Your generous contributions make this work possible.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| published Tuesday, January 22, 2008 |
690 Views |
|
 |
For the 11th legislative session, United Vision for Idaho will be trying to bring you an update of Idaho’s legislature from a progressive perspective. Be sure to pass it on to your friends and colleagues. Please give us your feedback – when you agree and when you don’t – and be sure to send us information on what you're following. We collect our information from dozens of volunteers who care deeply about an open and accessible citizen’s legislature and need to hear from many more
Lawmakers came to Boise on Jan. 7th and started working in much tighter quarters in the temporary Statehouse Annex. It is actually the old Ada County Courthouse which has been refitted to accommodate the House and Senate Chambers, their committee rooms and other services that make the legislature operate. You should plan to visit before the session ends sometime in March. There are no public galleries in the House and Senate, but cameras keep close watch on what they say and do. Most of the work at this point in the session is happening in committee and there is room to watch if you get there early. Bookmark the legislature’s home page http://www.legislature.idaho.gov/, make time each day to check out the video & audio streaming, the latest legislation that has been filed and the committee agendas and minutes.
With no space in the Statehouse Annex large enough to handle a joint session of the legislature, the Governor opened the session by delivering his State-of-the-State address at Boise State University. Idaho’s constitution requires the governor to initiate each session with a message. Unfortunately, as every governor – regardless of party – quickly learns, the legislature is not required to remember it. In past sessions, the governor was one floor away and could dispatch his deputies within seconds to remind lawmakers who still holds the veto stamp. Tradition requires legislators referred to the governor in debate as “the Gentleman on the Second Floor.” This year, the governor’s office is in the Old Post Office which makes it even more challenging for him to get legislators to remember what he wants them to accomplish. Lawmakers are a bit confused about how to refer to him since they occupy the second floor of the annex and the governor's office is across the street and two blocks away.
Since Idaho’s constitution also mandates that the legislature and governor must balance the state budget, before they decide whether and how to invest the public’s money, they must first come up with a revenue projection. The governor said that the people of Idaho will provide a little over $3 billion through taxes between July 1, 2008 and June 30, 2009. This is about 3.4% more than what they estimate we will have provided in the current fiscal year. Legislators prefer to pick as low a number as possible so they can keep investments in public services such as public schools as low as possible. If more money comes than was projected – as it has in several years in a row now – lawmakers have a long list of short-term needs.
Every lawmaker knows that Idaho’s tax system is riddled with exemptions. In fact, well over $1 billion is not collected because of deals that past legislatures have made with various industries. When the economy slows (like it is doing right now) they don’t repeal any exemptions but just raise rates on all of us (especially the sales tax). Several brave legislators – including Reps. Wendy Jaquet and Nicole LeFavour – keep bugging their colleagues on the House Revenue & Taxation Committee to actually MEASURE whether these exemptions produce any benefits to the economy. The Republicans felt some heat when they raised the sales tax again in 2006 and responded by creating a special committee to deal with exemptions. They met in August and October and came up with an impressive set of standards to measure exemptions and made a list of 23 exemptions to review during this session. Bills dealing with six of those exemptions came up before the committee this week, but the majority refused to print five of them – effectively killing them without any further public input. Only one – dealing with the exemption of sales tax on goods sold through vending machines – may get a hearing.
Do you know that when you buy goods from out-of-state even though you don’t pay Idaho’s 6% sales tax you still have to pay a 6% use tax? Idaho’s small businesses that sell goods subject to sales tax are frustrated that this is woefully unenforceable, unrealistic and creates a huge advantage for big Internet retailers. The tax commission estimates that at least $75 million is not collected – meaning that much less can be invested in local assets like public schools. Rather than wait for the problem to get worse or to leave it up to the federal government to come up with a solution, other states have formed the “Streamlined Sales Tax Project” to address this chronic problem. A no-brainer, you might think, that Idaho should participate? Well, last Wednesday, by a vote of 10 to 8, the House Revenue & Taxation Committee refused to even print a bill that would put the topic before them (those who refused let the bill be printed were: Representatives Lenore Barrett, Mike Moyle, Robert Schaefer, Dell Raybould, Ken Roberts, JoAn Wood, Jim Clark, Dick Harwood, Scott Bedke, and Phil Hart. Those who wanted to print the bill were Representatives Dennis Lake, Gary Collins, Leon Smith, George Sayler, Wendy Jaquet, Nicole LeFavour, Bill Killen, and James Ruchti).
Once again, Idaho was ranked in a six way tie for LAST place among the states this year for overall quality of public education. We got a D+. The study was conducted by Education Week, a periodical of the Editorial Projects in Education funded by the Pew Center on the States. Years of chronic underinvestment are showing its signs in classrooms. While most legislators ignored the Education Week report, several were forced to deal with fallout of a related education funding crisis: an audit of the state board of education that exposed financial problems which forced the board to cancel the 9th grade ISAT standardized test this year.
These are just the tip of the iceberg. A lot more his happening. We need you to send us stories! If you are following a particular issue and want us to include it in future UV-Eye-Openers, please write up a short (about 100 words) summary of what happened and e-mail it to us right away. We need to rely on more people to be the eyes of the Eye Opener.
|
|
|
|
|