Press "Enter" to skip to content
A plus for schools

A plus for schools

April 10, 2023

Public education came through the 2023 legislative session much better than anyone had expected. It was not a banner year, but the prospects for Idaho’s public schools appeared dim at the outset of the session because a number of new anti-education legislators were elected last year. Fortunately, because of their inexperience or overzealousness, they were not able to disable our public school system. That’s the good news. The bad news is that they will redouble their efforts in the 2024 session.

A bright spot is the $378.6 million increase in funding for public schools, with $145 million earmarked for increased teacher salaries. That allows for a pay increase of $6,359 per teacher and a minimum statewide starting salary of $47,477. The additional compensation will stem the flow of teachers to other states.

The substantial increase is due in large part to the hard work of Reclaim Idaho, which had qualified an initiative for last November’s general election ballot that would have raised school funding by $323.5 million. In order to nip the initiative in the bud, the Governor called a special legislative session before the election to provide a somewhat larger school funding increase. The session produced a bill raising school funds by $330 million. It provided for repeal of Reclaim’s initiative, which was expected to receive voter approval. The Governor certainly gets a great deal of credit for following up on Reclaim’s groundwork and getting the Legislature to appropriate the $378.6 million.

Going into the legislative session, it was almost a foregone conclusion that legislators would force taxpayers to start paying parents to send their kids to private and religious schools. Outside interests had targeted good legislators who thought taxpayers should only fund public schools, which are run by, and accountable to, the people. The Idaho Freedom Foundation and a fellow traveler called the Mountain States Policy Center worked hard on a variety of so-called “school choice” bills. Surprisingly, they failed in their effort to divert public money away from public education.

After examining how these schemes have played out elsewhere, rural legislators figured that school choice would devastate rural school districts while subsidizing people who already send their kids to private or religious schools in our cities. Also, there would be virtually no accountability for how the hand-outs of taxpayer money were spent. Make no mistake though, the school choice people will be back in force next session.

The Legislature passed a bill that took a tiny step toward meeting its court-ordered mandate to pay the lion's share of the cost of constructing and maintaining public school buildings. In 2005, the Idaho Supreme Court ruled that the Idaho Constitution placed this responsibility directly on the Legislature, not property owners. House Bill 292 will provide $100 million to school districts to pay off bonds and levies. When you consider that the cost of repairing existing school buildings is about $1 billion and that over $1 billion in bonds and levies were on the ballot this March (most bonds failed), it is clear the Legislature has just scratched the surface of fulfilling its constitutional duty.

HB 292 also eliminated the March bond election date, which has been the most important time for seeking voter approval of bonding measures. Let’s not forget that these measures are only required because the Legislature has refused to honor its constitutional mandate to pay for construction and maintenance of school buildings. The bill provides a dab of property tax relief, but not enough for anyone to really notice. But still, the bill provides a puny start for state funding for school building construction and maintenance, which would provide significant property tax relief. Idahoans must demand more meaningful action next session.

Reclaim Idaho volunteers laid the groundwork for public education successes this year. The Governor stood up for the State’s education system, with effective support from the chairs of the Legislature’s education committees–Dave Lent in the Senate and Julie Yamamoto in the House. Idahoans should thank them all for standing up for our kids.

 

The ghost of Aberdeen

The ghost of Aberdeen

April 8, 2023

A guest opinion from William Jorgensen.

The 30-year anniversary of rock legend Kurt Cobain’s death is just under a year away.

That sad occasion could provide a tremendous opportunity for his home town of Aberdeen, Washington, to attract tourists from among the millions of Cobain’s fans worldwide, spanning multiple generations.

What is the coastal town of around 17,000 doing to prepare for it? Absolutely nothing.

I took a recent trip there on the 29th anniversary of the Nirvana singer and songwriter’s untimely demise. This pilgrimage of sorts is about the only reason I would ever have to deliberately go to Aberdeen.

At this point, I’m a professional in my early 40s with children. But like many, I was a teenager in the early 90s when Nirvana and its classic album Nevermind forever changed the course of pop culture.

Cobain had already long since left Aberdeen by then, moving 50 miles to Olympia to achieve his dreams of eventual rock n roll immortality.

Now, all this time later, Aberdeen doesn’t seem to be faring well.

There is no shortage of vacant storefronts. Many of those spaces, oddly enough, would actually make great concert venues. Some even have enviable natural acoustics inside.

Signs of life are present, though. Boomtown Records serves as the Kurt Cobain Memorabilia and Info Center. Right across the street is Nirvana Coffee Co., with pictures on its walls of the band and its members. Customers can even order a “Heart-Shaped Box” drink, named after one of Cobain’s most popular songs. Kurt Cobain Landing stands as a modest park not too far from the house where he grew up.

Those who cling to his memory talk about ways to turn his connection with Aberdeen into a potential draw. But there also seems to be some resistance to that idea.

Cobain didn’t exactly speak highly of his experience in Aberdeen after being catapulted to international fame literally overnight. All indications are that the feeling is mutual among the town’s fathers.

They associate him with his admitted drug use and the heroin addiction that helped bring about his subsequent suicide.

What they’re overlooking is that, despite his many human flaws, Kurt Cobain was and is an inspiration. Someone from Aberdeen made an impact that will be felt far into the future. He wrote songs that are still played on radio stations every minute of every day in every city everywhere. He brought joy and happiness to countless people whose lives he touched, who his songs helped get through hard times. They provided soundtracks to memories both good and bad, and this won’t stop any time soon.

Maybe part of Aberdeen wants to pretend that none of it ever happened. And that’s too bad, because all indications are that the town could really use a boost.

They have just under a year to figure out ways to capitalize on the sustained popularity of its greatest asset, the Ghost of Aberdeen, who put it on the map in the minds of many.

Or maybe they won’t, and the chance will just pass the city by.

Oh well. Whatever. Nevermind.

 

The library attack

The library attack

April 7, 2023

Some of my earliest memories are of hours I spent in our city’s public library, the sense of wonder, of the whole world opening up in this place.

I spent little of that time in the children’s section; I was all over the general stacks, looking up books on many subjects. (In my earliest memories of the place, dinosaur books were a favorite.) Nowadays I generally visit our local library every week or two, and in between use their many online services.

I can’t say with certainty, but I do have to wonder whether many of the Idaho legislators so busily attacking the state’s public libraries have set foot in one for years. If they have any real knowledge or appreciation for libraries, there’s little indication of it in the just-ended legislative session.

Maybe Governor Brad Little has. He has been sparing with vetoes this session - too sparing - but he did apply one to House Bill 314, the ill-named “school and library protection act.” His veto stuck, with the failure of an override attempt - by a single vote.

Here’s what it would have prohibited in libraries: “Any picture, photograph, drawing, sculpture, motion picture film, or similar visual representation or image of a person or portion of the human body that depicts nudity, sexual conduct, or sado-masochistic abuse and that is harmful to minors; (b) Any book, pamphlet, magazine, printed matter however reproduced, or sound recording that contains any matter pursuant to paragraph (a) of this subsection or explicit and detailed verbal descriptions or narrative accounts of sexual excitement, sexual conduct, or sado-masochistic abuse and that, taken as a whole, is harmful to minors; or (c) Any other material harmful to minors.”

Well, that’s a model of clarity, isn’t it? As many have remarked, one of the first books to be banned from public libraries, under these terms of this law, would be the Bible.

Personally, I can say I’ve never seen something on the shelves that would present any harm to children. Librarians, like many other professionals, operate according to professional standards, and the kinds of materials you see in one library is not radically different from those you see in another. But then, almost anyone can find something to object to in the many items in our libraries. Something that wouldn’t draw your attention might get a shake of the head from me. We’re talking about purely subjective standards.

It gets worse. Anyone - a “minor, parent or legal guardian” - can sue over any of the thousands of items on the shelves. Can sue, and while a standard “damage” of $2,500 is provided for, the new law also allows for,  “actual damages and any other relief available by law, including but not limited to injunctive relief sufficient to prevent the defendant school or public library from violating the requirements of this section.” So exactly what ceiling on financial risk are libraries facing here?

The library director in Latah County said the libraries there might have to close for some weeks if the bill passed to figure out how to deal with it, and added, “We’ve never been confronted with anything like this before,” said Sokol. “I’ve worked in libraries for decades, and this totally turns everything on its head.”

At the least, as Little said: “Allowing any parent, regardless of intention, to collect $2,500 in automatic fines creates a library bounty system that will only increase the costs local libraries incur, particularly rural libraries. These costs will be forced onto property taxpayers of Idaho or cause libraries to close to minors altogether.”

A bill intended to slap prison time on librarians seems not to have succeeded this session either; but maybe it will next year. And so might a new version of the library bounty bill: An earlier version of it was tried (and failed) last year. Some measures pass on their second or third or fourth try.

Libraries in Idaho survived this year’s legislature, barely. The bigger-picture message still is that to doctors and teachers, add librarians to the list of Idaho professionals who have strong reason to question why they’re working where they are.

 

Farce

Farce

April 6, 2023

Isn’t it just ironic that President Trump’s greatest accomplishment in his four years of Presidency was something his followers considered folly? It’s a symptom that government has become farce. Theater performs farce. Comedians convey farce. Maybe only government can deliver farce. It should not be.

Think back to when President Trump gets COVID dropped in his lap, like a baby’s diaper spill. He hadn’t drained the swamp; he hadn’t built the wall and now this “China Virus” had his shorts in a twist. Heck, he even got it. And he survived! Old obese man survives the China virus! Maybe we shouldn’t fear this bug.

But then we get Operation Warp Speed. It’s not shining light into all our orifices, it’s not drinking fish disinfectant, it’s not ivermectin for all. It’s dumping tons of money into biofirms that have been sitting on mRNA vaccine technology and getting them to ramp up. They had the capability to make vaccines quickly.

We were seeing deaths mount. Vaccines might help. Give them money to work faster.

And they did.

A vaccine went from innovation to mass production and mass delivery in a matter of months. This had never been done before. This was very new ground. All under the watch of a President whose followers hated the swamp. And huge government funding to Big Pharma is the just filling the swamp, not draining it.

We could all see his discomfort. The press conferences where he waffled, his allusion to possible other treatments. He could not pull off the farce in the face of the mounting deaths. But he tried.

Folks still today hold to the alternative reality. If only everyone had taken ivermectin for a few years, nobody would have died.

But millions did. Even with the vaccine, even with ivermectin, even with mask mandates and state mandated shutdowns. Farce is funny when we can all laugh. It’s not humorous in the funeral parlor.

There is unassailable evidence that vaccines saved lives. A study matching COVID morbidity with vaccine rates is clear. But such evidence does not make converts of the followers. They still line up to cheer for the indicted.

So, why would he agree to send all those billions to pharmaceutical companies if he didn’t believe in the immunization? Was he bought out? Did Donald get corrupted? Were his advisors pulling his strings?

In truth, we’ll never know. Maybe he’s just as dishonest as his Fox News shills.

But the truth is, we didn’t escape the virus. Over a million Americans died from COVID. Over 5000 Idahoans died from the virus. Neither the immunization nor ivermectin saved us. We all went our own way. Theater is supposed to bring us all together in the play. Farce, comedy, tragedy, we should all believe the story before us.

But, as a nation, we don’t do well when farce is the medium. The tragedy of Pearl Harbor united us. The comedy of Bill Clinton’s peccadillo amused us. But COVID was not sold to us as a tragedy. We got the message from our President it was a farce.

Farce makes fun of the prevalent truth.

Then the deaths came.

When the truth has ambiguity, farce has some leverage. Deaths are too solid.

What is truly amazing is that President Trump’s followers haven’t abandoned him for his Warp Speed action. He acknowledged the threat, he acted with decisive action that got immunizations out there for all who wanted. But his followers wanted farce, not tragic death. They didn’t believe the threat.

Now they haven’t rejected his billions to Big Pharma as a sellout. Like they don’t believe his pay off to Stormy was an illegal business deal. This guy has been making business deals to line his own pockets from adolescence. And many people still pay to see his farce. That’s the sad joke.

 

Toward a deficit solution

April 5, 2023

For the 30 years that Sen. Mike Crapo has been in Congress, he’s tried just about everything to bring federal spending under control, and yet it keeps getting worse.

In 1993, the year that he entered Congress as a freshmen House member, the national debt was a mere $3.3 trillion – which seemed outlandish at the time. Today, the national debt is more than $31 trillion, with no signs of slowing down.

That’s not all of Crapo’s doing, of course. Over the years, he has been involved with numerous deficit-reduction efforts. In 2009, he co-sponsored legislation to create a bipartisan task force that would study the budget and propose ways to reduce federal spending and the national debt. It was a sensible approach that went nowhere.

The senator is making one more stand as Congress prepares to debate over the debt ceiling – which actually is a discussion over whether the U.S. should take the unprecedented step on defaulting on its financial obligations. Crapo, for one, says he won’t agree to raise the debt ceiling without some serious reforms to the budgeting process. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is leading the negotiating efforts for Republicans, with Crapo and other senators in the middle of those discussions.

“Raising the debt ceiling without addressing federal spending will only further compound the problem and kick the can down the road until we approach the debt limit again,” he says.

Crapo has a couple of ideas for reforming the budgeting process, and he is going to the “oldies-but-goodies” file. One is zero-based budgeting, which was a failed idea from the Carter administration. The second is a balanced budget amendment to the constitution, which has been pushed by Republicans for decades.

Zero-based budgeting looks good on paper. As Crapo describes, “it would require all expenses within an agency to be analyzed and approved by Congress every six years, and … would mandate agencies recommend funding cuts at least two percent.” Defense spending would be exempted.

In the real-world application, zero-based budgeting was a bust and there’s no reason to believe it would work today. For one thing, it would require Congress to collectively give a damn about the national debt and that hasn’t happened in the 30 years that Crapo has been on Capitol Hill.

Which brings us to the balanced-budget amendment to the constitution, which should be a no-brainer. Idaho and most other states require a balanced budget.

“As I re-read the bill prior to its reintroduction, I was reminded of the common phrase, ‘it goes without saying,’” the senator said. “One would think this common-sense bill was unnecessary, or in other words, ‘it goes without saying.’ Unfortunately, it seems the federal government needs reminding to do what should be done and pass a balanced budget amendment.”

Of course, that will happen “when pigs fly.” Democrats won’t go for it, and there aren’t many people on either side of the aisle who want to open the door for a constitutional convention.

The sad truth is that deficit reduction will not, and cannot, occur simply by cutting discretionary spending. The problem – and Crapo knows it – is with mandatory spending, such as Social Security and Medicare. No … those “mean” Republicans are not plotting to chop off grandma’s Social Security and Medicare. But it’s ludicrous to think that we can live with the same rules through infinity. Crapo says the Medicare trust fund could be depleted by the end of this decade unless changes are made. President Biden has bullied Republicans into doing nothing.

“It is unfortunate that the president is playing politics with Social Security and Medicare. Both sides have highlighted that the trust funds need to be addressed and the earlier this happens, the better off everyone will be,” Crapo said. “There are several bipartisan members who are having serious discussions. However, I am noting some hesitation from more members to try to enact bipartisan solutions and instead score political points.”

And political points are about all we’re going to get as far as bringing the national debt under control.

Chuck Malloy is a long-time Idaho journalist and columnist. He may be reached at ctmalloy@outlook.com

 

 

Round one

Round one

April 4, 2023

Well, now.

After four days of continual media fixation on criminally-charged D.J. Trump, are you about wrung out?  Had enough?  Too much?  Me, too.

We all knew there would be an indictment of some sort.  The only question has been, which crime committed where?

Though this first indictment won't be unsealed until later today, we're told by "anonymous sources" there are 34 citations.  Thirty-four.  Including one or more felonies.  In there, somewhere, is the one about "hush money" to Stormy Daniels, porn star extra-ordinaire.

Being an old media guy, I'm angered by how many media folk - regardless of source - have used those words.  Read that Stormy paragraph again.  Because, I've deliberately made the same error here.

"Hush-money."  See the problem?

Truth is, the payment to her is not the issue.  The crime is Trump reported the payment as a "campaign expense" on federal forms he had to file as a candidate for federal office.

But, what the Hell?  Picky.  Picky.  Picky.

No, it's not.

It's a very real problem we've seen over and over again.  When an error of fact is made so often, the other reported versions will nearly always carry the same error until people have heard or read it so often it becomes "fact."  Which it ain't.

And, in matters of Trump, that's important because, if you're tired of hearing about him already, there's gonna be a biblical flood of Trump-related stories comin' up.  For months and months.  Maybe, years and years.  Other news - often important news - will appear on page six or after the third commercial break on your favorite TV channel.  If then.  So, it's important to keep the facts accurate as they surface.

And, you can bet the farm, after this first indictment, there'll be one or more coming down the pike - state, federal or otherwise.  Too many prosecutors have spent hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars to simply slip their findings into a file drawer and go home.

Whatever the outcome of the campaign finance story, the one I'm waiting for is the paperwork on the January Sixth storming of the Capitol.  If there's going to be "Hell-to-pay," that's where it'll be.  We've already heard Trump was "surprised" by the first indictment.  Just wait for that one.

Nothing concrete about future charges has come about - yet.  But, it would seem convictions of dozens and dozens of those who broke into the Capitol that day are meaningless without charging the one who sent them there.  DJT.

As for the faux GOP outrage, forget it.  This first charge against Trump is legal business, not political business.  Kevin McCarthy and his minions need to take a seat, shut up and watch the upcoming proceedings.

Life, as Trump has known it, is over.  He's spent decades twisting and turning - and buying - his way out of serious trouble.  Those days are gone.  No matter how many lawyers he hires or how many millions he spends defending against the coming indictments, his high-flying lifestyle is a thing of the past.

Imagine being President of the United States.  Air Force One and all the trimmings.  The heads of State.  Four years in the White House.  The lavishness at the pinnacle of American life.  To a cell block.  And, an orange jump suit.

More indictments are to likely follow.  Quite likely.  If you're about "Trumped-out," we've still got a long way to go before it's over.  Developments, from here on, will be the overwhelming storyline.

I, personally, wish Trump no ill will.  But, matters now are in the hands of prosecutors and the courts.  Some of the expected charges he'll face carry specific minimum sentences.  Former President or not, it's the law.

Better stock up on more popcorn.  And, your favorite liquid refreshment.  We've got a long way to go.

A groovy new toy

A groovy new toy

April 3, 2023

Before the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Roe v. Wade decision in 2022, Idaho legislators were looking for a way to put a stop to all abortions in Idaho. The Roe decision had placed restrictions on what a state could do to limit abortions. Legislators cast their eyes upon the State of Texas, which had just passed a statute designed to bypass those restrictions. The Texas law allowed private citizens to sue anyone who knowingly aided or abetted an abortion after a fetal heartbeat could be detected. Someone bringing a successful suit was entitled to a bounty of at least $10,000.

Our legislators were captivated with the Texas bounty law and followed suit in the 2022 session with a statute that gives the abortion patient and her family members the right to recover a minimum amount of $20,000 apiece from an abortion provider. After the Roe decision was overturned later in the year, another Idaho abortion law went into effect. The new law totally banned abortion from the point of fertilization, providing a minimum two-year prison sentence for a doctor performing any type of abortion. That pretty much eliminated the need for the bounty law, because the total ban was effective to intimidate doctors and chase pregnancy care physicians out of the state.

Having seen the utility of giving private citizens the ability to accomplish what the government might not legally be able to do, the Legislature has sought to use the private lawsuit strategy in any number of situations. Senate Bill 1100, which the Governor signed into law on March 23, allows a student to recover a bounty of $5,000 from the school each time the student encounters a person of the opposite sex in a restroom or certain other school facilities.

House Bill 314 provides a $2,500 bounty against a library each time a kid gets his hands on material “harmful to minors” in the library stacks. The House passed the bill, but is not clear whether the Senate will have time to consider it.

The “drag show” bill, House Bill 265, provides for a $10,000 bounty each time a minor is exposed to some loosely defined “sexual conduct.” This bill passed the House by a wide margin, but there may not be time to act upon it in the Senate.

These bounty bills and a number of others have attorney fee provisions that benefit only the person suing.  The party defending can’t recover fees if it wins the case. This is a strong incentive for filing frivolous suits. I could envision dozens of overzealous parents filing harassment suits against their local libraries, causing the libraries to rack up thousands of dollars in defense costs without a means of recovering those fees when they prevail in the suits. Almost all other civil suit statutes call for the winning party to recover its attorney fees from the loser. That prevents most abusive lawsuits.

The fixation of legislative extremists with solving problems that do not really exist is troubling enough. Writing and passing poorly-drafted legislation that is designed more to intimidate than to accomplish worthwhile goals is an abuse of our governmental system.

This proliferation of culture war lawsuit legislation reminds me of those days when the baby discovers a groovy new toy and simply won’t let go of it. Some legislators are so fascinated by their new civil suit strategy that they can’t get enough of it, regardless of the fact that their strategy is likely to clog the court system with cases that simply have no merit. They would do us all a favor by working to address Idaho’s real problems.

 

Treading a careful path

Treading a careful path

April 2, 2023

In 2022, Oregon’s 5th Congressional District race was the least predictable major contest in the state, and now it looks much the same for 2024.

Both the national Cook Political Report and the Sabato Crystal Ball already label it a toss up – a rarity for a contest in which an incumbent is expected to run for re-election.

It’s a fair call. This is a seat in an area long represented for the most part in Congress by Democrats, now held by a narrowly-elected Republican, Lori Chavez-DeRemer. Democrats are prowling the contest hungrily, and the contest should be expected to be fierce.

The earliest indicators of what to watch for involve how the been positioned herself well for the upcoming contest. That doesn’t mean – as many people are quick to assume – that everything she’s done was undertaken for that reason. But the effects of most of what she has done have made her position more, rather than less, defensible.

Members of Congress have two areas of conflict to deal with: from within their party, and from without. Chavez-DeRemer has seen examples of in-party risks close at hand as recently as 2022: A Democratic representative, Kurt Schrader, was defeated in his party’s primary in her district; and a Republican incumbent from a district only a few miles north (Jaime Herrera Beutler, in Washington’s 3rd) lost her primary there.

The first test this year for Chavez-DeRemer came in the selection of a House speaker. She stuck with the party’s leadership and now-Speaker Kevin McCarthy, likely the sensible move for the longer term, though some activists in her party might have preferred otherwise.

Her initial speech on the House floor was short but carefully curated to include Republican campaign talking points likely to win support among her troops back home in its blue-state critique: “We need to get our economy back on track, secure the border, support safe immigration and reduce homelessness and drug overdoses. A report from the National Drug Helpline ranked Oregon worst in the nation for drug problems.

“Oregon is number one in drug use, and number 50 in drug treatment,” she said. “I frequently hear from moms and families who are begging their leaders to please pay attention to this fentanyl crisis. The drug cartels have insisted on taking our children from us.”

That opening speech, while not overtly partisan, has been an outlier, overall, she has been no simple purveyor of partisan red meat. Rather, she seems to have borne in mind the need to appeal as well to independents and Democrats in a district that leans slightly away from her party.

She has appeared and worked with other members of the Oregon delegation, notably Democrats.

She tweeted a picture with 1st District Democrat Suzanne Bonamici, saying (even offering a positive note about the Biden administration in the process), “This morning I attended the president’s announcement nominating Julie Su for Labor Secretary alongside @RepBonamici. If confirmed, I’m hopeful that we can work together to help workers succeed.”

Chavez-DeRemer is a member of the House Agriculture Committee, alongside fellow Oregon newcomer – and Democrat – Andrea Salinas. (The national prognosticators figure Salinas’sDistrict 6 as learning Democratic.) They jointly issued a statement about the upcoming Farm Bill activities, asking for Oregon feedback on the subject.

“Agricultural production is the heartbeat of Oregon’s rural economy, and we look forward to working hand-in-hand with our producers and hardworking families to craft a beneficial and effective Farm Bill that will set Oregonians up for success over the next five years,” they said, striking a bipartisan chord.

She also has moved in a bipartisan way on other subjects, such as on a bill concerning student loans with sponsors across the aisle. (If you get the impression she seems a little more than average visible as a House member, you’re probably right.)

There’s also her response – actually, two responses – to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech.

Her first statement on Feb. 7 called it a “mixed bag,” with some praise interwoven with criticism of national problems.

Her second, two days later, took a different approach and was more affirmative: ““Despite the partisan bickering that often dominates headlines, it’s important for us to remember –especially after the State of the Union – that we as Americans have much more in common that unites us than divides us. Oregonians have an optimistic spirit. And on my first day in office, it was with that spirit in mind that I committed to rising above the partisan bickering and typical D.C. gridlock – promising to work with anyone who’s interested in delivering results that benefit Oregonians and all Americans. I agree that we can work together to expand American-made products, improve our nation’s infrastructure, counter China, tackle the fentanyl crisis and ensure veterans receive the care they deserve.”

Not everything is under her control. The caucus running the U.S. House has been and likely will be prone to controversy and unforced errors, and Chavez-DeRemer will be held to account  for the fact that her control of the seat helps give the Republican Party control of the chamber.

She also can’t control what the Democrats do, which likely will include a strong campaign.

But so far, she’s handled smartly what she can control.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

Back to the source

Back to the source

March 31, 2023

So you’ve been hearing a lot about the Idaho Legislature this year - or at least, if you’re an Idahoan, you should have.

You may not like much of what you’ve heard, or maybe you do. But maybe you’d like to decide for yourself: Cut out the middleman.

Fair enough. I’m here to help. One incontrovertibly good thing we should agree on when it comes to the Idaho Legislature is this: They have made it easy to learn what they’re doing and what their members are saying. Behind the scenes lobbying and negotiating remains hard to get at, true (though lobbying reports and campaign finance documents, online at the Secretary of State’s office, are an underused resource). But a lot of useful material is available for those who want to use it.

It’s easy to track down the basics about how legislation passes through the session, who sponsors it, what it is purported to be about and what it actually says, and - critically - exactly what legislators have said about it, as well as how they voted.

All the pieces of legislation introduced this session are included in something called the “minidata” (named for a daily-produced pamphlet traditionally printed on a folded sheet of paper) located online at legislature.idaho.gov/sessioninfo/2023/legislation/minidata/.

Let’s run down the list and grab one: House Bill 124, which concerns voter identification. Here you can see the text of the bill (it’s not terribly hard to follow), and a statement of purpose, along with a note identifying the sponsor (in this case, a House member and a senator).  Also important, it notes the chronology of the bill’s progress: Where it started, what committees and chamber floors it reaches and on what day, and how the members voted (and when) on the floor.

Those dates are important if you want to check out what legislators actually said and did beyond their floor votes. This matters because the legislature, on its website, stores video of much of its action going back to 2013, for not only floor sessions but also many committee meetings. You don’t have to be at the Statehouse to see exactly how all the debate and activity unfolded: It was captured on video, which you can watch at home.

Let’s follow HB 124, the voter ID bill. We know from the bill’s link in the minidata that it was introduced on February 13; since the bill’s author is listed as “by the State Affairs Committee,” you know it was introduced by that panel on that day. If you go to the “media archive” page on the legislature’s site, you can navigate to the committee you need (or the House or Senate floor) and find not only the agenda and the minutes for that meeting, but also downloadable video from it. You can do this for every session in the last decade.

If there was further debate on the bill in the committee, that probably would have happened on February 16, and you can look up that meeting too. (If you don’t want to watch the whole meeting, you can check where the bill in question was handled in either the agenda or the minutes, and go to that point in the meeting.)

Floor votes often are good places - at least in the case of relatively controversial bills - for pulling out the flow of arguments about specific legislation, spotlighting what specific legislators said (in context), and watching the video of those debates (in the case of our bill, that would mean the House floor action on February 20) is a good place to do that. (A personal note: I developed most of last week’s column, on a different bill, by doing exactly this.)

You can follow the process through the opposing chamber (if the legislation gets that far, as this one did).

If you want the whole, unfiltered story, it’s available, courtesy of the legislature.

I’ve long wondered: What would happen in Idaho legislative elections if large numbers of voters actually followed through and watched their legislators in action? How many would survive?