr. Moncrief from BSU came to compare legislatures around the nation for us. Now we appreciate how odd ours is (elected every two years and three legislators representing the exact same district.) I suspect we also appreciate how little staff we have compared to other states, how small our districts are, how low our pay is (less then $17,000 a year which seems low only if you've not recently worked full time for minimum wage or for a non-profit, or small farm.)

I sit at home tonight while the fire in the wood stove dies and smile thinking about New Hampshire with 400 house members compared to our 70 or Nebraska which has a non-partisan legislature. No political parties. Imagine that.

Out of the Fog

November 30, 2008

On a day like today when the old Ada County Courthouse rises up out of the still green grass into the fog, inside the stairs are surprisingly grand. Sound echoes off the muraled walls, hodge podge furniture and stone steps

Soon 105 legislators from around Idaho will pack suits and shoes, name badges and file folders of legislation and come to Boise to live in apartments, vacant homes, condos, basement rooms and penthouses. Some share a place while others rent a room in a house. Many stay in hotel suites or simple rooms at the Safari Inn.

When we are sworn in Thursday morning. There will be no place to watch, no gallery as there was in the Statehouse, but people will watch online, through glass doors, or from the viewing rooms on TV screens on the first floor.

We choose legislative leadership this year and every year following an election: A Speaker or Pro Tem who governs the Majority and Minority caucuses and a Leader, Assistant Leaders and Caucus chair for each the Republican and Democratic Caucuses.

With only one seat net change in the number of Democrats and Republicans in the Idaho legislature, it might seem that this election brought little change to the Capitol. That is not entirely true. The house elected several more conservative members to fill the shoes of moderate Republicans. This means that Republican leadership is unlikely to change this year, but the House Democratic leadership is set to see some turnover with George Sayler leaving as Assistant Minority leader. There will be decisions for Democratic legislators to make by secret ballot over dinner. Who holds the respect? Who thinks strategically? Who speaks well without hand-holding? Who would the Democratic Caucus of 18 be willing to follow?

The Senate in its more deliberative way does much based on seniority, in both the Democratic and Republican caucuses. Senate Republicans gained only one freshman member, Chuck Winder from Eagle. But on top of that four of us from the House have moved to the Senate this year, two Republicans and two Democrats.

If Gov. Otter appoints Senator Geddes or Senator Little to the vacant Lt. Governor's positions, there will be Republican leadership races on the Senate side and that could mean serious change. Democratic Leadership in the Senate has already worked out who will replace David Langhorst who bravely ran for County Commissioner and will be much missed in the Senate.

There will be much to watch this week as the legislature convenes its "Organizational Session."

We will chose seats and committees and it is possible some committee chairships will change hands as well. Undoubtedly the many new seats on the joint Finance Committee will also help change the dynamics on key issues and legislation and how we balance the budget while maintaining the housing, medical, food assistance and job training services Idahoans need most in worrisome economic times like these.

………………….

See http://www.idahoptv.org/leglive/ to watch Thursday on-line.

Why we run

November 27, 2008

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/

Hoarse but Smiling

August 28, 2008

Never in my life have I felt so compelled to wave an American flag, so compelled to hug people, grin from ear to ear and just stare up marveling at all those tens of thousands smiling, waving flags singing and stomping their feet on the Denver Bronco stadium stands.
Image after image is painted of the nation we can have offering us a simple choice. Tonight we feel what we as a nation could be. The path there is clear and is two months to its start. Not an easy path but one that is right before us and around us and here in our flying hands.

So I'm horse from shouting and doing the wave and laughing. After this night comes the hard work as the Republican Convention begins and Carl Rove (who is here in a back room somewhere) and his machine grinds up to frenzy and spends the next two months trying to rip Senator Obama and our nation's hope to tatters.

But we are durable people — those millions of us who can not wait for equality or help with medical bills or jobs that don't vanish over seas simply so some company can make more profit for stockholders or escape the accountability of American health, environmental or worker standards.

Tomorrow the work begins all over for every American who is unwilling to risk losing the hope we have for the better nation that is in our grasp. But tonight I'll dance and sing to Bruce Springsteen. I'll go more hoarse and laugh and sing (even though I can't sing) because tonight Barack Obama accepts my vote and our nomination of him as our candidate for president.

Senator Obama is coming out now and I have chanting and stomping to do.

Remembering America Better

August 27, 2008

The primary election was hard on my feelings for Bill Clinton. Here tonight watching Bill Clinton through the waving flags I was impressed with the genuine tone in his voice, his words which redeemed him maybe to others besides me, maybe even to some who did not ever see his accomplishments. Living all the way in Idaho where our news sources were very limited, he and his administration was an obsession of talk radio. Bill Clinton did not in my memory come to speak to us. He was abstract. For any who were too young or too far away or might listen tonight from deep skepticism, Bill Clinton wove images of so much impressive policy and strong leadership, images of such stark contrast with the Bush administration, that even for someone decidedly not a Bill Clinton fan, I felt nostalgic.

Calling Home

August 27, 2008

You get in the middle of this ocean of politics and home gets swallowed in the blue lights and sea of faces. But I've been calling my dad at certain moments, like when I saw Randy Newman sing at the New Orleans tribute and when Michelle Obama spoke to the convention floor. My dad can be counted on to be watching what ever political thing I'm involved in. He made phone calls to voters during my first campaign in May of 2004 and was already marveling at the Obama Campaign in Idaho in the summer of last year, watching the Logo debate in LA when I traveled there for the campaign to cheer on Senator Obama as he debated 4 primary opponents in a TV studio there.

My dad seems to know more about what is going on here than I do. It is understandable since getting around here is a major undertaking involving many city blocks, shuttles, light rail and buses. At the same time the media is everywhere at once and viewers can float this whole place from caucus to floor session to issue session with the touch of a remote control.

My dad's partner, Faith Echtermyer, is a photographer. She has been making hand-made political signs and posting them at the end of their driveway. Her enthusiasm and anxious desire to see the primary behind us is surprising and cool.

My mom called me today from Challis. She and her partner are so far from all this and yet she asked me how I was doing and if I was having fun before she told me that doctors found a melanoma on her arm. She has to get it operated on next week to get it removed and see if it is OK.

So as this ocean churns and rises in the midst of the Clinton nominating speeches, I rise out of it and think of my mom, gun owner, horse lover and wonderful character. I wish her well.

Tense Moments

August 27, 2008

Senator Clinton is meeting with her 1700 plus delegates today. We are told it is so that she can release them. I hope she successfully does that because last night, as the white "Hillary" signs were passed out to the entire crowd (just as the Kenedy signs were the night before) it was hard not to feel like this primary will never be over and behind us.

In February the caucus floor in Boise was tense but light hearted as
we worked to persuade Democratic caucus goers to choose Senator Obama
over Senator Clinton. Last night here in Denver in the sea of
respectful Hillary signs, there were tense moments. I
couldn't help feeling how the room had over 1700 Clinton Delegates,
many of whom are now happily Obama supporters, but others for whom that
process of shifting their focus and support has not yet happened.

Our delegation has seemed to move gracefully in this but those divided states feed each other's frustrations I'm sure the more time they spend feeling again like there is any glimmer of hope that supper delegates could come over or something could happen to sink Senator Obama and let Hillary ride into the general election victorious. But this morning we Obama delegates signed over our votes to Senator Obama. They will be reported from a microphone and lap top console on the floor of the convention tonight. The Hillary delegates are saving their votes until later, after their meeting with her.

Last night I felt at moments that she was still campaigning. One of the threads in her speech asked whether her supporters were in this for the people affected by the issues. She asked again and again were they in it for this or that. But the end of what she was saying trailed off, seemed almost grammatically to be missing as if she left a line out of her speech. The set of questions to her supporters reached no conclusion. That conclusion seems as if it should have been then to say "Well then Barack Obama is your President." It didn't happen though and the series of questions trailed off. I'm sure it is so hard after all she has done to run for this office.

She did make some strong statements about our need to have Senator Obama in the white house. And finally the white signs were replaced with the tall blue "Obama UNITY" & "Hillary UNITY" signs. The feeling that she was campaigning faded a bit and people streamed out into the night, Obama delegates carrying a few Hillary signs and some Hillary supporters carrying Obama signs. May we be done tonight after the vote. Finally done and on to talking to voters about the differences between Senator Obama and John McCain.

Hillary Healing

August 26, 2008

I missed seeing Hillary Clinton speak earlier today. She will speak soon here on the convention floor and Texas next to us is going mad. Unlike Idaho, Texas was split 50-50 in the primary. Ceding the race has been harder there I'm sure. Tonight is supposed to be part of that healing process. I'm hoping for a warm and genuine endorsement from Senator Clinton with no barbs that suggest doubts.

Michelle Obama came to the Gay & Lesbian Victory fund brunch today. She just showed up and spoke so very passionately about LGBT equality to that room full of many Clinton devotees. She carried Senator Obama's devotion to equality so well in that room of delegates and community members.
No first lady, perhaps not even Hillary Clinton all those years ago has given a speech like that to TV cameras in the midst of a presidential election.

We have come so far. I marvel at people like Tim Gill who lives here in Denver and basically funded Democrats take over of Colorado a few years ago.

Michelle Obama just came out in a cream colored dress with Joe Biden to sit on the floor in a press box a ways away in the arena. That means Hillary is coming out now. Like most of you I'll watch and listen.

One of Idaho's three Clinton delegates, Jeanette Wolfley
on the floor of the convention with a roll out sign given to her by the
Texas Delegation.

Too Exuberant

August 26, 2008

Photo_082508_014 Canyon County Commission Candidate, Estella Zamora, stands the feet of the elaborate convention stage where the Delaware delegation now sits.

Democratic Party Chair Keith Roark and State Obama Director Kassie Cerami stand at the command center for Idaho's delegation to the National convention, high up above the stage.

…………….

NOTE: Due to technical difficulties (no wireless, not even expensive wireless) I could not post this or anything from the floor of the convention. I'll try to use my PDA from here on to send photos and shorter posts and will try to catch up each morning. Thanks for reading, sorry not to be timely!
…………….

Streaming toward the first floor session. Inside we find speeches underway, platform committee reports (a historic platform but that work is behind our party. This is not a place to discuss and debate.) Many of the seats are still empty, people visiting and getting to know each other. And there is Delaware down there front and center (literally) near where we would have been. Really up here in the stands is where we'd expect to be.

Slowly it is all starting to warm up and gel. People are listening to the speakers more, finding the rows of seats that will be home for the next three days. The seats are not where many are staying though. The glittery lights go up and down. People wander a lot, a crowd too exuberant to sit still or quietly.

It feels like a concert except that watching the crowd and the media is what most people are doing now. There are too many speeches to really absorb. Nancy Pelosi and Michelle Obama come out soon.

These are the "Credentials" which are our passes to the floor and our official Delegate papers. They have some sort of electronic chip in them that the security scans as we enter.

Denver’s Pulse

August 25, 2008

Late night. A day of wandering the streets of downtown Denver with thousands of slackjawed visitors also trying to find the pulse of this place. It is a city this week with too many arteries for a single pulse. All you get is the staccato of millions of us pushing together to move our nation on past this disastrous period in our country's history. We all mutter quietly, "May we please end the era when we whisper our nationality in foreign countries, where we know so much of our soul has been sold to the highest bidder and where we have grown so soft and unambitious as to our role in the world." As if our entire foreign policy for the past eight years had been crafted by Texans and tank makers just trying to figure out how much they theoretically could make if they completely had their way with federal regulations and our nation's use of military might. If.

But Denver is where we all look ahead. You do feel the heavy hearts of those who have not let go of having Hillary as the next president of the united states. The endless booths of buttons and t-shirts and stuff with Senator Obama's beautiful face on it must feel like a slap to some of them. But we will work to heal that. They themselves seem to be working to heal that. There will always be fanatics. That's OK. It happens. Hopefully we all know what is worth stressing about and what is not. Some people's minds you can not change. You thank them kindly and move on. You leave them in peace.

And one can not leave this evening without note of the number of police here on the streets of downtown. In riot gear. Mostly directing traffic and, by their own account, finding even the most "frightening" protests pretty tame so far. Carol and I have even been amused to see how often the black clad helmeted ones end up giving directions to those of us lost or searching for some event venue. They answer from behind the plexiglass shields, from horses backs or bikes or motorcycles. We thank them smiling.

What of the pulse? Rapid. It is easy to miss even knowing what you have missed. People walk about with their "credentials" on around their necks, announcing they are delegates. We moved quietly from street to street, Carol and I happily incognito. We found it nice to go and seek out gay people at receptions and fundraisers to visit with. This is a place where anyone political from anywhere will be gathering this week and talking strategy for elections or policy. The word "change" is a big one for gay people. We have much to change. We have a long list of what needs to happen before we find equality under our nation's laws– just to provide for our families, raise our children in peace, plan for emergencies, care for sick loved ones and die knowing our partners will be respected along with our wishes after deaths. That's a good little set of policies to change. But if anyone can do these hard things, if anyone can get our nation there, it is the man whose face stares out from every corner and street vendor stall. Who else is eloquent and persuasive enough to bring a nation to understand why gay people matter, how regardless of race or income, citizenship or marital status, we are all part of America? We belong. We are ready to dig in and help solve the problems of a nation in crisis, if we are only given a place at the table.

So Denver beats with a million footfalls and fingers tapping. Tomorrow we begin. 7:30 AM breakfast meetings with our state groups clustered around conference tables in hotel meeting rooms. Idaho is out here 45 minutes from downtown with Guam and Indiana. At 3PM we find out where we have been moved to since Joe Biden's little state bumped us from our nifty spot on the convention room floor. We are humble and don't expect too much. Swing states will be up front. Texas moaned about our being closer than them. It isn't flattering to moan. We will smile and wave from where ever we are. We have mighty delegation in ways you will soon learn.

Under the Huge Sky

August 24, 2008

We are driving across Western Wyoming, huge and dry, like an immense extension of Southern Idaho without the Snake River. It is spectacular in how much of it there is. It does make me appreciate our fortune in Idaho. That big, slow river flowing through our dry parts.

That this year’s convention is in the West means more than shorter drives and non-stop flights for Western Delegates. For many of us I’m sure it is a bit more of an acknowledgement that we count. We certainly did push Senator Obama across that delegate finish line. In the general our states are more in play than in year’s past and to convene here feels good. The familiarity of the food and the clothes and the air and light and big expanses is like home. Funny it is a little like the odd experience I had at the LDS temple in Salt Lake where I found myself for the first time in my life standing in a religious monument filled with symbols of the intermountain West. The seagull next to the sage brush, the smells so formative rather than foreign. I’ve been to temples and spiritual sites from Thailand to Alaska, Samoa to Prague, Nepal to the Ucatan. With all their majesty or simple beauty and deep history, none struck cords of home like that little courtyard at the carefully lit hub of Salt Lake’s city streets.

So to choose our Democratic nominee for president in a place with granite mountains and air that is dry and western, feels comfortable and somewhat profound. We are included, these Western States, crimson to blue, purple to chameleon.

On the Road to Denver

August 24, 2008

Carol and I packed our little blue car last night. We’re headed for Denver. I spent most of the first 10 or so years of my life in Colorado. Denver was the big city and seemed far away even though it was less than two hours from Woody Creek where we lived over a red stone creek bottom, between sage brush and pine mountain sides. My sister and I walked an irrigation ditch to school and our family left for Idaho when it all got too big and crazy in the 70s.

Not only have I never been a delegate, I’ve never been to a National Convention before. My clearest images of political conventions come from brief TV glimpses featuring oceans of signs and placards. Hunter S. Thompson’s dispatches covering one particular Republican National Convention liven up several still photos of Idaho delegates, including fellow 2008 national delegate, TJ Thomson as a very young man in a silly hat with Senator Malepeai smiling behind him in a stadium seat under bright lights..

I actually watched parts of the 2004 Democratic Convention including Senator Obama’s very moving address, the one where, for the first time I heard a national political leader so successfully transcend traditional political division and still genuinely include gay people like Carol and I in his vision of America. We both cried watching and I’m sure we were not alone.

But really, I knew nothing of Political Conventions until I ran for delegate this year. I know that is true of more than a thousand of us nationwide. And today we are streaming by car and plane and bus across the West to converge on Denver.

After its Over

April 9, 2008

I am home in front of the wood stove with the dog snoring and Carol doing her taxes. The pundits are assessing the session while I work to dig myself our from under mountains of unopened envelopes and unsorted e-mail.

All across Idaho legislators are taking off their badges and putting on sweat pants and finding home again. We visited Rep. Donna Pence in Gooding this morning. She had on her tree digging clothes, no lipstick. Human again. I had on my green corduroy jacket and a t-shirt. I’ll be happy not to see my black tights or a skirt for a few weeks. I’m sure I won’t get my way on that one.

But there is much to do after the session ends. I’ve taken a day to breathe and clean and sort and poke
around in the yard. I’ll go to debates and forums and meetings now.
Soon I’ll look forward to planting tomatoes and getting ready for the
campaigns ahead.

But I’m lucky, I’ve not been away from home and family for months like most my colleagues. Some have children they have left at home, young ones. Ken Andrus, Brent Crane, Steve Kren, and Branden Durst. Some are teachers and go back to work. Others take up small businesses that have sat still and dead, others return to larger firms where secretaries and staff filled the gaps. Many go home to ready for planting, lambing, burning ditches and moving cattle. As we grow more urban, we lose that feel of seasonal change. I remember traveling between teaching and my work for the forest service many years back.

But the legislative session distorts the seasons a bit. It is like a time warp where we miss winter altogether. We go in in the cold and dark and gray and come out with the lawn mowers blaring and now here the grass is coming up green and wild.

Democratic Conclusions

April 3, 2008

I adapted the following
based on a piece by House Democratic Assistant Minority Leader, George
Sayler, I added several points as did many of the 19 members of the
Democratic Caucus of the
House of Representatives.

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.

Sadly this
session shows that Republican legislative leaders are out of touch on issues of
importance to Idahoans.

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/

Saying Goodbye

April 2, 2008

I’m wearing the mixed perfume and cologne of many colleagues. I’ve found those I wanted to give a big hug to. Some escaped before I got to say good bye. Some when you say good bye you wonder with the hard races ahead will they be back. We all wonder. With the hours everyone puts in and what many give up in family and marriage and what might have been retirement I know the year will be heart wrenching for some. I’ll write more later. Now I’m going home.

Getting Silly

April 2, 2008

As we prepare to adjourn Sine Die as we call it… things are getting silly. People are playing competing country music songs on their computers, the speaker has a baseball he’s joking about throwing to the ceiling and Bill Killen has passed out some little plastic parachuters for all of us upstairs to throw from the balcony to those below.

We laid several issues to rest today and I’m in a good mood. I’ve done my mourning for the year so today I’m amazed at where we are after all this toil.

Business personal property tax is now a small-business-focused $100,000 exemption which costs about $17 million, rather than an unlimited exemption that would help mostly big industry. This exemption looks a lot like the $50,000 exemption Democrats crafted and proposed both this year and last. We have reason to be proud.

This afternoon the state retiree benefit plan, restricting what the state will pay for health benefits was killed by the State Affairs Committee. This issue should be taken up with state employees and retirees involved in the process and more information provided so they are informed and not left in fear of what complex legislation will mean to their lives. It will be a sad day when we as a legislature choose leave state employees to the whims of private plans and rising premiums, with less healthcare security rather than more.

Of the two pieces of legislation dealing with local option sales taxes, sadly H688, the legislation which I’d hoped would be amended to give authority to local voters to fund public transportation and other needs, was killed by the senate and never revived. Fortunately, HJR4, the constitutional amendment restricting the use of local option taxes was laid to rest by the Senate this afternoon. The delay the amendment caused communities like ours here in the Treasure Valley is inexcusable. Each year more people grow frustrated waiting in traffic. They have every right to be angry with this legislative majority which did nothing but stand in the way and propose obstacles to the local authority which local people have waited far too long for.

Agreeing to Disagree

April 2, 2008

…
We use the term "holding harmless" to talk about making changes of law have as little adverse impact as possible on those we do not intend harm. It is an attempt to minimize collateral damage.

So interesting watching Reps Clark and Lake sit with Rep Killen and Sens Hill, Langhorst, and Stegner trying to pick apart the Senate personal property tax bill. The more that Senator Hill talks, the more clear it becomes that Senate has come back with an elegant, well crafted piece of compromise legislation. It looks much like Bill Killen’s proposed draft from earlier this year.

A conference committee is an odd creature that is born out of Mason’s rules and legislative history. It has unusual characteristics. The three house members vote and the majority within that three is counted separately from the three Senate members vote. One can imagine the house and senate being split again as Clark & Lake try to knock holes in this bill to give cover for killing what is now a simple $75,000 exemption from personal property tax for every business in the state. It now is kind of like the homeowners exemption except that the $15 million this now costs will be paid by the sales tax rather than by other property tax payers.

The question is then since small business benefits from a greater share of this version of the bill and is the class of business most likely to invest the benefit back in the community, wages and health benefits and thus the economy, is this then wise and equitable tax policy. I’d say yes. Far more so than the huge $120 million tax shift IACI almost forced through.

What is yet to be seen is whether IACI still has any hand on the reigns. From Alex LaBeau’s face there at the other end of the row from me, I suspect not. Unlike some Lobbyists in here, he works hard for a client that the small business focused House might love to hate. He and Rep. Clark turned a big industry dream bill into a bill about tracking staplers and tape and about mom and pop and the lady selling hot dogs from a cart in front of the statehouse. You’ve got to give them an A for effort and strategy.

Empty Baskets

April 1, 2008

…

I know it is as much a message for us to go home as is Betsy Russel’s huge gold tie, but all the food in this place is gone. This is no plea for pity, just a phenomenon producing some interesting results. Low blood sugar is only aggravating the testiness of this place just now as tough votes threaten to hit the floor. Rep Jaquet suggested some gestures she would use if one more person said that a committee vote was some how more democratic than a floor vote.

As our caucus was starting (in the lounge because at first our caucus room was locked) and the press filed in, Lenore Barrett came in looking to get to the refrigerator. It, like the snack table and bowls and baskets normally holding granola bars, was undoubtedly empty. She stared around the room, with all the democrats stacked on couches and chairs, and commented that if she saw a nice leg she might take a bite.

Later I ran down and got her some licorice and made her a few legs she could actually eat. It is April fools day and some say we can not adjourn on April fools day. I’m ready. We’ve passed the substance abuse funds the Governor axed and those with the strings in their hands stand ready to kill or destroy everything good that remains, so let’s go home. Now.

Competing Motions

April 1, 2008

…

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.

Challenging the Speaker

April 1, 2008

If you have one member of leadership on your side, you have half a prayer. Just now, our Minority Leader, Rep. Jaquet made sudden a motion to concur with Senate Amendments to H599 and create a $75,000 exemption to the business personal property tax. We fly by a little white spiral bound book of rules. What we can do is limited by that. This was one option in rule 37. The Speaker we believe was going to move the bill to the Rev & Tax Committee where we believed we would have a tie vote on any motion to concur or not concur with the Senate version of the bill. So we thought maybe the floor was the better place to have this fight. Last week, by 5 votes, the House sent the full $120 million exemption to the Senate. We feel we have enough people who would prefer this small business version of the bill to get a floor vote to pass it. Some want to kill the bill, others want to amend it for a third time, which would be very very risky, even in a conference committee of both the House and Senate. We shall see how this unfolds.

The Speaker claims Rep Jaquet’s motion is out of order and is calling her motion a "challenge to the Speaker" with brings emotional and partisan weight to this debate. The vote we take now will not be so much then on policy and on small businesses or taxes, but on party allegiance. I think you can predict the out come. Things are flying: rule books, emotions, lobbyists, leaders, whispers.

Former Idaho Senator Cole / Nicole Legislative Blog

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