Senator Melissa Wintrow
The Senate is moving at a snail's pace, but considering the terrible bills in the House, maybe that's for the best. I presented 3 bills this week; my bill to help caregivers seek a little property tax relief failed on the House floor -- a heartbreaking loss for low income home owners who provide care for folks with disabilities. I shared the news with the constituent (from D13) with whom I was working, and we are determined to keep fighting for people!
WE WILL PERSIST!
My committees in the Senate:
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Progress on My Legislation
Sign up for myBillTracker to follow along with the legislation you are interested in and receive updates on the progress.
S1098 -- Increasing Access to Prescription Contraception
- On Tuesday, the testimony portion of this bill reading was heard. We had a great turnout of people in support of the legislation. The bill was passed out of the Senate Commerce and Human Resources Committee with a Do Pass recommendation and will be on the Senate Floor. We are one step closer!
S1089 -- Repealing Idaho Code 18-6107, Rape of a Spouse
- After the amending order, S1089 was read on Wednesday for the first time and filed for the third reading on the Senate floor. I’ll keep you posted.
H212 -- Property Tax Relief Bill Killed by GOP - A Devastating Loss for our Citizens
The H212 passed the House Revenue & Taxation Committee and was killed on the House floor. This is a devastating loss for low income families who are caring for people with development and physical disabilities in their household. This legislation would have allowed someone who is low income and a homeowner of a Certified Family Home (CFH) to apply for the "circuit breaker" property tax relief program by exempting the payment they receive from the state for caring for someone with a disability in their home from the income counted toward the application. This bill narrowly failed the full house falling to a 34-32 vote.
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Progress Report - Priorities Still UPSIDE DOWN
Power and control continues to dominate the legislative agenda. The majority of the House and Senate won't give up on controlling every level of Government from the Governor's office to local government to the people. For a state that says they value local control, this legislature continues to have its priorities upside down.
Let's see. What do constituents tell me that they value and want us to focus on and does this legislature respond?
- Funding education without constant school bonds: No.
- Keeping up with the cost of living (wages, property taxes, etc.): Nada.
- Affordable housing and real property tax relief: Nothing.
- Affordable healthcare, including better mental health services: Zip.
- Transportation infrastructure including public transit that keeps up with growing demands of urban areas: Zilch.
- Protect access to public lands from out-of-state billionaires: Nope.
Instead, the majority party has unfortunately spent their time doing the following:
- Enabling the legislature to call itself into session anytime for any reason
- Increasing the power of the legislature over the executive branch
- Increasing voter suppression by making absentee voting more difficult
- Nullifying the constitutional right to citizen-driven ballot initiatives
- Banning all future psychoactive medications including medical cannabis
- Shifting $4 million taxpayer dollars into a legislature slush fund to defend against lawsuits for poor decision making
- Allowing people to bring concealed guns into elementary schools
- A law to protect your kid’s neighborhood lemonade stand
- Making local communities get approval to install public art in their own community if it's valued over $10K
- Restricting women's reproductive health care and choices
- Making locals beg for permission from the state if a school, city, county wants to name or change a name on something or remove a public "monument"
The legislature is currently sitting on over $1.3 BILLION in rainy day funds, a record budget surplus and an idle internet sales tax account. Instead of investing most of that money in education, infrastructure and vital services, the majority party introduced a bill (H199) that would divert a good chunk of it toward tax cuts that will go mostly to businesses, the wealthy and the well-connected while likely raising taxes for a family of four making less than $75,000/year.
My Democratic colleagues and I have proposed real tax relief measures that will actually benefit Idaho’s working families:
- Invest internet sales tax revenue in education, which would reduce the need for perpetual school bonds and levies.
- Repeal the cap placed on the homeowner’s exemption enacted by the GOP in 2016 and re-index it; this would increase the exemption from $100,000 to approximately $150,000 and address the shift from commercial properties on residential property
- Increase the circuit-breaker allowance to help offset property taxes for low-income seniors and people with disabilities, which hasn’t changed since 2006.
- Create a new earned income tax credit.
- Support low income families caring for an adult with disabilities in their homes by providing the opportunity to apply for property tax relief (my bill)
- Repeal the portion of the $2.5 BILLION in annual sales tax exemptions and exceptions that cannot be justified as providing a net long-term benefit to the state.
Unfortunately, majority party leadership has thus far refused to allow most of these ideas to be discussed, debated or come to a vote. It looks like the legislature may once again fail to prioritize working families over its petty political squabbles – especially in a year that delivered a record budget surplus.
I recently saw a headline where the GOP took responsibility for passing $175M in federal rental assistance funding. The TRUTH IS, it took 7 weeks of pushing them past their foot dragging to get this to a vote, when they could have started the process Week 1 and gotten money out the door right away. Instead they were too busy attacking the Governor and everyone else, wasting valuable time and resources. The political games that were being played with this funding was shameful. I'm so happy that it is on its way to the Governor's desk now.
NOTE: I think it's important for you to hear my perspective on how things are going "behind the curtain" of the legislature. I am definitely reaching my limit on the political games and how decisions are being made that are harming everyday people.
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#IDLEG UPDATE
VOTER SUPPRESSION, LEGISLATIVE CONTROL, AND LIMITING THE BALLOT
 H223 - makes it a felony for a friend of family member to assist with ballot delivery. So if you help an elderly neighbor deliver a ballot, Rep Moyle's bill makes that a felony! Nothing more than a voter suppression.
H219 - limits a student's ability to register to vote with their student ID. This bill is just one more obstacle for voting when we should be helping students get their ballots and increasing student voter turnout.
 H220 - seeking to halt all public funding, from all levels of government, to Planned Parenthood or any other entity that provides abortions or abortion counseling, or any person or entity affiliated with them, for any purpose.
H101 - a bill to deny the Attorney General to provide legal advice to state agencies, which is part of the state budget. The AG in Idaho has been a pretty straight shooter on his opinions, but this bill increases costs to citizens for folks to get the opinion they want instead of what is legal.
 H176 - $175M in rental assistance funding to Idaho renters passed the Senate. Finally! The bill only needs to go to the Governor's office for a signature and will be deposited for use soon.
S1110 - makes the ballot initiative process nearly impossible by increasing the signature threshold to an unreachable amount so only big money special interest groups could get something on the ballot. This is one more power grab by our legislature. This will likely be heard on the Senate floor this week, so if you oppose this bill, send a message to your legislators.
H216 - MEDICAID Expansion budget - this budget got approved by a narrow margin in the House! The Democrats were pivotal once again to pass this budget that the voters, of course, support.
H209 - Medicaid stabilization fund failed - this was a good bill that would have taken excess funds in years like this and put them into a stabilization fund to support Medicaid in future years so it isn't in jeopardy.
I wish I could report more 's, but this has been a very disheartening session with too many of these: 
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Touching Testimony - Raising Awareness
This week during Senate Health and Welfare, I had the profound privilege of introducing the story of Hayley, Bill, and their precious little baby, Liv. Liv was born with a rare condition called Spinal Muscular Atrophy, or SMA, a degenerative disease caused by a lack of a spinal motor neuron protein key to muscle development and movement. Little Liv was diagnosed with an aggressive course of this disease at almost two months old—having already lost the benefit of early intervention, Liv passed away at home only 5 months later. A simple newborn screening for this genetic variant could have easily identified the disease in Liv, and, with treatment already available, prolonged the life of this sweet, expressive, and music-loving child.
This is why I stand with her brave parents in calling for this screening to be added to the panel Idaho recommends for new parents, thus joining the 33 states and more than 65% of newborns tested at birth for SMA. You can listen to their moving testimony before the Health and Welfare committee here.
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Social Work and Policy Practice
I had the opportunity to engage in multiple conversations this week with groups of social work students. On Monday, I spoke to nearly 250 social work students at the yearly NASW Idaho LEAD, The National Association of Social Workers, Idaho Chapter Legislative Education and Advocacy Days. We discussed social work and how to get involved in the legislative process, including ongoing legislation and possible action to take. I am always encouraged after talking to social work students, they see the importance of policy advocacy in the context of prioritizing vulnerable populations. We need more of them!
Then on Tuesday, I met virtually with Dr. Cynthia Sanders, a professor in the social work program at Boise State, and her social work policy class. We had a great discussion about the history of social welfare and policy practice today.
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District 19 Feature
Dr. Terry Ribbens, local physician, who has spent the last year on the front lines fighting COVID-19 shares some wise words for all of us...
“Hope – This afternoon I had the opportunity to come together with other healthcare colleagues to vaccinate fellow Idahoans. I shared hope and gratitude with a variety of community members as I administered the nearly painless COVID vaccine to them. Teachers, firefighters, therapists, grandmas, grandpas, dental hygienists were just a few who thanked us over and over for having the privilege of receiving the product of fast modern science ingenuity applied to help us combat this pandemic, one Idahoan at a time, toward adequate community immunity.”
To read the full blog, click here.
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Join me ad Reps Necochea and Mathias for our third town hall of the legislative session. Bring your questions, and we will give another update of what’s going on at the statehouse.
THURSDAY, MARCH 4
6:00PM
Email my intern with any questions at ndavidson@idaho.senate.gov
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Legislative Resources:
- Eye on Boise: the latest Boise and Capitol news daily by Betsy Z. Russell; get an overall understanding of the main events during the legislative session
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Idaho Legislature Website: the statehouse is open to the public, you are also welcome to join remotely via:
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Remote Testimony: follow this link to register to give online testimony through the committee agendas
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MyBillTracker: create an account to follow proposed legislation and get email notifications.
COVID Resources:
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