|
"We see the future not as something out of our control, but as something we can shape
for the better through concerted and collective effort"
- Barack Obama
|
|
Tracking My Legislation
S1332 - Confidential Communication Protections for Victims
NEW BILL JUST INTRODUCED
It has been an honor to work with stakeholders from the Idaho Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence and with Domestic Violence Programs, like the WCA, to rectify a loophole in the law that has been creating stress on programs. This bill will align state and federal law to protect confidential communications, so programs don't have to waste resources fighting lawsuits and subpoenas when they could be spending those resources on helping their clients.
For any victim service agency or community organization working with survivors of domestic and dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking, maintaining confidentiality is paramount to preserving the safety, privacy, and trust of those seeking services. When survivors seek services, they take huge personal risks. If an abuser should discover that a victim is seeking services, the abuse could increase in frequency and severity. There can also be potential societal and personal repercussions from being identified as a victim, such as housing or job discrimination.
Click here to read more about the importance of protecting confidentiality...
- Passed the Senate Committee and will be heard on the Senate floor this week.
|
|
S1260 - Expanding Access to Prescriptive Contraception
On Tuesday, after 5 years of introducing this bill, the Senate has voted to pass S1260 which would require health benefit plans that cover prescription contraception to reimburse for a six-month supply, instead of only 3 months. The bill squeaked by and passed. I was relieved because increasing accessibility to birth control is THE BEST PRACTICE to decrease unplanned pregnancy and abortion.
Unfortunately, there will be opposition in the House, but I have addressed ALL previous concerns including neutralizing right to life groups who thought contraception was somehow an abortifacient. Some legislators said that 12 months was too much to have on hand out of fear of "black market" sellers or waste. That was an interesting concern, but that's why I went to 6 months instead of 12. After waiting in a pharmacy line for 4 days, 12 people deep each time, I realized that with the work force shortage, this bill would help pharmacies and prescribers to stay on track. Finally, some legislators don't want to tell insurers how to run their business, but the insurers are neutral on the bill and have shown no opposition.
I have worked hard to address all their concerns, and I hope that in good faith, by addressing those, my GOP colleagues will vote for this bill. But we'll see.....
- PASSED - 20-14-1 on February 22nd and referred to House Health and Welfare.
Tuesday was a good day! We got bill S1259 passed by the Senate! This legislation allows in-home caregivers to apply for property tax relief through the "Circuit Breaker" program by exempting the Medicaid payment they receive to care for someone with a disability in their home from income counted toward the application for the Property Tax Circuit Breaker. Four GOP cosponsors spoke on the Senate floor in favor of the bill, showing strong bipartisan support.
JoAnn Vasko, a constituent of D13, and Marilyn Sword, the Coordinator of the Idaho Caregivers Alliance, have been such strong allies, working relentlessly to educate legislators about how helpful this bill would be.
...Stalled in the House by Chair of Committee
They are so inspiring especially in the face of opposition from only a few legislators who don't want to offer this support and are blocking a hearing in the House Committee for nothing more than political games.
Please, email and call Rep Steve Harris, Chair of House Revenue and Taxation, and the rest of the committee and ask them to give this bill a hearing! It has 22 cosponsors, which means that it has be potential to pass and should not be blocked by the chair.
Click here to access their emails
- Now waiting to be assigned to the House Committee for a hearing.
S1240 - Racially Restrictive Covenants
This bill allows homeowners to remove racially restrictive covenants that still exist in the chain of title for many Idaho homes in Idaho. It doesn't make up for over a century of housing discrimination, but it acknowledges institutional racism and provides a tool to document that it's null and void.
- Passed the Senate and awaits a hearing in House Judiciary and Rules.
To read more about this bill and watch me chat about it on KTVB, click here.
|
|
|
BILLS FROM THE HOUSE -- ELECTIONS
 H439 requires that unaffiliated voters must change their voter registration status to one of the political parties in order to vote in the primary elections by the candidate filing deadline prior to the primary election. This limits access to the ballot and is particularly troubling for voters who may wish to know who is running prior to affiliating. This disenfranchises independent, unaffiliated voters. H439 passed the House will now come to the Senate for consideration.
Read more about this bill by clicking here.
H547 would criminalize, for instance, a person who picks up their elderly neighbor's ballot or more than six family members' ballots and takes them to the post office to be mailed. Further if that person, as is not uncommon in some rural parts of Idaho, collects and mails or otherwise delivers more than ten ballots, they would become a felon. These criminal penalties apply where ballots are properly delivered with no tampering. The sponsor of the bill admits that Idaho has not had any significant problems with our elections as a result of people helping out in this way. This bill passed the House and has been sent to Senate State Affairs for consideration.
 H548 provides that the residence for which a person claims a homestead exemption shall be considered their residence for voting purposes. It also provides a mechanism for the Tax Commission to create a database of all exemptions claimed so the Secretary of State can verify residency for purposes of voter registration and candidacy. I am co-sponsoring this bill to provide more transparency and clarity as to residency, voting, and candidacy for office. This bill passed the House and has been sent to the Senate.
H512 requires that taxing districts wait a period of eleven months after a failed bond election before a subsequent bond question of the same type or subject can be placed on the ballot in that district. School districts already face a difficult path to passing bonds because they must garner 2/3 of the vote. When a bond fails, districts often respond to the feedback they receive from constituents to tailor the bond to the desires of the community. With the current dismal state of Idaho's public school facilities, it is especially troubling to restrict access to the ballot to make improvements and provide a safe environment for our children. This bill has passed the House and been sent to Senate State Affairs for its consideration.
H566 provides that public property that is available to the general public may be used by a political party if all political parties are given equal and fair access.
MORE BILLS FROM THE HOUSE TO WATCH
HB 675: Ban on Gender-Affirming Healthcare for Trans Youth 
The GOP continues to introduce anti-trans legislation. The new attempt to further harm the transgender community now comes in the form of a ban for gender-affirming healthcare for trans youth. This legislation would make it a felony to provide trans children with gender-affirming medical care. Providers would be barred from giving minors hormones, puberty blockers, or gender-affirming surgeries.
Trans youth already experience significantly high levels of discrimination, isolation, and suicidal ideation. Getting gender-affirming treatment has proven to significantly reduce all of these. The reality is, if this passes, we will lose more of our children.
- Referred to the State Affairs Committee for a hearing.
Read more about this bill by clicking here.
HB 581: Banning Employers from Health Measures
This bill would make it a misdemeanor for any business operating in Idaho to either require its workers to be vaccinated or to require them to disclose their vaccination status. The Majority party has abandoned its rhetoric and protections for business to gain governmental control in culture wars surrounding health. I find this bill troubling for many Idahoans, especially those who are immunocompromised. Folks should be allowed to make an informed decision about which of two candidates to employ, given that one may be about twice as likely as the other to pass on a potentially fatal disease. Idahoans deserve to know who has more potential risk for their fellow employees.
- Read for the first time and referred to Commerce & Human Resources.
Read more about this bill by clicking here.
|
|
TROUBLING NEWS IN THE SENATE
S1287: Rural Nursing Loan Repayment Program Killed
Senate Bill 1247 would have created the “Rural Nursing Loan Repayment Fund.” The Money allocated to the fund would help pay educational debts for nurses committing to practice in designated rural health shortage areas and critical access hospitals in Idaho.
The bill was killed by the Senate. I was so disappointed to see this bill fail. A program like this would have proven extremely beneficial to the state of Idaho. The Senate claimed it was too much money, but they fail to consider how much we will continue to lose because of our healthcare worker shortage. During a healthcare crisis, we should be working to provide our communities with the tools they need to succeed.
S1309: Bounties on an on Abortion after 6 Weeks
The majority party is working with pro-life groups to introduce a bill that would ban abortions after six weeks of pregnancy — before many people know they are pregnant — by allowing extended family members of the patient to sue any doctor that performs one. This is the worst bill I have seen! It imitates the Texas law and creates a bounty hunting system to intimidate and harass someone from getting a safe abortion. This sets up abusers and their families to terrorize someone they are abusing and keep them under control. This bill is unconscionable.
The use of falsehoods and rhetoric are being used to divert people from the truth and reality of pregnancy. At six weeks, with the use of an invasive trans-vaginal ultrasound, electrical activity in a group of embryonic cells the size of a pomegranate seed, may be detected, which is far from a heartbeat. Extremists pushing this six-week ban deliberately use falsehoods and false images, calling it a "fetal heartbeat," to play on misguided information to conger up images that couldn't be farther from the truth. This bill and others like it treat women as if they don't deserve any say in their own lives and are nothing more than a vessel under patriarchal control. What's next?!
- Retained on the calendar until February 28th, but probably won't be heard until later next week.
|
|
SCR 118: Misguided Resolution Intended to Denounce Teaching Divisive Concepts
This resolution is so misguided and so far from the truth. Teachers are not using The 1619 Project by Nikole Hannah-Jones, nor “critical race theory” to teach people to be ashamed or limited by their race and ethnicity. That simply isn’t true.
First critical race theory is simply a lens to examine laws and identify how racism and white supremacy have been incorporated into law to create disparities in access to opportunities in our country. For example, S1240 that was passed unanimously earlier in the month that addressed racist language in deeds and covenants is a result of using critical race theory to address an inequality in housing; language that directly prohibited people of color from purchasing and owning a home in some of the more affluent neighborhoods. I shared a brief history of a government practice in our country that advantaged white people over people of color. That wasn’t meant to inflame it wasn't meant to cause guilt or make anyone uncomfortable, but to speak the truth about practices of our federal, state and local governments to prohibit access to property to people of color. That is an important fact in understanding wealth disparities in our country.
Most people I spoke with didn’t understand what red-lining referred to, but to better understand where we are today in society, a clear and plain reading of history is important to learn from the past so we don’t repeat it.
Regarding the 1619 project, it is a piece of literature intended to provide a perspective about slavery and oppression of Black people in our country. It is not meant to divide, it is meant to explain.
Here is a quote I shared to fellow legislators regarding SCR118:
“’We are the most unequal of Western democracies. We incarcerate our citizens at the highest rate. We suffer the greatest income inequality. Americans’ lifespans are shorter than those of the people and nations we compare ourselves to. The 1619 Project seeks to explain this present-day reality and challenge these myths, not tear down or further divide this country as some critics suggest, but so that we can truly become the country we already claim to be.”’
Read more about this here.
|
|
|
Idaho FAKE NEWS Freedom Foundation
The Idaho Freedom Foundation is an extremist conservative organization that claims it is a think tank dedicated to "upholding individual liberty as the highest priority," but they are more preoccupied with controlling a specific patriarchal and racist narrative than freedom of choice or anything that helps everyday folks.
Their main goal is to dismantle public education into a private voucher system. This group uses dangerous rhetoric and threatens reasonable leaders by labeling them as socialist and communist to scare voters away from voting for reasonable people; they wage misinformed attacks on political candidates who won't do their bidding in hopes of electing the most extreme candidates who will fall in line with their mission. It's a very dangerous time for our state government. As I watch images on TV of Russia invading Ukraine, I see these extreme GOP members more preoccupied with mask mandates than any reality or reasonable approach to help people in our state. All I can do is shake my head and continue to fight for reason in a body that is trying to gaslight the entire state and harm our future.
KTVB has released a great video and article about the amount of influence the IFF has over Idaho's legislators and how they use their "Freedom Index" to push their political agenda. Many GOP legislators, elected officials, will vote in lockstep with the IFF's Freedom Index, without even considering or evaluating the bill on its own merit.
As I told a KTVB reporter recently, leaders need to be more focused on doing their jobs instead of worrying about keeping their jobs.
I don't have a very high freedom score -- who knew! Freedom is one of my core values! They stop valuing freedom when people think for themselves or when women come out of the home to work and get an education. No freedom for women who want to plan their families and use contraception and have access to all forms of reproductive health care, including safe and legal abortion.
No freedom for women who exercise their freedoms, as their main supporter, Scot Yenor, discusses.
They determine what it means to be free, and then punish anyone who doesn't go along with their definition. I successfully passed a bill last year repeal a law that was prevent someone from being convicted from raping their spouse. The IFF gave it a bad rating because they thought I was trying to affect the child marriage age; they were more worried about adults having sex with children under 18 and being able to marry them instead of the real issue of raping a spouse. I went through great lengths to alter the language of the bill so the score wouldn't direct the legislators who follow them lock step to vote against the bill. It was astonishing. I frequently get asked how a bill is scored because there is an extreme faction who follow those scores and do not vear from them.
This organization is one reason the closed primary is so bad, and is now influencing Democrats to register as Republicans out of fear of electing someone associated with this organization. I warn against such party jumping. First Governor Little has shown he will go along with this faction to save his own election, so that's no better. With great risk, comes great reward. Vote your heart and vote for the best candidate.
Shelby Rognstad is my choice; he is exceptional candidate for Governor. He is currently the mayor of Sandpoint and has led with strength, integrity and compassion. We need more people like him in office, and I hope you will vote for him in the Democratic Primary and the general election, and not fall prey to the fears and plans of the extreme right. |
|
|
28th Annual Frank and Bethine Church Gala
The Frank & Bethine Church Gala is the signature event for the Idaho Democratic Party. Now entering its 28th year, the event gathers hundreds of Democrats from every corner of the state. The event features local and national speakers from the Democratic Party, you’ll have the opportunity to place bids in our silent and live auctions, and you’ll be treated to a gourmet dinner with your choice of three menu options.
Also, the Idaho Democratic Party is making a BIG announcement at the Gala this year. You won’t want to miss it, so don’t forget to reserve your Mystery Pin!
Click the image below to register and get your tickets!
|
|
|
Idaho Learning Day at the Capitol!
|
|
|
Idaho Youth of the Year
Every year, the Boys and Girls Club hosts a Youth of the Year competition. I was happy to be there to listen to the winners, who will be advancing to the National Youth of the Year competition.
|
|
|
Ensuring I got at least 10K steps for Steps for School Challenge, I walked to the Statehouse. I walked through Hyde Park and snapped this picture. The snow just looked beautiful! I love my district.
|
|
|
District 19 Virtual Town Hall - March
TUESDAY, MARCH 8, 2022 AT 6:00 PM MST
Hear from your District 19 legislators Senator Melissa Wintrow, Representative Lauren Necochea, and Representative Chris Mathias, on how the 2022 legislative session is going. Please email idahod19democrats@gmail.com with any questions or concerns.
|
|
Local news resources to stay updated on the legislature:
|
|
|
|
|
|
