Cole / Nicole LeFavour

Notes From the Floor

Former Idaho Senator Cole / Nicole Legislative Blog

Add the Words 3rd VIDEO: Only Stronger

February 19, 2012

On February 10 the bill to Add the Words to include gay and transgender people in Idaho’s Human Rights Act was killed without a word of public testimony. For six years the Idaho legislature has refused to allow a single public hearing on the legislation to ban discrimination in employment, housing and education. Tell your Idaho law makers it is finally time to stand up and say discrimination is wrong. http://addthewords.org

Send your message now respectfully asking the Senators to reconsider the bill and Add the Words.

Sen. McKenzie: CMckenzie@senate.idaho.gov (208) 367-9400
Sen. McGee: JMcgee@senate.idaho.gov (208) 455-3950
Sen. Lodge: PALodge@senate.idaho.gov
Sen. Winder: CWinder@senate.idaho.gov (208) 343-2300
Sen. Fulcher: Rfulcher@senate.idaho.gov (208) 332-1340
Sen Davis: BMDavis@senate.idaho.gov (208) 522-8100
Sen. Hill: BHill@senate.idaho.gov (208) 356-3677

Letters to the Editor Idaho Statesman: https://forms.idahostatesman.com/lettertoeditor/

Idaho Press Tribune: You may mail, fax or e-mail your letter to the editor, but letters must include your full name (no initials), home address and daytime and evening telephone numbers for verification. If you have questions regarding your letter, please call (208) 465-8115 or e-mail:
op-ed@idahopress.com

………………………………..

Add the Words Idaho is an all volunteer organization of people all across Idaho working to demonstrate the level of public support for inclusion of gay and transgender Idahoans in the state’s laws banning discrimination in employment, housing education and public accommodation. Add the Words has gathered over 2000 messages to Idaho legislators written on sticky notes from people in more than 60 Idaho towns. http://addthewords.org

Thanks to Lucy Juarez for video footage, and to Jim Huggins and Stacy Ericson for still photos. Thanks to Lisa Perry and all those organizing or participating in positive silent protests across the state.
Thanks to Dave at Rail Tees on Overland for the Add the Words T-shirt design and printing.

Live in Boise? Find out how you can post your sticky note in the statehouse any time, day or night.

http://addthewords.org

To Those In Favor of Bullying

April 7, 2011

I’ve paced every bit of marble around the rotunda between the two chambers many times today. I’ve been on the phone and visited members in their rabbit warren of basement office suites one after another. Senate members have talked to House members with me but it is no good now. The bullying bill S1105 is dead. It died on the calendar for lack of consideration.

To the young people from Sandpoint, Nampa, Jerome, Boise, Challis and across the state who I have told “It gets Better” — I need you to know, it does. Even if the most powerful in our state don’t all yet understand the road you’ve walked, the strength you have had to find inside your selves when others said you had none. Still it gets better. I have promised to make it better — and I will. We will.

This year we tried so hard and came so close. But you must know there are people here who have not heard your stories. There are elected Representatives who think that bullying makes a person stronger. They need to understand how wrong that is.

And yes I asked them:

Have you never walked then in the shoes of a child whose family has rejected them, their church has turned them away, and now, at school, they are taunted or hit by those who think difference is a weakness — that it gives others a license to cause pain.

Have you never been a child whose life is a struggle on its own –and for whom school could be salvation or a hell –but because of the calculated cruelty of just one person, it does become a hell.

Have you have never watched a young person fail to see the beauty inside themselves? Have you watched someone see nothing but darkness — no strength or promise — until that they take their own life?

If you ever imagined such sadness, you might have fought for this bill.

But the House has just gaveled an end and adjourned for the year. The Senate has been done for a few hours. The kind words there flowed for a bit like and odd balm after three months of battle. The issues from closed primaries to rejecting federal health reform, cutting mental health treatment and education all split the Republican Party and the Senate itself again and again.

And the bill to make it better for young people died.

 

……………………………………

There is no end in this though only a beginning because there need to be more voices next year. If you have stories you need to share them. We need them. We need you to help us make sure it gets better. humanrights@4idaho.org

Hard Endings

April 4, 2011

In these last days, the boxes come out. Empty stacks of them line the halls like flimsy coffins. Senator McKenzie announced this morning we have tied now with the 10th longest session in our 121 year history. By Friday we will tie with the 5th longest. Yet this one with its gut wrenching policies and passionate, even desperate bipartisan debate, seems to have passed like a blurred dream.

–Long evenings pouring over each new version of Tom Luna's long, painful bills to find any change, the implications of each new word or deletion.

–Walking in here from dark streets in the snow or rain or cold. People honking, waving, thumbs up.

–Streams of email like water, where my email box came alive, filling faster than i could read or move to sort or answer.

–The tears of teachers. Many times. Passing words. Me wishing I could say how sorry I am, in my core.

And somehow I expected we would do more than just damage, that there would be a limit to the damage we were willing to do. But, with a few brilliant exceptions, we moderates and Democrats lost every major floor debate: protecting schools; trying to stop the bleeding in Medicaid, mental health and disability services; protecting private end of life and medical decisions; opposing the Republican Party's attempts to strip voters bare, branding party affiliation in waterproof marker on every human chest.

And here I need to say this –say the Republican Party seems broken, bogged down in divisive social and anti-government issues that have been impairing its ability to deal with our state's failure to recover economically; to grow not destroy jobs; protect services which people's lives depend on; stop policy that is already demoralizing and decimating the most important profession in this state, policy which gives millions away to corporations under the guise of reform.

I wish all those moderates out there and in here who have been bashed and bloodied — those who have had enough of all this would join Democrats, help us re-build the Democratic Party back to something powerful enough to check this freight train that is taking our schools and economy downhill before our eyes. What more does it take? What more has to happen? What more can they do to you?

Primary Transgression

March 30, 2011

On the floor of the Senate in afternoon session. The sun shines down from above through the frosted sky lights and we Democrats are posing a long series of questions to Brent Hill, the Senator charged with carrying the Republican Party's closed primary bill.

The bill gets personal to me. As you dig through the layers you find that not only does it allow Republicans to do as they have long wished to and close their primary races off to Democrats or even independent voters, but in fact it forces counties all over the state to reveal publicly which ballot an independent or unaffiliated voter chooses when they come to vote in any primary election — even a Democratic primary that our party will keep open to anyone.

Even worse, this choice of chosen primary ballot by an unaffiliated or independent voter will become an assigned party affiliation for that voter if they choose to vote in a primary that is closed by a party like the Republican Party. And it will not be easy for voters under this legislation to get your names again unaffiliated and  your selves once again unassociated with a political party if you perhaps don't live and die by political parties and you want instead to vote for the candidate of your choice without having a Political Party listed by your name.

But today the debate is unlike any I've seen. Many Republicans in this room smile at our questions, nod and many even laughed when Diane Bilyeu asked Senator Hill to explain why the Republican Party brought the lawsuit that forced the state to pass legislation changing its primary elections. It was a bold question and Senator Hill answered that he could not explain that.

But Senator Siddoway just now stood, clearly shaken, he broke ranks and debated how the Republican Party has forced its way into the Capitol "into our house" to make him and others pass this legislation. In the gallery, Rod Beck, former Republican Party Chair sat watching. Siddoway concluded his debate against the bill telling Senators to vote yes. Many laughed. His statement obviously adhered to whatever agreement was reached on this bill in the closed Republican caucus meeting held yesterday upstairs in the grand room facing West.

Like Senator Siddoway, I grew up in the small town wilds of rural East central Idaho where privacy is precious. This bill did not have to trample on Idaho's privacy. No court or judge or constitution dictated that it do that — but sadly that is exactly what the Republican Party has chosen that it will do, that the state will do and that we all must suffer with as this bill flies through the statehouse to become law.

Not Rational

March 26, 2011

In all my seven years in the Idaho legislature, this is the most damage we have ever done. I say "we" because I'm an elected part of the body, like an errant leg or toe. I picture myself reaching for the ground in hopes that the whole thing will come crashing down to face the reality of what we have done, what we have taken from every community, every family with children, every school from Sandpoint to Bear Lake.

And the sadness I feel. How I want to ask everyone to thank their teachers, send a bag of groceries, paper, pens, supplies, gift cards, flowers. Just because I feel the damage about to settle down on them. The bills are cruel. They make a proud and difficult profession into an uncertain one, a nearly impossible one.

And during debate Thursday night Senators sat on the floor in the big chairs taking calls from the Governor. Otter's administration may not be skilled at all things, but strong arming it has mastered. I think it's clear with the vote. And in my mind I remember Dean Cameron pleading with our colleagues to remember who they represent. I know why he said that now.

The debate there in favor of the bills in was surreal. Listening I often felt like the proponents of the bill were reading different legislation or that they live in different world where young people need to spend more, not less time on technology; where the challenges of the twenty first century are actually using a lap top and internet chat to discuss topics rather than learning face to face negotiating skills, mastering fluid persuasive written communication, becoming skilled in debate, collaboration, creative problem solving, invention and leadership.

In the end, like so much of what comes down hard from above, this must be about money. Like raising taxes for roads, eliminating the personal property tax on business equipment or deregulating land line phone service — there are tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars to be made by someone.

That is what we get when the state is beset by elusive PACs running millions in campaign ads with no requirement to report their donors. Who will ever know exactly where the money really flowed.

All I know is that this policy won't improve education. Reading the hundred or so pages of legislation, I can't see where it ever will.

In Silence We Risk All

March 16, 2011

My office lies in an alcove off the long marble hallway that leads from the underground wings into the depths of the Capitol. Two freshmen Republican Senators share this suite with four of us Democrats. Across the bright stone passage, Republican offices circle another suite, and, down the steps behind the committee rooms, a long dark hall lit by skylights hides the offices of the Republican Committee Chairs for nine of the Senate's ten committees.

In the evening, some law makers stay late sorting and answering email, others have given up. The voices flow like bitter sounds that only rarely fall to whisper. The building has riled a sea of discontent. Oddly for all the voices I fear few are listening.

Still, crisis unfolds far away on littered beaches seeming not yet to soften this hard determination of newly elected men to hate the collective expression of America we call government, taxation, regulation and welfare. If compassion is an anthem to some of us, to others it remains a sign of weakness and pitiful need.

It is as if, divided into camps of those who fear and those who hold out a hand in offering, our nation and state have both split themselves into parties, factions, armies of America.

In times of world crisis can we afford these lines we draw? These tendencies to label groups of the unknown into good and evil. Is not the essence of humanity, patriotism, and our constitution that all are created equal and that we exist to express our will with free voices that honor the opinions of the minority whether those voices are ours or those of others, also American, also patriots for expressing an opinion about the nature of their duty in government.

But sacred is the obligation of the majority not to trespass or violate the outnumbered. Serious are the obligations of those who govern to not only hear but to heed those most vulnerable with whom we together constitute our union, our state, our country and nation.

But our nation is none other than an island to which the disparate have come seeking refuge, each of us claiming bits of its land as our home. Yet we should know there's nothing permanent in history but change and the rising and falling of nations, governments, kingdoms, empires and tribes.

If today in our fear of discomfort, our fear of giving up time or troubling with those we don't agree with, if in this fear we fail to rise when others fall, when the strong step hard upon the vulnerable; if too few stand, then all may be lost, not just the perpetuity of our wealth or safety, but eventually the very land and government upon which all order relies.

So, if participation is politics seems inconvenient, think how difficult is the consequence of disengagement. Not always will there be others to stand when we do not. And sadly it is not until it is too late that we will ever know that others did not stand. And then where shall we be but lost in a shaken tide of regret; landless and anchorless without a nation to recognize because, for us, standing up when all might be lost, was more than we were willing to do.

So stand now, in the midst of our state's determination to suffocate its tradition of decency toward those with disabilities, teachers, children and those who may wish never to have to carry a gun. It's not too late to stand now, even though the ground shakes. Single voices make a difference. Single acts of courage and leadership against a tide can turn that tide, bend history toward compassion.

Indeed something must move us to common action in this tiny red corner of our bleeding nation. We are not yet lost as other nations are. Our buildings tower still above our minds. For the sake of those that come after us, we can not let slip the beauty of a better nature, the heart of our uncommon good. We are more than greed, more than soft silent masses.

Where are our voices Americans? What will be left for the generations to come if we don't stand up and speak now?

Letter to Rev & Tax

March 11, 2011

Anyone who says the state has no options but to cut the budgets for public schools & Meidicad is forgetting a major componenet of a legislature's responsibility to balance the state's budget. Many are asking for an increase in the tobacco tax to fund medicaid. With that in mind I have asked other members of the Senate Education Committe to sign on to the following letter to the only committee in the legislature that can make changes in Idaho's taxes, exemptions, credits and incentives.

 

March 10, 2011                                                                           DRAFT LETTER

 

Chairman Lake & Members of the House Revenue & Taxation Committee,

As a committee that has been asked to make recommendations toward building a public education budget for FY2012, we are concerned that the remaining revenue available to the legislature for general fund appropriations leaves Idaho with between $6 million and $31 million less funding for the upcoming budget than we allocated for the FY 2011 budget. That budget saw a reduction of $128 million in state funding.

At the same time, Idaho student populations have increased, creating a need to fund an additional 176 new classrooms or support units at a cost of $27.3 million. Indeed funding the $27.3 million in student growth was the governors recommendation for a total of $1,235,894,000 to public schools. This amount funds all school class rooms at the reduced amount now in use for the FY 2011 budget.

Reductions to education funding on the order of $30 million or more can not occur without consequences. We will again have to consolidate, reduce or eliminate line items for textbooks, transportation, gifted and talented, Limited English Proficiency, Idaho reading initiative, Idaho math initiative, teacher incentive awards, dual credit for early graduates, math and science requirements, college entrance exams, technology, the Idaho Digital Learning Academy and more.

We recognize the reluctance to raise taxes at a time when the economy is challenging families and businesses but we feel that much deeper cuts to education will also be devastating to both.

With that in mind we encourage you to be creative and to consider not only delaying advancements in the size of Idaho’s grocery tax credit but making temporary changes to the structure of the credit to reduce its cost to 2007 levels, recovering $27 million or more to fund growth in student enrollment and assist in meeting the most basic needs of Idaho public schools in the year ahead. We would encourage a return to full funding and full structure of the credit following this fiscal year.

Thank you.

 

Sincerely

 

Members of the Senate Education Committee 

 

Bake Sale Schools

November 23, 2010

Rock to Read gathered fabulous and quirky musicians and song writers in a spot-light lit room full of books, authors, teachers, parents, kids and auction items. The benefit was to try to buy books for school libraries since state budgets eliminated library fuding last year.

Hard to believe something as basic as books have to be bought through benefits and bake sales. But that's what we've come to. Many kids are going without some of the key tools they need to succeed.

And yet now, as bad as this current year has been for crowded classrooms, cuts in teacher pay and loss of student class time, we're looking at an even deeper crisis in the year ahead. Just to keep school budgets at the level of cuts we had last year, we'd have to raise taxes (temporarily for a year or two until the economy recovers) by more than $300 million dollars. (That's like taxing business and professional services with a sales tax for the first time or like a penny and a half increase in sales tax or a percent and a half more in income tax for a year.) If we don't raise taxes (since we won't get another federal stimulus like the ones that saved us the past two years) then we have to cut schools yet deeper.

Can you imagine struggling kids after another year of even deeper cuts and even larger classes and less teacher time? Can you imagine not funding schools to hire the 200 new teachers we need just to guide class rooms filled with the 5000 new students who showed up in the state this year?

Is there not a finite limit to the number of bake sales and benefits a school can hold?

This is the poem I read at Rock to Read Benefit Friday night.

 

I dream of Idaho on fire.

I don’t mean the incendiary flame of combustion

I mean the simple spark of some saintly prayer that our schools will fly.

 

I sleep blocks from the capitol, that marble palace

with wings that could have lifted classrooms, libraries, teachers and minds

from survival to spiral orbits of aspiration

where children would dance with spirogyra

microscopes would raise mitochondria and mitosis to the heavens of the known

where English would flow with French, Russian and Chinese from the red lips of scholars

where numbers would glow in galaxies of geometric gem stones

where formulas and proofs would speak like poetry

 

When I sleep under the huge white pine in the turn-of-the-century Victorian that creaks

in the wind and with the whisper of tectonic secrets

our schools do spark and fly

lawmakers plot to proliferate brilliance, invention and art.

We’d fund mock courts and student Senates

celebrating teen poets and novel writers, making heroes of young physicists

and the teachers

who inspire it all again

and again

and again.

 

But I sleep still

strange slumber of frightful dreams where a marble building sinks deep in a mire

political pandering screams

and teachers cry over stacks of papers in the wee hours of the night

where there through the fogged glass students wait with hands raised

in row after row of desks.

 

But I stand here

for in waking I swear I dream for more

just as you dream.

We imagine Idaho on fire

minds sparked to lift a marble dome from the depths, high up over the trees to the sky.

With you I'll not rest as long as books must be bought by benefits

and marble wings and shiny new highways stretch to each horizon.

I will dream.

I will dream in the marble building.

There I will beg others to dream.

Leadership in Flux

November 6, 2010

Legislative Council has assembled around the big wooden table in the Senate Republican Caucus room in the top of the statehouse. The showing is sparse. Missing are the members leaving us whose terms end a month from now. In December we will be sworn in again and joined by six new senators and twelve newly elected house members. That is not unprecedented change. Compared to other states, Idaho simply stayed its red self. Interestingly we stand now at the same numbers we had six years ago when I was first elected to the house.

Legislative Council is an ongoing committee made up of Democratic and Republican leadership plus members elected by their caucus to serve in overseeing policy, procedure and the general workings of both houses. We discuss everything from whether the dining room will welcome the public, to whether committee secretaries will be detailed or vague in writing up the minutes of legislative committee meetings.

This is my fourth year on Legislative Council. I've looked around in the past and realized that the committee has been used at times as a consolation prize for members not elected to leadership positions in their respective caucuses.

And it's that time again. Leadership elections. Speaker in the House, Pro-Tem in the Senate, in both houses a Majority Leader, Assistant Majority Leader, Caucus Chair, Minority Leader, Assistant Minority Leader & Minority Caucus Chair.

Already the Pro Tem is telling people to save Friday morning after our one day December organizational session and swearing in just in case leadership races get drawn out. This year with the surge of far right or tea party Republicans one can expect some leadership challenges within the two Republican Caucuses. Never mind that, in the House, Majority Leader Mike Moyle is rumored to be taking on Speaker Denny.

Last time we had a serious Speaker's race, after Bruce Newcomb retired as Speaker of the House, committee chairships changed, new people were given JFAC seats and the tone and feel of the legislature turned from a moderate and congenial place to an often far more difficult and contentious one.

I am holding my breath about the Senate. Some say that with the final numbers there will be enough relative moderates to keep the Senate from radical change.

This year, for Democrats, members of leadership retired in both the House and Senate. New leaders will be elected from among those not serving on the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee. In the Senate in our tiny seven member Democratic caucus with two JFAC members and three leadership positions, our choices are a bit less wide ranging than in the House. We have some pretty wide ranging personalities though.

Sunday, across the state, we legislators will pack our bags for the Northern Idaho Legislative Tour which always follows on the heels of the election. We will travel and mingle for three days getting to know new members and discussing legislative ideas. Both parties will hold caucuses to begin to brooch the topic of leadership races. We will know then who will run and begin to contemplate the temperaments, the strengths, weaknesses and personalities that will shape our lives and policy in the next two sessions and possibly in many more to come.

Harder to Find

January 15, 2010

Night time. Senators leave in groups, out through the bright wings into the streets. Thus begins the many weeks of legislative dinners and receptions.

I am in my office. This is novel. I have never had an office before. I always loved working on the floor. I loved having others around me working at their desks. We mixed, joked, got beyond the hard politics.

In the Senate we all have offices now and, if you know where these are, you can find us there. It could be a good thing. But I worry a bit that it will isolate us more, that the three Senate office areas down here behind the committee rooms keep us a bit segregated.

The 70 house members have cubicles, not offices, also on the "garden level" off their underground wing. Some are lovely, others are just that, temporary divided cubicles in a virtually windowless back room. For this reason, and because I'm sure many still like the camaraderie of working next to each other on the floor, I suspect a good set of Representatives will still work at their rows of desks in the chamber. I don't know if this is true of the House but the Senate floor is cold now and though the historic red curtains give it a warmer feel, compared to the old courthouse it seems so huge, tall and formal. My office is not quite as beautiful but far more homey to work in. In fact, since I do not have a window, I brought a disco ball and it throws wonderful patterns of light on the walls and ceiling in the low lit room.

I will hold my first office hours Friday the 15th, 1 pm to 3 pm. In two weeks I'll start earlier so people can visit me on their lunch hour. We'll see how it works. My plan is for every other Friday and then a few Tuesdays as well 4 to 6 so people can come after work. You will be able to go to my new web site soon and see a schedule.

Having an office hopefully means I have a place where people will visit and feel comfortable. I have hot tea and lots of chairs. Like others I'm settling in to this space a bit. Four of us Democrats are tucked away behind double doors at the base of the capitol's 8th Street West underground wing. Don't give up in looking for us. All the Committee Chairs and a few others are in suites behind the row of smaller committee rooms. You will find the door at the base of the short set of stairs that leads back into the old capitol and the new visitors center.

At the top of that short set of stairs, near the old vaults where we stowed the lobbyists away, you will find two more sets of Senator's offices. Don't be intimidated, we are back in these areas, just a little bit harder to find.

Recent Posts
Categories
Archives