Senator Melissa Wintrow

A Few Wins in 

WEEK 4 

Let's celebrate some wins this week that pave the way for a safer, fairer, and more prosperous Idaho!

 

Senator Ward-Engelking and Senator Just joined a bipartisan effort in their committee to address the problems in the budget process. 

The large omnibus bill that was passed in week 2 didn't cover all the basics of the agency budgets, leaving out expenditures covered by law, like the Launch scholarships, full employee compensation, teacher salaries, military, water projects, and more.  So, a hardworking and caring group of legislators introduced their own maintenance budgets to replace those skeleton budgets to be sure that they were true "maintenance budgets."

Check out Sen Ward Engleking on Idaho Reports to learn more. 

MEDICAID EXPANSION DEFENDED

REPEAL BILL HELD IN COMMITTEE
 

In an amazing victory this week, the bill to repeal Medicaid Expansion was held in committee.

Thursday morning the House Health and Welfare Committee voted on a bill that would essentially have killed Medicaid Expansion. The bill’s sponsor and supporters claimed that it merely put new requirements on Medicaid Expansion, if you read the fine print you’ll see that many of the requirements were obvious poison-pills that would completely destroy the program within only a couple years. This was nothing more than a not-so-subtle attempt to kill the program without openly saying it. It’s not hard to understand why the supermajority was so sheepish in its opposition to Medicaid Expansion, since it came into being after 62% of voters voted to establish it, and now polling suggests that support has jumped to 70%! Fortunately, after hours of heartfelt testimony from Idahoans pleading with GOP Reps, the committee voted to not send the House floor. For now, Medicaid Expansion is safe!

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE

AND NOW THE BAD NEWS...
 

The “Parental Choice Tax Credit” was introduced; it does nothing to further any meaningful “choice” for families. Instead, it would give handouts to families whose children are not in public schools with the state cutting checks for $5,000 per kid with no accountability. For the vast majority of Idahoans that amount far exceeds the amount of funds they would be paying for public education, so in effect this would incentivize families to take their children out of public schools. At a time when our schools are in desperate need of funding for repairs and maintenance, we cannot afford to siphon $50 million of taxpayer dollars to these pet projects that would only benefit a tiny portion of our state's wealthiest families.

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE from Sen Ruchti


Guns in Schools

H415 passed out of the House; it would force schools to allow anyone who passes a minimal set of requirements to concealed carry in classrooms. This is bad for many reasons, most of them are quite obvious. Firstly, our laws already allow for school districts to have faculty to concealed carry, but the key word is allow. Many school districts in our state already have their own programs and requirements for teachers and school employees to be armed, but they have a far more rigorous set of training requirements and standards than this bill prescribes. This bill would force school districts, even in communities with neither the need nor desire, to allow any faculty member who desires, to conceal carry. Despite a significant opposition fro the public, law enforcement, and school boards, the bill passed. I'll keep you posted on next steps.