Notes From the Floor

Messages Sent

January 31, 2008

Tense days. Finalizing legislation, seeing the deadlines looming. The friction is palpable among factions of our Republican colleagues over brewing debates about the grocery tax, open or closed primaries and more. Everyone seems yet more on edge as we close the week. Some of us stay late calculating fiscal impacts, writing statements of purpose (SPOs) which you find at the bottom of the bills on the legislative web site. In committee they appear as a sort of green cover sheet on a House bill (yellow on Senate bills.) They say what legislation does and why we feel it is necessary.
This afternoon in the Senate, a long list of us as Senators and representatives, expect to introduce the bill to get PERSI, our public employee retirement system, to divest from Darfur. If we pass it, we sell .03% or less than one third of a percent of the stocks PERSI holds. Those oil, weapons and other companies sit on a list of businesses flagged nationally as contributing significantly to genocide in Sudan. If we pass this bill we join congress and the even the president and send a message that we won’t participate in the deaths and torture of thousands in Africa, where, far off there today, it is nighttime in the heat of summer.

Taxing Mabel

January 30, 2008

………………..

Let’s say there is a woman named Mabel and she lives in Star. She is 80 years old, lives in a tiny house which she has paid off. She survives on social security. She has asthma, drives very little and buys her groceries once a week at a local store.
As a member of the House Revenue and Taxation committee I sit with a group of 18 people every day to decide how we should tax Mabel. Yesterday we debated when to let her choose to tax herself. This is a debate which has burned for a decade in the Idaho legislature.
To understand the debate better, let’s say Mabel doesn’t like kids (in fact on Halloween she pus cans of green beans in a bowl on her front porch for trick or treaters.) When asked to vote for a plan that would put $20 more on her annual property tax to pay for vocational and technical programs for teens in four neighboring school districts, she votes no.
Prevailing tax policy in Idaho says that, because a minority of tax payers in any taxing district may own a house or property, there should be a 2/3 super-majority vote to approve any property tax increase. This gives as few 1/3 of the voters in the district the option of rejecting the tax, denying the funds for a project and imposing their will on the district if they choose. To me that’s not generally unreasonable since those voting for the tax sometimes may not pay it themselves.
However, yesterday the Rev & Tax committee went a bit deeper in. What if several school districts get together to do a cooperative project. They create a new taxing district which encompasses several school districts. Now lets say one of the school districts within this new bigger district does not get the required 66.6% while the other school districts get more than enough votes to pass the tax? Should the vote fail? Is there a fair floor we might want for the vote across all the distircts? Or shall we call a district a district if all those like Mabel living inside it have access to benefits from the services this district provides.
The same issue is being raised almost daily here in the legislature in reference to the Community College election held here in the Treasure Valley this past May. Ada County voted over 70% in favor of the tax and the college while Canyon County voted only 61% in favor. Many law makers have characterized Canyon County’s vote as a rejection of the community college and the small property tax it imposed.
Is it accurate to say then that they (Canyon county as a whole) rejected the tax and the services the College will provide to the community? Actually a very healthy majority of the voters voted yes.
In contrast we might note that every day Legislators (all of whom were elected by a simple majority) are empowered to raise or shift property taxes and change policy all across the state, again by a simple majority vote in both the House and Senate.
If we have given a taxing district very limited taxing authority (preferably to raise only very small amounts of tax which they must get voter approval for) should we arbitrarily be looking at how sub sections of the district vote, even though all the lines we draw in creating a taxing district follow random features of the land, latitude or longitudinal boarders or roads or fences built by local residents to navigate the land or pen animals in? Just because a school district line falls in one place does that mean that those people on opposite sides of the boarder have different interests or are not dependent on each other economically? Mabel may vote no but actually may benefit by having lower cost plumbing services because of the number of plumbers being turned out by the technical college. She may get her car fixed more quickly or inexpensively. She may have fewer kids wandering the streets board, unemployed, and causing trouble in her neighborhood. She may have to spend less to white-wash graffiti off her garage.
Let’s say today that the tax we want to ask Mabel to approve is a sales tax to fund a new bus and rapid transportation system for the entire two county area. Mabel will pay this tax on her food, her annual trip to buy blue jeans and white cotton shirts and will pay it on the washing machine she has to buy this year when her old one breaks down. Mabel, because she doesn’t drive much and has never sat in a traffic jam in her life, votes no on the half penny sales tax. She is, at the time of the vote, unaware that the new frequent buses and trains will reduce traffic and improve the air quality which is aggravating her asthma. She is also is not able to predict that her failing eyesight will cost her her drivers license and that she will need a bus soon just to reach the grocery store. She doesn’t consider that she will soon be able to visit her grown nephew in Nampa without ever having to navigate another freeway interchange.
Mabel’s nephew, looking forward to the day a few years off when he can walk the 1/2 mile to the train, get ten minutes exercise and avoid a 45 minute commute morning and evening, votes yes. He will pay this tax on his new car, his TV, his new fishing rod and hunting riffle.
Because this is a sales tax the transit district is asking voters to approve, all the voters in the two county
area will pay the tax. Should we still then require a 66.6% vote at the time of the election? Those voting yes will be the same ones paying the sales tax, unlike with the property tax where those who benefit most may at times be different from those who actually pay it.
If Mabel and her neighbors in their local county, school district or mosquito abatement district should vote to approve the tax at only 60% should the entire two county area be denied the ability to address pollution, traffic jams, and access to local services for the disabled? Should the majority be allowed to solve their urgent local problems or should they not?
Maybe Mabel will vote yes on a half penny tax. Maybe she will vote no. But someday, depending on what we do in the House Revenue and Taxation Committee, all the way out in Star an older woman will ride a bus to the grocery store and breathe easier when the inversion sets in, or she won’t.

Greener Pockets

January 30, 2008

Today the House Energy, Environment and Technology Committee, which I serve on, approved a bill to require 30% more energy efficiency in the construction of state buildings in coming years. The bill, swallowed by the committee last year on largely partisan lines, passed today with only Rep. Steven Kren and Rep. Curtis Bowers voting no. I am sure Steve and Curtis have reasons for voting against saving state dollars by building structures which use less energy. I might not know what they are exactly but I know they have them. I might hazard a guess. It may be that deluge of fun publications which offer article after article about the evils of government regulation of everything from day care centers and water quality to building construction, carbon emission and fuel efficiency. I’m pretty sure that the Heritage Foundation, which publishes these newspapers, is largely an organization by and for businesses which are making strong profits for their shareholders doing things exactly as they do now. Not surprisingly they work hard to try and persuade legislators that there is no sense to arguments that human health or taxpayer dollars may be at stake if things (designs, materials, emissions, effluents, or the ingredients of their products) stay as they are right now. But that’s just a guess. We all have our own legislative priorities and values systems within which we operate. We each have to weigh out how we prioritize human health, our feelings about government regulation, short term vs long term costs and what ever else enters our reasoning from the recesses of our minds.

Against Us

January 28, 2008

For two years, we, the members of the House of Representatives have given the morning invocation ourselves. We have had an occasional guest chaplain, but on most mornings we could look forward to seeing the world through the eyes of a different legislative colleague. We have Buddhists, members of the LDS Church, Christians of all kinds and some whose invocations reflected a mix of respect for different faiths, including respect for the right for members to live without religion.
This year Speaker Denny chose to return to the practice of having the same House Chaplain give our invocation in the form of a Christian prayer each morning. Our house chaplain began prayer today with this quote from Romans: "If God is for us who can be against us?"

Because sadly there are days that that quote sums us up all too well, I would ask: Since we have at least some Legislators who are not Christian, will we misjudge which God is with us? What about the definition of "us," who do we include? Who do we exclude? And which god or gods would take sides where all mean well and have good moral intent? And what if gods differ in their assessment? What if we have asked the wrong question and believe in our hearts we are righteous when we are not? What if we are divided, who is God with then? Who is God against? Is it not possible that both sides believe God is with them? If so, does this lead to greater understanding or to greater conflict?

Energetic Disagreement

January 27, 2008

The Idaho Legislature’s efforts at energy planning in recent years leave much to be desired. As legislators, we ranchers, teachers, small business owners, insurance salesmen and retired farmers gather in committee and try to learn some of the basics. What are the limits to how much electricity we can carry on our existing power lines? What new energy producing technology is being developed? What are the true comparative impacts to our health and our environment of coal, nuclear, wind, hydro, solar and geothermal power generation?
Sadly we rely heavily on presentations from industry to answer our questions and school us in the basics. Ultimately it is Idaho Power, Idaho National Lab, coal producers and the very corporations who stand to gain from energy projects who take committee chairs to lunch, feed us information and set policy for us behind closed doors so that we end up with plans which are designed more to improve companies viability than they are to create energy independence and security for uncertain times.
For example, our interim committee on energy did not set firm targets for renewable energy in Idaho’s portfolio of energy sources, instead our state energy office has been set free to focus on nuclear power whose lobby has been relentless in trying to convince the state that, though practically no other state wants to build new nuclear power plants, that Idaho should embrace the idea in spite of the fact that it ensures the storage of new nuclear wastes within our boarders.
I’m quite certain that our new energy czar does not have a set of proposals or options from every possible type of energy producer on his desk. Solar turbines, tidal and micro hydro never seem to enter into the conversation. And what if we really thought outside the box and decentralized energy production somewhat, especially for residential usage? What if we heavily incentivized solar water heaters, passive solar heat and small energy projects on ditches, ranches and roofs across the state?
Diverse and decentralized production makes more sense for creating energy independence and energy security for our state than giant nuclear project or new coal plants. Both coal and nuclear rely on limited resources and even with recycling of nuclear fuel, very dangerous wastes remain as by-products which will continue to accumulate and will have to be put somewhere for hundreds and even potentially thousands of years.
In committee I ask questions and watch some of my colleagues roll their eyes at strategies to address the impacts of climate change, air pollution, and water contamination. We can keep feeding the folly that says we will be fine when gas reaches $5 a gallon. We can pretend we don’t really need public transportation and that the public will accept radioactive waste being stock piled next to the Snake River. We can pretend we can keep building subdivisions out to the horizon and never run out of water, never find a time when the freeways can not be widened any further.
Without question energy and environmental issues are the toughest ones I deal with. They have become sadly the most partisan — I think in part because, as legislators we don’t know enough about science to ask the right questions. We don’t demand to know the other side of the story or demand to know who paid for the glossy publications or the monthly "climate" and "environmental" newspapers which appear everywhere we go. If we are to guard the interests, the energy security and health of our state and our population we have to be more critical and creative. Too much is at stake for us not to.

Pages and Hair

January 26, 2008

Unless you’ve been to the statehouse or our temporary quarters while we are in session, you might not know about Pages. I admit I don’t know that much about pages, except that there are quite a lot of them, that they seem to have a sense of humor and that they keep the legislature from existing as this insulated club of 105 mostly older men, and some women, with little or no connection to the generation now contemplating first dates, acne, college applications and a world attached to little or no experiential limitations.
Sure some legislators are grandparents, a few are parents with kids this age or younger, a few of us are teachers, but it’s a very few. Yet we spend all day, five days a week with the equivalent of a high school graduating class, from an average sized rural high school in our midst, studying us, learning the rules, the procedures and personal politics from very, very close quarters. I confess at first, it is a bit easier not to notice them, particularly in the balcony where we are somewhat out of the way on our two dead end rows perched above the main floor. Eventually they make their impression, they say hi, they ask questions, make a joke or hang there just outside the debate.
Practically speaking, day to day, pages staff our committees, retrieve code books, pass notes for us, they run errands, make copies, fold letters, and congregate in a little room off the House Lounge near the snack area. Of course these are not just any high school seniors or juniors. They hale from particular towns around Idaho and tend to have last names like Lake, Andrus or Moyle, names that reveal their lineage and ties to the committee chairs and sheep-rancher-legislators they are the children and grand children of.
Dan Popkey noted two years ago how the pages, if they had been the ones to determine the fate of the constitutional amendment banning gay marriage (and civil unions and anything remotely similar), that this younger generation would have rejected the amendment quite soundly. Listening to their conversations this year you see them thoughtful and playful, exploring what party affiliation they feel fits, what hair styles they might enjoy and what law makers they might emulate or avoid.
If you watch the floor session from public television or the internet, something I find hard to recommend until the session gets into full swing and we are actually beginning to debate legislation (as we likely will next week,) you might have noted on Friday that one of the pages on stage during the prayer had her hair in a pretty vigorously teased "do." The speaker called it a beaufont. Given that I am actually one of the now growing handful of gen xers in the legislature, I was not alive in the era of the beaufont, so probably can’t well judge how beaufont the hair was. What I do know is that chairman Dennis Lake’s grand daughter and page for the House Revenue and Taxation Committee has one fabulous, wild, gutsy hair-do. We’ll call it a horizontal beaufont. Kind of a giant, blond, back of the head, eye lash. All the female pages I understand on Friday were trying to apply enough hair product and combing techniques to achieve this level of hair. The Speaker took it well. It was much needed levity in a long somber week.
As for the pages, they are here until half way through the session when they return to high school and a new batch arrives on the House floor. I suspect they see a lot more than we think. If past groups of pages are any indication, there are thinkers, scientists, writers, activists and governors among them. It will be a surreal transition for them I’m sure, from immersion in politics and issues in a stuffy, adult-centered environment, to home and school again. All the secrets of the House will spin off to far parts of the state with them. For now they are here, perfectly capable of judging us, our integrity and actions, hovering, hair flying, just behind us here, but ever so slightly invisible in the legislative process.

Night Time

January 24, 2008

The Doors to the Floor of the House

Entry to the Balcony or "Upper House" as we call it

Inside The Forbidden House Lounge. Once the only place off limits to all but legislators.
………..

Night time. Four hard working Democratic women left on the empty House floor as the clock ticks toward 8:30 PM. Snow is falling heavy outside and I wander down to graze at the snack table. Pretzels. Two white shirted security guards smile and say hi. I say good night to them almost every night when the windows are dark and the halls are quiet.
The stairs are good exercise. In the day I run up and down trying to find Senator McKenzie (who is busy with his law practice right now) or my cosponsors for other bills, going to committee, collecting my mail (which appears in growing stacks all day every day.) I open letters from prisoners, answer e-mail notes on everything from dog fighting and the grocery tax to the human rights act and a bill that’s trying to make it even harder for recent immigrants to hold a drivers license and car insurance.
Each night my calendar in my auxiliary brain (pda) shows a mass of overlapping events. Receptions with the Hispanic Affairs Commission (which I serve on), dinner with water users, disability community advocates, stem cell researchers and more. I’m back here on the floor though after just one event most nights, because I still have so much work to do finalizing drafts of legislation and getting really ready for that time soon when I will be juggling several bills at once.
Off into the night now. Snow inches thick since I returned from enchiladas and dancers in colored dresses, statistics on Hispanics still uninsured, and warm hugs from old friends from years back or hundreds of miles away.

Words and Power

January 23, 2008

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

Finding Home

January 22, 2008

Sitting in Rev & Tax Committee. Our Minority Leader, Rep. Wendy Jaquet has waited three years to get permission to arrange today’s speakers on workforce housing. Workforce Housing. That’s the term resort communities use for affordable housing even though in many places its not just people in the service industry who need a place to live, it’s seniors, young families, people who face a health crisis and can not work. I know we face a tough audience in here on this issue, especially if its not clear that people struggle with rents and mortgages far beyond Boise and Ketchum They struggle in Teton County, McCall, Coeur d’Alene, Bear Lake and Stanley.
The questions from the committee are telling. Our Chair, Rep Lake, asked it it were not more wise to raise wages rather than buying land and building housing so as to create a class system where some people live in special houses or buildings set aside while others live in homes. He makes a great point. I passed him a note to ask if he would support a locally adjusted minimum wage up to say $21.50 an hour so that even those laboring for years in resort communities could have a chance at affording their own home.
However, if saying we need to raise wages to address the problem is going to be an excuse to kill any efforts as helping set aside land and funding for affordable housing efforts, then we should all come clean.
In the past two legislative sessions bills to raise Idaho’s minimum wage a dollar or two above the present $5.15 an hour and then to index it so it keeps pace with inflation have been killed pretty much on party line votes. I’m just hazarding a guess that there will be no real legislative effort to bring wages anywhere near the level where someone trying to work in a restaurant in McCall can own a home in town or anywhere near by.
And Rep. Wood’s point about loss of land for trailer homes and later about how farms and ranches build on-site housing for workers is interesting as well. If only a school or gas station or cafe had an abundance of land, affordable, extra land, they could build a house or two on in downtown Victor, Stanley or McCall. But I think that is the point. Lots of businesses rent and don’t have land to build homes on for their workers. And as Rep. Ruchti from Pocatello pointed out, the whole town benefits from having people live where they work and having people housed rather then homeless or driving fifty miles to work each day. So a whole town or city should help ensure housing is available for those who work there.
One can’t help but think of the city of McCall which recently mandated that a portion of all new developments include affordable housing. This policy keeps neighborhoods mixed, protects areas from air pollution, commuter traffic and sprawl and protects communities from potential economic instability that comes from having all members of a neighborhood or community belong to one single economic strata or class.
Real estate developers were none too pleased with McCall’s policy. The Idaho Association of Realtors in fact sued the City Council to stop implementation of this particular ordinance. I suspect that if developers, builders, real estate companies, ski areas and down town merchants do not step up to create proactive plans soon, we will need more mandates. Either that or we can live with homelessness, live with dishwashers driving hours in the early morning dark through a storm, live with streams of traffic as people commute from distant parts of the county to work, live with more people turning down Idaho jobs because they can not find a place to live near by on the wages we offer.
There are consequences to prosperity that benefits only some but does not pay adequate wages or at least offer adequate help with the necessities to benefit all. Idaho’s growth bumps us up against that problem, finding homes for those who need them most. Like homelessness, it doesn’t seem to go away just because we build one small shelter, make a few arrests or buy a ream of bus passes. There are root causes and eventually we will have to tackle them.

A Little History Made

January 21, 2008

This morning the Idaho legislature made a little history. On this day when we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the Senate State Affairs Committee voted to print the first piece of legislation to mention sexual orientation, and to propose ending centuries of discrimination against gays and lesbians in employment, housing, education and public accommodation.
Leslie Goddard, director of the Human Rights Commission beautifully presented the bill after an introduction by Senator Tim Corder, a major sponsor or the legislation. Some may remember the Mountain Home Republican Senator from a City Club debate in 2006 or from his past vote to ban gay marriage in Idaho’s Constitution. His support of this year’s legislation speaks loudly to the fundamental fairness implicit in the issue of employment discrimination and to the progress made on understanding of these issues over the years.
Nothing, except giving thanks to those who vote well, is more important than dedicating ourselves to having positive, gentle interactions with legislators who are still on the road to understanding these issues and voting as we would wish. I will never fault a community frustrated with waiting so many long years to see a day when we can not be fired from our jobs solely because we are gay. Still, I hope it is well noted that Senator Little was one of the majority voting yes in support this morning, the man who bravely helped hold off the Constitutional Amendment for two years before bowing to extremely intense political pressure. Again his vote speaks to the importance of patience and how different and fundamental this issue is from marriage which so unfortunately intersects with church and religion.
In what I hope will help bolster a budding coalition of conservatives and moderates, the BSU public policy survey this year found that 63% or Idahoans feel it should be illegal to fire someone just because they are or are perceived to be gay, that was a majority in every region of the state and both political parties. Clearly those numbers take this out of the realm of being election year issue and show that basic fairness crosses all kinds of political lines. Who today doesn’t know someone affected by this issue? In fact, how many legislators still do not have a family member or friend who is touched by what we deliberate today?

Yes votes (note some legislators were absent): Sen Pro Tem Robert Geddes, Committee Chair Curt McKenzie, Senator Joe Steger, Senator Brad Little, Senator Kate Kelly, Senator Clint Stennett

Access

January 19, 2008

The Closet the Media is Assigned to

Reporter on the Floor

Lobbyist in the Balcony

"Back Benchers" share a light moment in the back row of the balcony where the media now must be escorted to enter
……

Access to the statehouse and to lawmakers is an issue this session. Normally the House floor might welcome a line of print reporters, photographers and TV cameras. Writers would sit in a neighboring legislator’s chair while asking questions in the afternoon or early morning. This year new signs are appearing on doorways to the floor limiting access to the upper and lower house not just for lobbyists but for the media as well.
While i admit I didn’t want to have lobbyists filing in unannounced or TV cameras set up to surprise me when something was breaking and I had no time to think, I am concerned we have now restricted access to legislators generally. We operate in a tight space where, since all but a leadership and committee chairs have no desk or office but the spot we chose on the floor, we have little alternative but to spend most our time behind what are now closed doors.
It is enough of a problem that Republican Caucuses are closed to the media and public. Democratic Caucuses are and always have been open, but now the media is hard pressed to find us when they have questions since they can not even see the balcony seats from a window to know when we are there.
Access by lobbyists concerns me less since nearly all green tagged and registered lobbyists are paid and spend the whole day in the statehouse where they have far more access to us than the public.Reporters on the other hand often operate on deadline and are frequently the only access that people in some parts of the state will have to the law makers who represent them.
While it might not be pleasant to be surprised by a bank of TV cameras, it is our obligation to respond when we are held accountable for a vote or asked to react to an event that our constituents’ lives are affected by. I know no reporter who will not respect a request to give us a minute to collect or thoughts, find more information or otherwise prepare before we respond.
It is curious to me that the issue of media access first came up on the balcony where I have noted that all the freshmen lawmakers sit. Kren, Crane, Bowers and Thane are all in the back row far from leadership and the Republican Party’s media handler. I imagine that to have an entire row freshmen legislators unsupervised and unspun far from watchful eyes might make some in the party nervous. That row has established itself as a jovial entity: "The Back benchers." They hung a banner on the back wall of the house chambers over their heads this week until the speaker asked them to take it down.

A Killing Mood

January 17, 2008

The Idaho legislature is in a killing mood. Last week, happily the bill to close Idaho Republican Primaries to Independents and democratic leaning voters died in committee before even getting a bill number. Yesterday the House Revenue & Taxation Committee killed major legislation before it was even introduced. That bill would have let the state tax commission join an interstate compact just to LOOK AT collecting internet sales tax (we call it a "use tax" because the item actually isn’t sold in Idaho… only used here.) The bill would make sure that internet businesses compete on a level playing field with Idaho storefront retailers and small businesses. Roughly $50 to $75 million in taxes simply are not being collected, giving internet companies an advantage that potentially hurts Idaho’s local economies.
Today, after a summer of work to craft criteria to re-examine the validity of Idaho’s many tax exemptions, Republicans on the Rev & Tax Committee killed draft after draft of legislation to consider actually holding hearings on these exemptions. The few of us who served on the interim summer committee were divided very much as we were this summer, with the exception of Chairman Lake, who a few times didn’t even vote to print his own bills.
Rep.Lake is caught in the middle of the tension between the House and Senate’s philosophy of taxation. What looks like a party line divide is not entirely that, since it was largely the members of both parties in the Senate, working with Democrats in the House who pushed to look at how we approve tax exemptions in the first place.
Today I put my legislation in two piles, "consistent" and "inconsistent," as we talked through seven randomly chosen tax exemptions and heard from the tax commission whether other similar entities were being taxed similarly or if the exemption we were considering stood out as an exception to an otherwise rational system of taxation.
What does this killing spree today mean for average Idahoans? It means a continuation of arbitrary tax policy. It means we keep a system of tax exemptions passed largely on emotion and the power and influence of industry — rather than on the merits of each policy’s contribution to a predictable, fair and constructive system of taxation.
So far this year we will consider only one of the over 100 tax
exemptions on the books in Idaho: a partial exemption to sales tax on items sold in vending
machines.

Visiting the Senate

January 16, 2008

Today is a day to visit the senate. What used to be a longer walk around the glaring white marble of the rotunda, is a short walk between the brown granite and pioneer murals. Still I understand that Senators don’t visit the House that often these days. You don’t see them in our halls.
The Senate has 35 members. We have 70. It might be said that they have a tad more experience since many served here before being elected to the Senate. I do not believe any current House members served in the Senate. The Senate is certainly more balanced in idealogy with both moderates and conservatives in Majority Republican leadership. Here now our Republican leadership in the House is all very conservative. It has created tensions and interesting dynamics with the Senate and occasionally with the Governor’s office.
I consider it a rite of passage to have long ago first been grilled by certain members of Senate leadership. It is something which, when I was a citizen visiting the legislature, intimidated and frightened me. As a lobbyist in 2004, working on health care, consumer protection and poverty issues, those visits, though few, were a necessary trail. The longer the conversation or grilling lasted, the better off I knew I was. If silence fell too early in the conversation or you took "no" for an answer, you knew your bill was toast or you knew that the bill you were trying to kill was going to pass.
Today those long, intense, demanding conversations are some of the more intellectually stimulating and important discussions I have. They are an essential, powerful part of the legislative process. They let us test ideas and legislation, develop arguments, face potential opposition and humble ourselves.
I lean back here in my big black chair on the floor of the House and know that this is an odd, foreign world, the legislature. Perhaps the realm of trial law comes close, yet not, because there is more chaos here, far more wonderfully random reminders of the complexities of the world. We are not trained for this. The 105 of us are elected. These are the early days of this year’s bills, the point at which they are still organic and slightly fluid. The lives and experiences of real people start to turn into words on paper now, and to keep that text connected to those who will be impacted takes no small amount of will. The potential to turn policy into a game of political expedience is always there. Always to be tested. I hope always to be resisted.

Running

January 14, 2008

Walking Home in the Dark

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

Prison Tour

January 13, 2008

Dr. Mary Perrin, director of programing. Idaho’s work at real rehabilitation.

Control Room

Maximum security segregation cells

Heath and Welfare Chair Sharon Block and Boise Rep. Sue Chew leave the prison in the snow

Sentences

January 13, 2008

The Capitol Annex is alive even on Saturdays now. Keys click at a desk or two on the floor and the budget analysts and bill drafters roam in jeans and base ball caps. Mike Nugent the lead bill drafter and long time veteran of legislative services looked like he’d come from a ball game.
I’m working with Republican colleagues Phil Hart and Lynn Luker on finalizing legislation to change Idaho’s sentencing laws to ensure offenders get supervision after they leave prison. This also for many inmates means better access to drug treatment, support and accountability to keep them healthy, productive members of their communities and families once they leave our state prison system. We hope it will help keep them from returning to an addiction, committing another crime and coming back.
Hopefully too it will mean less crowded prisons as Judges specify how much of a sentence can be incarceration and what might be set aside for transition and supervision after release onto Parole. This is particularly important for sex offenders, but for some of those whose main issue is addiction, we have a separate bill to help focus on treatment as an alternative to long mandatory minimum sentences.
Here in the statehouse we are wired and filmed. But nothing like the prisoners we watched from behind the glass on Tuesday. Rep. Margaret Henbest and I watched one man, shuffling, cuffed, long-haired and disheveled, he was moved from one cell to the next clutching some sort of white leather bag or purse. Everything about him screamed despair and bewilderment. What ever he did must have been horrible. But now his life is in that place, behind the glass with all those cameras, guards and all the pastel colors and white paint.
Downstairs here in the Capitol Annex, legislative services has set up viewing rooms where big TVs wait so the public can watch us when we assemble to vote on legislation in the House and Senate. The feed is now broadcast on Idaho Public Television as well as on the web at the IPTV web site. The cameras now are dead eyes staring wildly and blank at walls and empty seats. Most days they will click to life at 11 or 11:30 AM. At first boring procedural sessions will in weeks turn into long sessions of debate and parliamentary maneuvering which at last most people around the state will be able to find somewhere on the dial.

http://idahopublictelevision.com/leglive/

Being Gay

January 11, 2008

Carol Growhoski / Nicole LeFavour 2006

Some days it is harder than others to be the only gay person in the legislature. Ninety nine percent of the time there is no reason for me to feel it. My colleagues ask about my partner Carol. When I talk about what I did over the weekend I might say "Carol and I." I don’t think much about it and I don’t think they do either. At least not most of them.
Rep. Curtis Bowers wrote a pretty frightening anti-gay editorial to the Idaho Press Tribune the other day. Bowers was appointed by Governor Otter this year to fill Rep. Bob Ring’s seat. Dr. Ring is one of a group of Republican senators and representative who voted against the anti-gay constitutional amendment when he served in the house. Today I miss him more than ever.
I imagine some days it is not easy for Raul Labrador listening to the debates around immigration and how they so easily flow into anti-Mexican, anti-Hispanic and racially stereotyping tirades. It is an odd feeling to know that someone you work with doesn’t just perhaps disagree with your ideas or beliefs but feels that you as a person are lesser or evil or by virtue of your existence deserving of pain or derision.
Representative Bowers sits behind me here on the balcony of the House. I stood up a bit ago and went back to tell him how uncomfortable his editorial made me and how sorry I was to see he felt that way about gay people. He was willing to talk more about it. I offered to answer questions when he has them.
I don’t know if it will ever really make any difference since I understand he is a strong John Birch Society devotee. But I want him to see me as human. Even if he never votes in a way that shows he respects or cares about gay people, I want him to see me as human.

Missing Sali

January 10, 2008

View of the Speaker from the "Upper House" where 20 lawmakers sit

………….

So if you are looking for an update on Congressman Sali’s visit to the Idaho legislature today. I wasn’t here. I spoke to the Telephone Pioneers over lunch and this cool retired group of telephone company workers mostly seemed to feel I had made a good choice. I talked to them about taxes. No one fell asleep in their tasty potatoes and gravy (that I could see.)

Lines Drawn

January 10, 2008

It is surprising how early lines are being drawn this session. Before we’ve even see any bills, editorials against the utility of public transportation are being xeroxed and circulated on desks. Everyone is digging in. Perhaps because over the summer so much work was done to show legislators good public transit systems like Salt Lake’s, the stakes are upped. It has sounded sensible these last months so of course those who have built political careers signing anti-tax pledges and painting urban areas as axes of evil are now ready to make sure anything that benefits Boise is not signed into law. What kind of respect for the Democratic process and for true bipartisan problem solving does it show when the House Majority leader talks about ensuring that any place that elected Democrats will find its interests thwarted by this Majority. What of all the people in other districts who have similar needs. What of the Democrats and Independents in the minority in Republican districts whose communities are intertwined economically with these now Democratic areas? What of seniors and people with disabilities who rely on public transit to get to jobs, to medical appointments and for every aspect of their lives? What of commuters who are sitting in parking lots of traffic trying to reach work or home each day? Does none of this matter as much as ego or partisan politics? I think those who presume so much will be surprised in the coming week when they hear from angry voters and when they meet a brick wall in the often sensible Senate. We will see. But lines are drawn and we are all digging in.

Rev & Tax

January 9, 2008

The House Revenue and Taxation Committee met today in our little room that’s frankly not much smaller than the old one. We filed into the room and found our Committee Chair Rep, Dennis Lake chose to assign seating based on "seniority. " One can’t tell
if there is any indication of relationships to be gleaned from where
people are sitting. Rep. Clark and Rep. Bedke are at the little table
in the middle of the room. Rep. Clark expressed discomfort at having
Rep. Leon Smith sit behind him. Leon is a bold moderate whose served in
here for years. Smart, kind, well spoken, last year he was one of the
very few who spoke up and refused to let Denny’s Majority Republican
Leadership tell him how to vote. He was punished and his legislation
vanished. I’m watching to see how the dynamics go this year. Public
Transportation rests in the hands of those relationships on this
committee and how easily Leadership can lean on Canyon County
legislators when we vote on Local Option Taxing to fund buses, light
rail and local roads in the coming weeks.
We are the committee where all tax legislation must originate. A mountain of legislation on tax exemptions is coming from this summer’s interim committee. We had a great bi-partisan alliance there and prevailed in several votes as a coalition of Senate Democrats, Senate Republicans and Bill Killen and I, the two Democrats from the House. We were not able to get a vote for a regular re-examination of ALL tax exemptions out of that committee. I made a motion to do so but a later motion passed and we never voted on mine. We will review a few. Not the ones I’d prefer us to assess for fairness and to ensure they are actually doing what they intended in stimulating the economy (rather than just shifting taxes from one payer to others.) Maybe with time. For now we will work toward greater accountability.
I’d not want to be the Idaho Children’s Home which called this week hoping for an anniversary gift of a one time sales tax exemption to celebrate their 100th anniversary. How worthy I’m sure they are but in terms of creating a stable, predictable and just system of taxation, we really shouldn’t keep adding to this odd arbitary list of who gets our gifts today.

Taxation and spending are reflections of our values: Who do we ask to pay for what we as a state government decide is worthy of our charity? Schools or more often prisons? Industry more often than health and environmental monitoring? Construction companies or mental health care providers? State employees or insurance companies? Under Otter you will find a lot of private corporations on the list and his shift from ongoing dollars to "one time" dollars means more brick and mortar and less service for our tax dollars.

Minority

January 8, 2008

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

……………..

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

Never Left

January 7, 2008

So I didn’t go home. This happens a lot. The fans whirrr. The sound of the keys echoes. I remember how foreign the formality of this place was at first. Nothing in my life prepared me for all the woodwork, the gold leaf, the orders of business and the structured discourse. We are farmers, ranchers, insurance agents, retired business people, teachers and sometimes ordinary working people. When you first arrive, this place can not help but instill awe.
Trying to dress in the clothes this building requires is only one part of it. It is a lesson in class which I think those of us from rural places never got. Two earrings, not one. Shoes with heels, the tie for men, jackets for all of us, all the trappings of gender especially. And then there is the hand shaking. I’d never done that before I worked with the legislature. On doors when I ran for office, I learned to reach out and look someone in the eye. It was good. That making flesh to flesh contact that says I am not an image on a TV screen.
The formality here forces us into civility perhaps. Maybe it is best we do not get too comfortable. In this place we have a very specific task. We are here to do the business of the people of Idaho, not our own business. The formality and foreignness is a reminder, minute to minute that we don’t own this, we visit by the graces of those who elect us. This place is other worldly for me in a wonderful way. I leave here and walk past neighbors and constituents longing for my black jeans and single earing. But that will wait. We have at least three months of law making ahead of us.
Not in Kansas anymore. We pray, pledge allegiance, stand and sit at the gavel. We ask permission to speak and address each other as good lady or good gentleman.

Otter’s Shifts

January 7, 2008

Rep. Boe at the State of the State

Tonight I’m one of five legislators left. We’ve chosen seats, settled into our desks, played with our new on-screen voting machines, and finally proceeded to BSU to hold our annual, enormously formal greeting of the Governor and all the dignitaries.
Watching from theater seats, Otter strode to the stage, hair long, less fussy, now going natural and gray. He read from his speech which some of us had acquired in advance… local option tax for roads not public transit, 5% for teachers but only based on merit, private prisons and what I’d been holding my breath for: proposing again to shift all of big business’ personal property taxes onto small business and families.
For someone who says he cares about low income Idahoans and has a grocery tax proposal that benefits only those earning poverty wages, he sure has a funny idea of what makes a tax system fair.
Tell me does this make sense? You have very big businesses, mines, manufacturers. Some are publicly traded entities, their profits go to shareholders far away and you propose to cut $100 million in taxes and pay for that cut with income and sales taxes paid largely by families, small businesses. This is a shift of taxes. Small businesses amount to less than $9 million of Otter’s tax cut. (And we could totally eliminate their personal property taxes and give the big businesses a break for about $10 million.) But instead we are going to again do battle over the whole $100 million, a huge portion of which will be a flat out shift from one class of tax payers to another.
And don’t get me started on Otter’s enthusiastic endorsement of a Prop 13 style homeowner property tax proposal. That too is a huge shift. I hope Idahoans do the math. Two identical houses and yet the millionaire in one will eventually end up paying one tenth the taxes of the young family next door.
These proposals are bad for families. Really bad. They make Risch’s big business and vacation homeowner tax shift of 2006 look like a warm up. I expect more of this Governor.
Enough for the night. Time to head home through the snow. Tomorrow our committees meet and we really get down to work for 2008.

Ready or Not

January 6, 2008

This will be my forth session serving in the Idaho legislature. Each
year I’ve spent the night before it starts with more and more to
contemplate and worry about. This year I have more than 10 pieces of
legislation I am hoping to pass or at least see introduced by a
committee in printed bill form. Of course that’s way too many pieces of
legislation for one person, especially a Democrat in a Republican
majority and I know it. But as much of an optimist as I am, I know the
fate of some of these bills.

Three of these have a good chance this year because I’ve worked
very
hard to gain expertise on the issues and have good potential
co-sponsors. In those cases I am addressing problems which a majority
of legislators agree need solving — regardless of what party we belong
to.
In a case or two this year I have a solution to something that many
of my colleagues will probably not feel is a problem.
In one case I
think a majority of my colleagues would agree there
is a problem but most are afraid of what their constituents will think
and so will need a great deal of assurance before I have a chance of
seeing this legislation become law.
There is one draft in my stack of
dull looking black and white
pages which is a great solution which almost all agree is sound and
necessary policy but which we may never get to vote on because House leadership may decide to apply force or obstruction to prevent its
passage. That is the hard stuff, good policy tied up in power struggles
or partisan politics.
I have two drafts this year which address
technical problems,
and honestly I don’t know if I’ve found the solution but I’m trying and
my colleagues will give me feedback and I’ll work on it more and we’ll
get it right so it works eventually and then maybe next year we’ll pass
it into law.
Finally there are two proposals which are not mine. They
are going
to be set out as solutions to problems I agree exist. Unfortunately
they both do more to shift burdens and harm teachers and small business
taxpayers than they actually help them. I will be fighting these. One I
helped stop last year and the other is new.

So we’ll see how it goes. Tonight I’m fretting about co-sponsors
and surprised at how calmly I’m debating the potential fate of what
I’ve spent this last year struggling to make worthy of Idaho law.

Passage of some of these bills will affect thousands of lives, some
will impact over a million people in ways they may feel every day. Without some of this legislation hard
working people will lose their jobs, and farmlands will be buried under
subdivisions; men will sit more years in prison even though drug
treatment is what they really need to become constructive members of
society.

I remember: What we as legislators write and pass into law, we
sentence Idahoans to live with (or without) daily until others repeal
our folly or the courts strike it down. I ask, every day of the
session, may we think carefully where all the burdens fall.

19 out of 70

January 6, 2008

Big frames in the halls of the House and Senate hold photos of law makers since the legislature began. All but the most recent of those photos are in storage. In last year’s photo, (I’m the dork who wore neon green on picture day) mine is one of 19 Democrat’s faces in a very, very Republican sea of eyes. Of course looking at the photos you can’t tell us apart.
For a decade before I was elected, I was a volunteer for non-profit organizations. I talked to legislators about human rights, tax policy, health care, consumer protection and gay and lesbian issues. Hard issues. I rarely saw anything I worked for get printed by a committee, much less passed into law.
In my 30s I spent a lot of time angry with law makers who disagreed with me on the issues that affected my life. The year before I ran for the legislature, Jerry Sweet, one of the most anti-gay law makers in the statehouse became one of my best allies on a health care bill I was working to pass for the Idaho Community Action Network.
It hit me there under the photos outside the Senate Local Government Committee how we humans are pretty multi-faceted. To make it all work we have to remember what we agree on and have in common. We can’t take each other’s stands on legislation personally. With one or maybe two exceptions I genuinely believe that each one of my colleagues is a good person trying to do what’s best for their constituents within the framework of beliefs that they hold. We may debate heatedly on an issue one minute but the next minute on the floor we might have to be allies on a different bill — one which won’t pass without us working together.
Politics are not as simple as Democrat and Republican or conservative and progressive. Over the past few years Lenore Barrett and I occasionally voted together against the Rev & Tax committee on small business issues. That was a beautiful thing. …and it works because we know not to spend time dwelling on how we feel about wolves or whether people should own automatic rifles.

Before It Begins

January 6, 2008

The old Ada County Courthouse sits across the street from the
Idaho Capitol Building. This evening, as snow begins to fly, the
historic marble and columns wait under construction, and, in what we
now call the "Capitol Annex" (our temporary statehouse,) 70 new House
desks and 35 well worn Senate desks wait to be filled with lawmakers
from the state’s 35 legislative districts.

My seat will be somewhere upstairs in the new balcony of the
House chambers. This year I’ll sit with a very smart and hard working
crew of six Democrats and 14 as yet unassigned Republicans.

Where we sit to make Idaho law does matter. It allows us
either to see or be seen by our colleagues while we debate, speaking
into one of thin, black microphones that reach up from every pair of
desks to the high ceiling. It lets us whisper to a neighbor we hope to
persuade or ask questions of a seasoned friend. It lets us plot or joke
to make the difficult days go more quickly. It lets us solve problems,
hatch ideas and improve state law through reasoned discourse.

On Monday when the 2008 legislature convenes, we will repeat
the chair choosing ceremony which usually follows an election. Choosing
one by one in order of our seniority, 70 House desks will fill and we
will be assembled and ready to begin at least three months of
inventing, repealing and hopefully doing no serious damage to Idaho
law.

Former Idaho Senator Cole / Nicole Legislative Blog

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