"END" OF SESSION REVIEW
This has been a rough year for Idahoans, dealing with the pandemic and its aftermath. It was my hope that the Legislature would make an immediate, positive difference for everyone. However, helping everyday folks was overshadowed by the majority party’s legislative power grabs from the Governor’s office all the way to the people themselves, when they passed and the Governor signed S1110 which will make it nearly impossible for citizens to use the ballot initiative process. We broke a record for the longest session at 122 days, but we still may not be through. The Senate went Sine Die, sending a message to the House that we need to end the games and respect the constitution and the people’s desire to have a part time legislature. However, since the House went into recess, it seems that we could be called back by the House, which I believe goes against the spirit of the Idaho Constitution.
|
|
EDUCATION
Early Learning and Teachers
Investing in education is a priority for Idahoans. This session has been a challenge to our constitutional mandate “to establish and maintain a general, uniform and thorough system of public, free common schools.” House GOP members voted down a bill to appropriate a $6 million grant for local communities to build and execute their own early childhood learning opportunities. This was so disappointing, but the Governor's office is working with the Congressional delegation to get the money to these local cooperatives to improve early childhood learning opportunities. The House GOP also killed the teacher salary bill to pay teachers and finally reinstated it. Near the end of session, the House GOP killed a bill to provide $40M to support COVID testing in our schools so we could support in-person learning. This didn’t make much sense to a lot of educators who simply want to teach in a safe environment. Finally, Democrats pushed a bill to fund full day kindergarten but the committee chairs would not provide a hearing. What great opportunities these bills would have provided for so many of our communities.
|
|
Creating a Bogey Man as a Distraction to Cut Higher Ed Funding
The GOP would not approve the higher education budgets until $1.5M was cut from Boise State and another $500,000 from each of the other universities. All of this is due to some phantom concern that teachers are indoctrinating students. In order to pass the higher ed budgets, the GOP pushed through H377 which decries efforts to engage in anti-racism work in education.
H377 is nothing more than copycat legislation that is showing up all over the country in retaliation to 20 million Americans taking to the streets last summer to protest police brutality as was evidenced in the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer, Dereck Chauvin. We saw an unprecedented response by individuals and organizations acknowledging the negative impacts of institutional racism and efforts to address it. The U.S. military, professional sports teams, businesses, and groups like the Boy Scouts implemented training and programs to dismantle racist practices. We even saw images of police officers, one in our own state, who knelt with Black activists fighting for justice.
Then, last September, Trump issued Executive Order 13950 on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping (Order), which barred federal agencies, federal contractors, and recipients of federal grants from conducting diversity and inclusion training that promotes “divisive concepts” involving any form of “race or sex stereotyping” or “race or sex scapegoating.” Conservative radicals jumped on the bandwagon and constructed a nation-wide attack on the progress of social justice by throwing out the term "critical race theory" as some bogey man to fear and scare white people into believing that social justice was about making white people feel bad about America and teach babies that they are racist.
Using McCarthy-like misinformation and conjecture, the legislature, hypnotized by their own entitlement, proclaimed that they would punish any institution financially for engaging in programs that seemed to "indoctrinate" students when elevating the truths about American history and institutional racism. The Senate passed the Higher Education budgets after proclaiming they were "proud" to be cutting funding, especially to Boise State for engaging in anti-racist work and BSU "would get the message" or experience "further punishment." In my comments, I said, "I'm embarrassed by this action; it is a stain on our record..." In the end, the Idaho Legislature further institutionalized racism by enacting laws that denounce analyzing social problems through the lens of race.
While the legislature is doubling down on punishing teachers and faculty, a growing number of students are adding their voices of disdain and will fight against measures to censor the content they want to learn. It's been an honor to work with students this session and lift their voices up in the media. You can catch D Graf Kirk (BSU student) and Shiva Rajbhandari (Boise High student).
|
|
|
BALANCE OF POWERS
The main theme for the session was power and control: the GOP dominated Legislature worked to increase its own power. We spent much of our time focused on the balance of power between the legislative and executive branches, with multiple bills in both houses centered on this topic. Concern over this arose in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Governor's responses to it. However, we must consider not just the short-term politics of today's crisis, but the long-term consequences of how power is allocated in Idaho. For example, emergency declarations are a crucial part of our response to a variety of events, including droughts and wildfires. These events and recovery from them can last months or years. If an emergency declaration is lifted prematurely due to an arbitrary cut-off date, the aid ends before the need does.
Both the House and the Senate introduced bills to allow the legislature to call itself back into session and finally passed SJR102. This will now come to you, the voters, as it will require an amendment to the Idaho Constitution. Many state legislatures do have this authority, but it is important that any proposal to do this be carefully crafted to prevent frivolous special sessions and ensure that Idaho’s legislature remains a part-time body. I voted against this bill because it only requires 60% of the legislature to agree whereas 2/3 majority is required to over-ride a veto and many other things. This gives them a lower bar to take power.
The quest for legislative power also showed up in other intrusive forms, like a bill to limit cities’ authority to spend money on public art; a bill to require legislative approval for renaming a street, park, school, etc. under some circumstances; a bill to limit counties, cities, and other taxing district’s ability to collect taxes needed to provide crucial services; taking away local authority over mask mandates and other public health declarations; and more.
Most egregious was S1110 that passed on party lines in both chambers trying to make it so difficult for the people to get initiatives on the ballot that it might become impossible to exercise that Constitutional right. Reclaim Idaho and the Committee to Protect and Preserve the Idaho Constitution said the new law violates the state’s constitution because it makes the ballot initiative process impossible; they filed a lawsuit in early May. However, the plot thickens. The Legislature will now use the $4M of taxpayer dollars that they appropriated to fight the lawsuit.
|
|
Attacking Local Control
Local control has always been the theme of education, but we saw an overzealous attempt to set one-sided state missives to our local school districts. Several bills set out to penalize our schools for COVID decisions by withholding funds. Several other bills were designed to mandate parent involvement and choices while negating school board policies and decisions. Teachers and their professionalism were berated either through their certification standards or school collaborations. Our local schools are a partnership with every one of our communities--parents, students, teachers, and administrators alike. Our most vital commodity is our children and we should all work together to support them. What I saw was a legislature that hates the federal government interfering in state’s rights, but a state that interfered, intervened and sought to control local entities at every turn.
|
|
TAXES
THE MAIN CONCERN for citizens is reducing property taxes, but the majority party focused on lowering income taxes for the wealthiest Idahoans and blocked Democrats' bills to address the property tax shift. An income tax cut that disproportionately benefits high wage earners is not what Idahoans have been asking for, but the GOP was proud to pass a bill that provides significant relief to the top 1% of Idahoans making more than $450,000 per year, while low- and moderate-income Idahoans were provided minimal relief.
For 18 weeks, the legislature fought about power, wrestled with the Governor, engaged in political theater in their committees, and cut education funding on unfounded McCarthy-like claims of “indoctrination” in the school, and THEN with 2 days left in the session, the GOP rammed a bill through on the pretense of property tax relief -- but let’s be clear, it won’t even make a dent in most property taxes AND it will kick vulnerable Idahoans off the circuit breaker and increases taxes for many people.
In 2016, Rep Mike Moyle and Rep Janet Trujillo-Moyle, both Republicans, led the charge to cap the homeowners exemption at $100,000 and remove the indexing function to adjust to inflation. That significantly shifted tax burden onto residential property, away from commercial and other properties. Prior to this move, the ratio of commercial to residential was about 60/40 and now it’s 30/70 with the burden resting on the backs of homeowners. That’s not fair.
Had the legislature not capped this exemption in 2016, the exemption would be at about $150,000. So what does the legislature do? They throw you, homeowners, a tiny bone and make the exemption $125,000! That’s a slap in the face.
According to the Idaho Capital Sun, “Of the 26,916 Idahoans who filed claims through the program in 2020, 85% were over the age of 65. And under new property tax law passed by the Idaho Legislature and signed by the governor this year, about 4,000 of all claimants will likely no longer qualify for the program in 2022.” That is HEARTLESS!
|
|
Democratic Response to Failing Attempts to Help Families
|
|
Democrats introduced the “Idaho Working Families Agenda” that provides a comprehensive plan to deliver tax benefits to working families and boost critical education investments to children learning basic skills, including reading. The Working Families plan achieves two important goals: boosting working families to grow a thriving middle class and providing funds for our schools and kids. Who could disagree with these much-needed goals?
The Working Families plan includes: increasing the child tax credit, increasing homeowner’s exemption for property taxes, doubling the scale of the property tax assistance program (a.k.a., circuit breaker), optional full-day kindergarten, one-time funding for additional instruction to help kids catch up from the effects of COVID-19, and a sliding scale tax credit. Unfortunately for the Idahoans who need relief, GOP legislators have different ideas on what should be prioritized when it comes to taxes. Idaho is sitting on over a billion dollars of revenue that constitutionally should benefit the health and welfare of Idahoans, like property tax assistance, tackling the crucial lack of transportation maintenance, broadband infrastructure, and crumbling education budgets.
|
|
|
Saw Major Wheatley at the fallen Peace Officer Memorial, honoring officers who have lost their lives in the course of duty.
|
|
Grace was the last page standing in the Senate due to the length of session. So great to work with her and meet her mom.
|
|
|
|
|
|
