They are like sick people who have lost their appetite for what is truly nourishing. Such sick people should not frighten or discourage us. They should be prayed for along with the sick people who are in the hospital. The love for justice that is in us is not only the best part of our being but it is also the most true to our nature." Cesar Chavez, in commemoration of his birthday, March 31st.
With little on the House or Senate calendars and little will to compromise, nothing was done on the grocery tax or closed primaries or the effort to shut the revolving door on legislator-lobbyists. Rhetoric and symbols won out over substance. Lots of new legislators promised to come back and finish things—not knowing that once the momentum is gone it may take years before certain ideas get revisited. The Governor signed lots of bills and vetoed a few. The House overrode two of the vetoes and the Senate one.
said Representative Jim Clark in opposing the effort to override the Governor’s veto of the grocery tax credit. He and others opposing the override suggested that we should hold off and do it right rather than making an incremental change that could mean, Clark opined, that “there will not be a change in the grocery tax for 20 years.” We found ourselves uncomfortably in that camp, believing that HB81, which raises the credit from $20 to $40 does not do enough to help people who really need it while taking money out of the budget that is needed for public schools and other priorities. Proponents of the override all agree that the rebate is too small but argue that we should give “the peoples’ money back.” The House voted to override the Governor’s veto by one vote, but the Senate sent the bill to the Local Government and Taxation Committee to meet its death. We are hopeful that the grocery tax issues can be taken up as part of the interim committee focusing on Idaho’s tax system.
, who is resigning this month due to failing health, that the legislature overrode the Governor’s veto on HB 121, a bill to ban smoking in bowling alleys. The Governor vetoed it primarily as a maneuver to push Senator Brent Hill, chair of the Senate Tax Committee, to support a means tested grocery tax credit. Although true opponents of the bill argued about free enterprise, private property rights and personal responsibility, there were few in either the House or Senate who followed this lead. Bowling alleys will join most other public places in being smoke-free on July 1st.
from many of the Republicans leading the herd these days. I remember sitting with her at an Idaho Women’s Network event a couple of years ago when IWN released their report on the status of women in the Idaho job market. Like her positions on choice, Representative Miller took an unswerving feminist position on the importance of women receiving equal pay for equal work. She was known as a partisan because of her decades’ long work on behalf of the Republican party in Ada County. Still, when she died last week, I couldn’t help but think that we could use a few more Republicans like her from other parts of the state.
The Senate passed a bill that will make Idaho’s state minimum wage conform to the federal wage when it is raised later this year. Didn’t know there was state minimum? The state minimum wage picks up those people who are excluded from the federal—like farmworkers. In some states the state minimum is lower than the federal; Idaho has generally followed the feds. When we got farmworkers included in the minimum wage law a few years ago, the law set the state minimum wage at $5.15. It couldn’t make them eligible for the federal. ICAN led the charge on this issue after Senate State Affairs Chair Curt MacKenzie told them that he did not plan to hear it in his committee because it was not a priority to pass the bill. What should have been a perfunctory process required a lot of work to get a hearing. Democrats in the committee and on the floor of the Senate opposed the bill because they were supporting an alternative that would have raised the minimum wage to $7.25 and indexed it to inflation.
The House Ways and Means Committee, which only meets to speed up or circumvent the regular process, met to print a bill that would require a one year cooling off period between the time that a legislator served and before becoming a lobbyist. The bill, sponsored by House Minority Leader, Wendy Jaquet, has the support of Republican House Speaker Lawerence Denney after he was criticized for encouraging a developer to dump their lobbyist and hire Julie Ellsworth who was defeated in November. Unfortunately this kind of “gun to your head” support tends to fade pretty quickly. Witness how much ethics legislation got passed in the wake of Senator Jack Noble’s resignation for egregious conflict of interest violations. That would be a goose egg. Denney pulled the revolving door bill back to Ways and Means where it will sit for this year. There’s always next year, right?
Despite the best efforts of Keith Allred of the Common Interest, who has been absolutely the Energizer Bunny on this issue, time has run out on reaching a compromise plan on changing Idaho’s primary elections. With the threat of a lawsuit looming from members of the Republican Party, Allred, a professional negotiator and Harvard professor, has tried mightily to come up with a plan that would appease the part zealots who want a closed primary that they control completely and provide a system that protects privacy and the voting rights of independents. On Monday morning, a bill was printed in the Senate State Affairs Committee. By Monday afternoon a new bill was being circulated that dealt with issues raise by the County Clerks, but by Friday morning it is not looking like anything will move forward this year.
as expected. It is a sorry commentary on the legislative session that lawmakers can get consensus to pass divisive legislation but cannot get it together to pass any decent legislative ethics bills, instate tuition for immigrant children, or reasonable grocery tax relief for middle and low income Idahoans.
I learned that Elaine Hofman, who was a Democratic legislator from Pocatello in the early to mid-90’s died this week. Elaine, who as I remember, was at one time named the Idaho Mother of the Year, was a good friend of progressives. She will be missed.
. As I am writing this, the Senate is trying to finish its work by passing a bill to allocate $246 million for major highway projects statewide. Yesterday the Senate killed a bill supported by the House that earmarked the money to specific projects. The Senate has been opposed to designating projects, believing instead that the Transportation Department’s board should decide what projects to fund. It was alleged yesterday by Senator Dean Cameron that at least one preferred project had been dropped in the House because it would benefit Democratic legislators in Boise! This is the kind of politicization the Senate is trying to avoid.
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Check out The Ledge, Mike Flinn’s latest and our end of the session wrap up. http://mflinn.com/cartoonup/mupload/03292007-1807_Ledge6-500.jpg