Notes From The Floor

Save Dollars & Lives

As our congress members and US senators explain why a public option and real health care reform is bad, let's be clear, if they do not do it now, the changes we need certainly won't happen on the state level.

Firstly, the US does not have a health care "system" yet to reform. No safety net for the average family. We have a system of care, Medicare, for the elderly, and Medicaid, a state system for people with disabilities and partly for the extremely poor. To be frank, there is no "system" of care for most Americans. We Idahoans are left to fend for ourselves in a sea of sparsely regulated private insurance companies who can deny claims, refuse to insure us, drop our coverage if we get sick, or price us out at any time for virtually any reason.

Note that, in Idaho, insurance companies use "discretionary clauses" or catch-all exceptions in insurance contracts to obscure what conditions, procedures, medications or treatments they might not cover. These are very broad statements giving companies legal room to deny care or payment. Only recently has the Idaho Department of Insurance actually begun to regulate some of these. Director Deal should be encouraged in his efforts. He's got a long way to go.

But to create a system of health care we still desperately need national reform. Eliminating discretionary clauses only helps those who actually have insurance. Those with bare-bones, catastrophic policies or high-deductible coverage will likely never use their policies until crisis strikes and they realize their lifetime maximums and fine print limitations will bankrupt or send them to the County’s Indigent Program anyway. Remember, we as tax payers, pay for this crisis care, through increased taxes and higher hospital bills. Paying for a system of preventative care and real national care could eliminate this tax burden and hospital cost escalator for all of us.

Congressman Minnick says he won't vote for a public option unless it's got cost-containment measures. Let's be serious. If you understand health care, you know that ensuring that everyone has decent access to health care, including preventative care, is itself a cost containment measure. A public option would offer roughly 50 million Americans a chance to go to the doctor rather than the emergency room for care. It would prevent costly cancers and conditions like diabetes and other ailments from becoming expensive medical crises.

Forcing all Idahoans to buy private insurance is not adequate. Such an approach would only make insurance companies more powerful and break small businesses and uninsured families.

Both Minnick and Simpson talk of eliminating "defensive procedures." More effective would be eliminating procedure-based reimbursement entirely. Doctors should be paid a generous salary to provide care. They should never feel compelled to pay off expensive equipment with unnecessary tests and scans. Critically, a public option could be designed to help provide communities with state-of-the-art medical equipment to be shared by providers in a local area.

Electronic Health Records are an important part of cost containment. Together with fine changes in liability law (so doctors trust each other’s tests) having a patient’s history and medications at each doctor’s fingertips, will eliminating duplicative testing and examination. The Obama Administration actually included fifteen million in the stimulus package for Idaho providers to convert to EHR.

As a legislator who serves on three committees which could have been advancing a system of health for every single Idahoan, I promise you change will not happen as long as insurance industry lobbyists continue to run health care and these committees, convincing law makers to kill every bit of industry accountability or transparency proposed.

For the past year, I've asked Democrats and Republicans, rural and urban people around the state whether they trust government or insurance companies more. That's a tough question in libertarian, anti-government Idaho. But people simply don’t trust the insurance industry. Every person in Idaho, with few exceptions has a story of how private insurance has harmed them, a friend or family member. And what of the fifty million who are uninsured or have very poor or inadequate insurance? Health Care in the US could not be more expensive. We have the most expensive and ineffective "system" in the world. People are ready for some predictability in health care, not more promises to be broken by companies with infinite legal funds and a long line of attorneys just waiting to explain why that illness, essential procedure or medication "is just not covered."

Simpson, Minnick, Risch and Crapo, this matters. Idaho’s businesses, families and budgets are drowning in this private insurer quagmire. We state law makers can't fix health care for Idahoans. You have to. It's now or never and not a debate that's just begun.

Without Fischer: Less Violence

I keep getting asked how I feel about Bryan Fischer leaving Idaho. Quite frankly what is most striking is how i feel when I think of the impact he has had in the time he has been here, relentlessly repeating the cruel words of national anti-gay groups and spending long days in the legislature with people who should know better than to listen to him.

But of course the media has covered him solidly. That love of controversy has earned him front billing whenever he wanted it. There are not a lot of people willing to dedicate their lives to hurting other people and doing so with a megaphone in public life. So he got covered. The media made him louder, more powerful and more virulent than he might have been somewhere else.

You know when young people write to me about hope, hope that someday they will not be hated or pitied for being gay or where they will feel safe and not ridiculed or targeted for violence, I think of Bryan Fischer. If it was his goal to ensure that gay teens in Idaho would find themselves in a hostile world, then he accomplished that.

Idaho has one of the highest teen suicide rates in the nation. Typically in any state about 1/3 of all teen suicides are related to teens struggling with coming out or with conflicts within themselves as to whether or not they are gay. If a parent were inclined to be uncomfortable with their child being gay, sure enough Bryan Fischer would be in the paper over the past decades, talking about how we gay people destroy families and live dangerous lifestyles. Of course he has always hammered away at the idea that being gay is a choice. For a parent and that child, something changes when that is the frame within which you exist. For the parent there is the sense that the child can be forced not to be gay. For the child there is the hostility of those statements, the devaluation of the lives of people who are gay, and the conflict of failure when young people, especially young men find that they can no more make themselves straight than their straight peers can force themselves to find boys attractive and make themselves gay. The idea that gay people can be "fixed" or reprogrammed has long been found false, yet Fischer and people like him know that by insisting that being gay is a choice, they can make it a moral issue, make young people and all of us feel that if we were better people we would not be gay.

I'm sorry, but I think the criticism of Bryan Fischer is all too mild. This man, through his relentless words has incited hatred and violence. He has impacted thousands of lives daily, not for the better, by assisting in forcing through a constitutional amendment not just to ban marriage but to hugely complicate our lives by ensuring that we can in no way be recognized as couples by the state or any government in Idaho. Every year in Idaho we will be turned away from emergency rooms or the bedside a partner who is dying. When we die, our joint possessions can by default be taken away from our partner and given to estranged parents or siblings. Already, our social security benefits can not go to our partners. But here in Idaho now, some couples have had to struggle just to get a family gym membership or health insurance from anti-gay companies like Blue Cross.

The cruelty of all this, the lack of Christian values in working to create an environment where real people suffer, where good people suffer, is what is so hard to take. Young people die at their own hands in this state and I lay some of that blood at Bryan Fisher's feet. When you spend your life perpetuating hate against a group of people, people die, people are beaten and harassed and fired from their jobs and even murdered.

The recent death of Dr. Tiller just shows further how hate leads to violence. Fischer can claim he does not condone violence, but how many times did he ensure that those listening would not do harm to those he condemned? I don't recall a single time.

I wish Bryan Fischer's departure meant an undoing of all the pain and harm he has done to so many. Sadly it doesn't. That is up to the rest of us including that vast majority of Idahoans who know gay people as family, friends, co-workers and classmates. We have to make the changes that end the violence and suicide.

The tide has long been turning against people like Fischer. There were times he was shunned in the legislature, especially in the House under Speaker Bruce Newcomb. I think he found luke warm response to his anti-gay rants and recently focused instead more on promoting absurd fear around gender identity and cross dressing. Nationally, efforts to divide our country over gay people have worn thin but I'm sure Fischer will find others to demean and condemn. I send a quiet apology off into the rain today to the people of Mississippi. I'm sorry you get him now.

End of the Endless

We are done. Senators are Standing up to say thank you and good bye. Soon the Lt. Governor will bang the gavel and we will go Sine Die for the year.

I will write more later.

Juggling

In these last hours of a legislative session, stuff flies, errors are made and leaders juggle the timing of bills flying from one house to another. What order are we in? Do we have to read that across the desk again before we can pass it? You will hear us skip from "order of business" to order of business, trying to move things forward at break-neck speed.

Fourteenth order is for amending or changing bills. 13th order is 3rd reading or final consideration where we vote on them and . 12th order is 2nd reading or a place where we can suspend rules and pass bills if we want but usually where they season on the calendar for public absorption for another day before we vote. 11th order is first reading where bills arrive from the amending order, the house or a committee which has passed them.

Right now the caucus leaders Senator Davis and Kate Kelly along with the Lt. Governor are trying to time how legislation that will have to pass the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee soon will get back to the floor of the Senate here for a vote and over to the House for a final vote and passage. We are close. It feels like it. After five years in this place that final juggling is what gives away the end.

Earmarking Road Funding

 

We are at ease for the hundredth time today. Thankfully there is actually a bit of a ruckus over two amendments to the GARVEE bonding road building bill. Senator Keough and Senator Davis both are trying to obligate future borrowing for specific projects in their districts, in spite of the fact that the Idaho Transportation Department is supposed to objectively determine the most needed, safety necessary, urgent roads to build and repair.

Seems always in the last hours that the pork slides into the appropriations bills. Quietly, greasy and a bit acrid. This one smells none too pretty. We'll see if behind the closed doors here behind me in the Senate Chambers if Senator Cameron prevailed in putting his foot down and questioning this idea. Or if the pig will be all the better greased and slide on through when we come back to order.

..........

Greased in the Senate. Look for a bit of Oink in the next round of millions Idaho borrows for roads.

P.S. It the amended and earmarked GARVEE bill passed the Senate but the house killed it later. So the Senate amended a different House bill and the same initial GARVEE funding was tacked onto that bill (near as I could tell without all the two previously added earmarks). While I am not a fan of GARVEE and its millions in highway borrowing, (I always try to vote no,) I ended up voting yes because the Design-Build bill that the GARVEE borrowing got tacked onto seemed worth a try as a cost containment measure. These are the quandries we end up with at the end. Things get packaged together in ways they are not quite supposed to and it all moves quickly, often no time to read every word of the bill. I think this time mostly because that was the quickest way for Senate leaders to get us home.

A Brightening

The sun was out this morning and Carol washed a mountain of spinach while I planted chili plants and put up a trellis for the peas. The Senate started a good half hour late as has often been the habit this past month of waiting, redoing bills and battling back and forth between the the Governor and House and Senate Republicans. But here in the building, faces are not as somber, tense exchanges are forgotten. Grey haired men are back to telling stories. Reporters roam the halls and stairs expectantly.

We passed two transportation funding bills this morning, neither of which was substantial, one of which was pie in the sky, amusing. It would entice trucking companies to register here in Idaho. I stood and presented my final two appropriations bills. I see them flying through the brown granite halls to the House as a sort of trial test balloon. We are hopeful but there is a slightly tentative flavor to the hope. There have been close deals or trials with a whole array of transportation funding and education gutting legislation, almost all of which was killed in one body or another.

We are close to going home. We think.

The rain leaves fields safe from drought. We all know that soon it will dry and there will be pipe to move, fields to irrigate. We are close now. Really. We think.

Messing With Elections

Imagine a school bond or sewer bond election where all the candidates for public office were on the ballot at the same time and weighed in on these issues. Imagine the elections for all these things were held on the same day at the same time and the various conservative, moderate, and democratic candidates took sides and aligned themselves with passage or failure of bonds to build schools, jails or waste treatment plants. Imagine supplemental levies, to allow schools to meet short budgets also became more partisan. Votes on local option taxes for construction of jails. Imagine that sewer elections, school boards, mosquito abatement funding, small taxes for auditoriums, all became part of the same ballot.

Unquestionably it would be easier to go on one day and vote for all of it at once, school board, school bond, supplemental levy, sewers, pest management, library issues etc... But as our system stands now, I rarely manage to ferret out every judicial, county and statewide race that will be on the ballot each primary and general election, much less every one of the various issues that will be decided annually by an election somewhere in my tiny part of the county.

If we held all elections for all the tiny jurisdictions and tiny local issues on two dates, I have no doubt that, even as a voter who works hard to be informed, I will walk into the polling booth and face a myriad of issues I know nothing about, but for which my vote may truly be the deciding ballot cast. I might even be tempted to vote on gut instinct, knowing nothing about the details of a proposal or the candidates and offices at stake. Like anyone, I will do my best, but I will not be an informed voter and in many cases my vote will be cast quite randomly.

Is it a great service to democracy that we have tiny obscure elections held on random seeming dates, where a handful of people show up to vote? I know that there have been some of these I have thought to attend, but in the end did not feel passionately enough one way or another to go to the trouble to participate. I think it is safe to say that I was happy to leave these decisions to those more closely connected to the issues, those more directly impacted.

It is important to note here that the borders of all the counties, school districts, mosquito districts, auditorium districts, urban renewal districts, transit districts, fire districts, water districts and more (the list is really long) overlap in often very complex ways. To hold an election for all these districts at once or even for a few of them at once can mean that ten people living within a quarter mile of each other may get ten very different ballots and have an entirely different set of issues to decide once inside the voting booth.

Imagine all those districts, boards, candidates competing for your attention at the same time. Half of what you might hear by radio, TV, bill board or e-mail might not even be on your personal ballot. Delivering a sample ballot to you so that you knew what would be on your ballot on election day would require as much work for the County elections office as would making sure that you got the right ballot when you came in to actually vote on election day to vote.

All this might be OK, or even really positive if every County had the software, electronic GIS maps, address level boarders drawn for every little district to make figuring out who would vote in each election on election day doable. Sadly Idaho doesn't have such technology or detailed electronic mapping. In fact our neighboring states don't "consolidate" elections in this way either, so it would be a leap of faith to say we would be ready to do this by 2012. But we might be. I don't know. But I do know that yesterday an election consolidation bill passed the Senate, having already passed the House. I can appreciate parts of it but fear how candidates will weigh in on these issues that will now be decided in May and November when partisan races are run. Schools can hold elections on two other dates, for four dates total, which is good. But the cost is more than $4 million, that's enough to have reduced cuts to state employees by more than an entire percentage point, saved hundreds of jobs, or to have ensured that state services to someo of those in need did not decline when many Idahoans needed them most.

In a year when we are cutting budgets so deeply, to bow to pressure from House Republican leaders to undertake such a costly task, one that could wait a year or two, is fiscally haphazard. Even worse, we have obligated funding this project in the years ahead when it will have to compete with other budget needs and when it is uncertain that our economy will be fully recovered.

It is ironic too that this is yet another costly computer system project. Technology projects have pulled in tens of millions of dollars from Idaho's budgets and stimulus funds this year, while we have cut services to people with disabilities, substance abuse treatment and school funding.

Election consolodation is not an idea we are exploring. It is legislation the legislature passed yesterday. All seven Democrats voted against it. It was a proposal House leadership has wanted to pass for years. A way for conservatives in the Republican party to have more control over local issues decided by autonomous local bodies. I am sad to think of some of becoming twisted by association with one party or faction rather than surviving on their own merrits. Be we shall see. I hope this grand and expensive experiment in government is successful, worthwhile and, most of all, nothing to fear.

It Goes On

This weekend many of us got a taste of what it was once to be home with the session done. I know my colleagues from the far corners of the state suffer the most when this goes long. Jobs wait, or don't wait. Children grow, fields lie untended, yards, families alone for a month longer than the usual stretch of three.

If you look at the Senate calendar on line, it may look like we have a lot to do. Those are almost all bills vetoed by Governor Otter that we are having to pass again. Senate Republicans have held some of these on the calendar, skipping over them, hoping they will slip through after deals have been made so that the bills are not veto-fodder for the governor again.

So yes we are back, after the House left for three days. The seventy or so of them are back there across the muraled hall, bells signalling votes, Republican leaders deeply dug in and preparing to adjourn again. The games and fights go on within all the factions of their party and we stay, longer and longer with no end in sight.

Rogue

Morning. Sitting at my desk on the Senate Floor. The trees outside the Senate chamber windows now have leaves. The House has shut down. House members wander the hall in jeans. Republican Majority Leader Mike Moyle has on a striped shirt with his. Senators sit at desks, reading the paper, chatting and answering e-mail while Republican leaders decide just how we proceed. Senate Republican Majority Leader calls Mike Moyle into the back and we sit and wait.

Yesterday the House half of the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee met alone and passed budget bills out to the House floor. Idaho's budget system is praised nationally for its efficiency and cooperation. The 20 member committee with ten house member and ten senators, four Democrats and sixteen Republicans, has, for decades, crafted balanced budgets for the state and kept our process smooth and consensus driven.

Yesterday's break from that practice is no small thing. This year with Moyle's penchant for running his 52 member caucus like a boot camp, and with him positioning to run for Speaker after Lawrence Denny retires, the stakes in these battles seem to have been raised. There is an assertion of power that is palpable in here to all of us. If we ever wondered if one man could hijack this process, we may have an answer.

On JFAC this year, Moyle and House Republican leadership got their 8 Republican members voting lock step on several issues, schools, state employee pay. They strong-armed the House co-chair Maxing Bell and she was caught between the House, Senate, Governor and her long and honorable place in Idaho's budget writing process and its history. But House Republicans control only 8 members of the 20 member committee. Shirley Ringo, our senior Democratic member and Wendy Jaquet serve there for House Democrats. So on those instances when all or nearly all Senate Republicans supported smaller cuts to state employee pay, and all four Democrats also wanted smaller cuts to state employee pay, Mike Moyle could not get his way.

I have no doubt this frustrated him. I sense he very much worked to find other leverage points. Maxine may have been one of those. I don't know. Not to get his way is not something he might not be used to now.

So to have the House yesterday have its half of the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee (JFAC) meet alone and pass budget bills, and then for the House to preemptively bang the gavel, adjourn and go Sine Die for the year should be a resounding message to the State of Idaho. That gavel sound was the sound of one man seizing power.

Even if I agree with Mike Moyle in opposing Otter's $80 million in new taxes and fees for roads in a year like this, the sound of that gavel falling last night sent a chill down my spine. It should send a chill down the spine of any Idahoan who cares about Democracy, ballance of powers, and the integrity of the legislative process.

Cement Booties

It is not like anyone seems to have a plan for how the Republican House, Senate and Governor will agree on anything and go home. Senate Republican leaders are trying to help Governor Otter save face. So polite. But at what cost? And why take the fall for him pouring himself such an oversized pair of cement booties? The House says it is going home with or without us. I agree, we should go. But Senate Republicans have closer relationships with the cement and engineering industry lobbyists who must be camped in Otters office. They say they wouldn't dare override the Governor. So how does this end? Cement booties for all?

Traveling in Sheep Clothing

Carol and I got a puppy from the Caldwell pound, a husky mix, white, seven months old. I slept in the living room with her last night while she settled in. She has kennel cough so we are walking her at night and in the early morning so she doesn't touch noses with all the other dogs which she so very much wants to meet. With bird flu mixing with swine flu and all of us mixing in airports, schools and at concerts from here to the tip of the nation to the south of us, it is hard not to feel for Bighorn Sheep in their canyons across southern and central Idaho. They meet a wooly domestic sheep and wet noses touch and its all over, potentially for entire herds of what is left of the bighorns. Viruses and bacteria hitch hike from one of us to the next across the globe. DNA mixing and then multiplying until the microbes run out of habitat, like bighorns coming up over the canyon rim when rafters set up camps below and the jet boats roar. And so under a bill we just passed out of the Senate, someone will load up the roaming bighorns who touched noses with the wooly sheep and send them off in trucks elsewhere, perhaps to infect a different herd than their own. The wooly sheep, with their own germs, stay, migrate out of the hills in the winter to pick up more disease and come back in the spring. And here in the statehouse, more than anywhere, we all shake hands, touch noses, move on.

Dumb Ideas

With some certainty I can now say that sometimes, with repeated attempts, legislation gets worse, not better. The recent idea of spending general fund dollars on roads is about as bad as it gets. Proposing to increase budgets for roads out of the money we would be spending on schools, when we have cut budgets for every part of state government, including schools, is beyond unbelievable.

Rep. Marv Hagedorn has a great break down of ITD/road funding on his blog. He estimates that, counting stimulus and GARVEE and all the dedicated and carry over funds, almost twice as much money is available for roads in the 2010 budget as there was in the 2009 budget we passed last year.

But if someone thinks that I and others are going to vote for a gas tax increase this year, just to avoid a really stupid idea like taking from schools to build roads, they need to have their heads examined.

I don't hate gas taxes. I live in an urban area where things are not all that far away. I am guessing that my friends in Challis and other very remote rural areas might like them less. But if you want to charge people for how much they impact roads, gas taxes are still pretty fair. Fuel efficient cars tend to be lighter, less impact. Driving more means more roads impacted. Pretty fair.

But it is true, voters don't want their taxes raised this year. Conservative voters especially. And they will probably never, not in any year, like the idea. Some voters, and it is no small number, are more concerned about the economy and see it as the reason we need to go home now and stop pretending we want to accommodate Otter's urgent desire to pass $80 million in tax and fee increases now in the depths of the most severe depression in modern history. Still others are bothered by the priorities demonstrated by cutting education budgets while raising taxes for roads. They might accept some kind of tax increase when the economy and state budget is in trouble, but not for roads.

Perhaps those many Republicans in the house who don't care about public schools are thinking this spending general funds is a great idea because it gives more funds to roads without raising taxes. Brilliant. Except that again and again, polling in Idaho shows that Idahoans care A LOT about public schools and education. It consistently ranks number one in spending priorities. If Republicans want to do this, and I hope they don't, voters are suddenly going to have uncanny insight into what really matters and doesn't matter to the Idaho Republican party. I suspect such a revelation might be a great gift to Democrats in the 2010 elections.

If having Idaho stuck down in the lower third in the nation on many indicators for the quality of our public schools was not enough, maybe we want to ensure we are at dead bottom in the years to come and that our kids have no option but to stay here to work in Walmart and all the chain stores that will represent the last of Idaho's increasingly narrow and stunted economy. 

But I hope this dumb idea fails and that we all look around and find ourselves at the end of our ropes very soon. I hope we get annoyed and finally vote to override the Governor's frenzied vetoes tomorrow or Monday so we can stop wasting millions and go home.

Bloody Gashes

The Senate floor is nearly empty. The few left are answering e-mails on the stand-off and sharing u-tube videos of British singers and snakes. In one video a rabbit bites a snake on the tail and chases it across a lawn away from its burrow. In both videos the most unlikely prevail.

This morning Carol and I went running in the foothills. Cool air, early, quiet. Sunday there were sheep grazing and loose cows on the trail. It is astounding to be able to get so far from the Capitol by running out the back door. Boise is amazing, still rural at its edges, wonderfully so. Owls are nesting, our fruit trees are blooming.

When, on the way home, I tripped and fell on a rock and gashed my knee wide open, I was worried first that I would not make it to the Capitol in time for session. I had three appropriations bills up today and we were convening at 9:30 am. If we can't be in we can let leadership know and get a letter drafted for an excused absence. I don't think we had such formalities in the House.

Carol helped me up off the trail. We tied a bandanna below my knee to keep the blood out of my shoe, ran down the trail, showered, dressed, drove to the doctor, got seven stitches and made it to the Senate floor literally just in time to stand up and present the substance abuse appropriation bill and not miss a single vote before the Senate.

Time Bends at the End

This late in the session, time compresses. A meticulous and formal process that ensures bills get hearings, public airings, readings and time for debate, gets compressed into a Dali-like distortion of days or weeks. Weeks become days or hours or minutes. Clocks bend and the sound of voices requesting unanimous consent to dispense with the rules speed and rise in pitch until our words become like the drone of mosquitoes singing in a hollow granite drum.

So when the Governor's veto stamp falls, some things run backward while others speed and in a flash what was undone is redone. The veto, so dreaded, is just red ink on now meaningless paper.

This morning in the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee we re-did 8 vetoed bills in a few minutes. No debate. On the Senate floor, while we amended horrific education cutting bills from Goedde, Nonini & Luna, the House killed Otter's $70 million road tax and fee increase which Senate Republicans passed yesterday.

Like space squashed, stone and bodies and wooden desks warp like silly putty, we trade place on sides of votes, rearranging chairs while the mosquito voices hum. Republican leaders return from the Governor's office. Deals have been cut on more sides than any players may realize. There are millions of dollars at stake and they, like a magnet or worm hole, bend flesh, squish us all in fast forward through these last few days.

Dealing with Vetoes

Apparently, the governor decided to send a stronger message. Here on our desks after lunch we got a xeroxed letter listing eight more bills the governor vetoed. I'm sure he didn't like the idea of us chuckling. But perhaps really this isn't a problem he can solve with vetoes. Sometimes you just don't have the votes. Sometimes law makers just don't feel they can go home and justify to voters raising their taxes to increase budgets for roads when we are cutting schools and health and everything else.

So what do we do when the Governor vetoes something?

We have several options. 1) by a two thirds vote we can override and pass it anyway. 2) we can run the bill again, even quite quickly with a long series of "unanimous consent" requests. All the rules of the house and senate mean nothing in the face of a unanimous consent request. If no one objects, its done. If someone objects it takes a majority vote. If we run a new bill, even an appropriations bill, it can be done very quickly. It has to be slightly different. We may increase or decrease it by $100 and change the "intent language" which goes with it and directs how or when or conditions under which the money must be spent.

The governor says in his letter, "I tried to be diplomatic and respectful of the legislature ... yet it seems my efforts left many confused and questioning my resolve. So to eliminate any doubt about where I stand ... I am vetoing these appropriations here bills before me immediately." He says also that he will continue vetoing appropriations bills, "until an adequate transportation bill is approved by the legislature."

What adequate means is a frightening thought. I do think there comes a day when the public tires of this, when the $30,000 a day seems just as excessive as the huge registration fee increases and gas tax hikes, all after a session filled with millions of new state and federal dollars for roads.

Odd Vetoes

If Governor Otter thinks his two vetoes have the legislature quaking in our boots, he might want to peek in the Senate just now. More laughter and head scratching than anything. An early childhood education bill with Democratic sponsors and a bill on security breaches and identity theft with bipartisan support. Neither controversial enough to fail an override vote. Neither will send us back to work as a legislature because the state can't function without it -- as a veto of an appropriations bill would have. If a veto is a message, this one might be a whisper.

Alien Planets at War

While it might seem that sitting in the statehouse would be the best vantage point for up to the minute news on what is going on in the statehouse, it's not. As legislators, we might be in committee when something big happens. We might be the last person on the Senate floor working away at an inbox of 5000 emails. We might be meeting with a constituent in the hallway and miss the great conversation in the lounge, where Senators who do not have offices sometimes sit on old furniture to drink coffee or read the paper.

If you really want to know what's going on you probably read Betsy Russell's Blog or you wander around the state house and ask questions. Sitting in one place is the last best way to learn anything. Bathrooms surprisingly are excellent ways to catch up. That's because the House and Senate share bathrooms and they are one of the few places law makers from both Houses mingle. The chambers may be 40 feet apart physically, but in every other way they are light years distant from each other.

The Legislative Services office on the first floor where bills are drafted is fascinating for news. While, by rule of the legislature, they can't and won't tell you anything about who is drafting what or what is being drafted, you do get to watch who walks in and out and chat with them about what they know and why they are there in the dark reaches of the statehouse.

If you are not in legislative leadership, which I am not, of course you would want to visit the Majority and Minority leader's offices. But They are on the second floor in their offices and we don't see much of them. Honestly I've gotten more info out of my Senate JFAC Co-Chair, Dean Cameron, than out of my leadership this year. Dean is often happy to help me figure out what at the moment is going on amongst the factions and who is behind which budget proposal for the next day. Sadly though what he says is has usually changed by the next morning when we vote, so I've made a note to chat with him next year right before our morning JFAC committee meetings.

Republican leadership in their dark back hallway will tell much in sarcasm. Ask a direct question, get a very telling cryptic non-answer. Often very helpful if you know the language and facial expressions. Of course you can not walk right into a Republican caucus meeting because those are still closed meetings with secret handshakes and rituals of consensus I wouldn't like to know. Our Democratic open caucus meetings, as open meetings, do not usually reveal anything anyone did not already know. That is why they are open. We don't say things we don't want the media to hear. Fortunately the media will share the gossip with us when they visit. Which is handy but odd but useful.

Of course this open caucus thing got a bit out of control this year. In the House, Dan Popkey, whom I like, apparently sat in on an open Democratic strategy discussion and then went off and asked a Republican chair woman what she thought of the strategy before the strategy could be put to use. Call me wierd but when I was a reporter I think I did see myself a bit like the starship Enterprise exploring the galaxy under the prime directive. Report but don't interfere or do anything that would change the outcome of the news.

So, this morning, I think it is fitting to consider the legislature an alien planet, this place with foreign rules, pomp, circumstance, odd language and traditions. Surely though the House and Senate are separate planets, or alien races stuck on one planet with starkly different languages, beliefs and diets. The governor's office would be yet another alien race at war with the first two. And if we continue our century-long planetary war, the people of the galaxy will go hungry or roadless or unstimulated. Perhaps they will grow tired and invade the planet of state themselves, bang the gave and call it done for the year.

In any case it is hard to know what is going on in here unless you travel and speak several alien dialects. I suggest Betsy's Blog. She seems to travel light speed and have the best universal translator in the universe.

Steelhead Whispers

The Senate Chamber is empty but for Dean Cameron and Shawn Keough sitting down at the other end by the open windows talking about the staff upstairs. They are trying to produce the final appropriations bills to legislate various compromises and deals that will close out the session. It is all sticky because two education bills are still hanging in limbo on the Senate Calendar. These affect the education budgets by cutting school programs. Adult cystic fibrosis funding also is still in limbo, as are school facilities matching funds, gas taxes, and the details of what is to be done with the Governor's $44 million in discretionary stimulus dollars.

So the chamber is quiet as the sun warms the world outside. My colleagues are cheery in their good byes. We wish each other a good weekend. Monty Pearce comes to ask me if we Democrats are holding firm on not raising taxes for roads while we cut education budgets. The words steelhead caucus have echoed on Republican lips today. This is a bit like the days in years past when the Democrats together with blocks of Republicans worked together to accomplish much in the legislature.

Some day, when moderate Republicans and Democrats get together, Mike Moyle and his conservative house leadership will finally have a problem. They will no longer be pulling the governor and Senate around by the nose. It will likely be hard on those moderate Republicans in the House at first. But if enough were brave, it would, at some point, become hard for Moyle to punish them all. From day care standards and education funding, to state employees, energy conservation and healthcare, things might change.

Ode to the House

Oh House of Representatives with your two tiered chamber,
With your multitudes and chaos
Your skits and singing
I miss your humor

Oh larger body of elected ones, Majority like sheep you follow your leaders
As the caucus doors close and thumbscrews turn
Down hill you trod, the state, its schools,
Its economy in tow

Oh disciples of the temple of Moyle when will you finally gather and stray
Retribution against the few is easy,
Against the many is foolish.
Organize your multitudes.

Oh larger Minority with your 18 members, I miss the difficulties of communication,
The instant messages,
The frustration and joy of meetings where all was not decided in advance,
The meals together, the laughter.

Oh House of Representatives you are a fractioned, contentious body.
In your eyes there is life,
In your voice there is song,
In your pages there is theater.

As the trees leaf in this late session it is time to say goodbye, yet we remain.
From one great stone building to another we shall soon drag our cardboard boxes and folders.
We are done here though your draconian ways keep us longer.
Farewell oh House.
Farewell.

Gauntlet

While here the Senate quietly debated the Governor and Department of Administration's budgets, across the marble hall, on a party line vote, with every single Republican in the House of Representatives voting no, the bill to undo deep cuts to state employee pay just went down. A vote like that says one thing. Republican leadership, Moyle, Bedke and Roberts have decided how their caucuses will vote. I say this because hurting state employees with a 5% funding reduction that includes a fixed 3% pay cut is NOT a partisan issue. Is it?

We are about to go into the 14th order where we amend or change bills. The 14th order is a time on the Senate floor where great mischief can be done. Elliot Werk and our Democratic Caucus is plotting now to "radiator cap" S1055 to turn it into a local option authority bill. And we rally can do that. In this order of business you can actually take any bill and turn it into a completely different bill...

Sadly, John McGee says he won't vote for local option unless Democrats vote for tax increases for roads. I'm sorry to see John will be an obstacle to Local Option when we have so few chances to move forward anything to finally fund public transportation in Idaho.

The Gauntlet is now down.
Today things should get lively and the end should start to really unfold.

Games at the End

For me home is within walking distance of the Capitol. For my colleagues it is generally not. Right now some are trying to extend leases, moving into hotels or contemplating sharing digs for what is a few days but could become a few weeks when you count the personalities involved in Idaho lawmaking.

For now the Senate's Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee members have stuck together on more mild cuts to state employee pay. Not a wholly moderate body, there seems to be a frustration on the Senate's part with House leadership for forcing votes from Republican members. The House has buckled down in its Republican caucus to make larger cuts state employee pay and to make the deepest possible cuts to Education.

With the House split on transportation tax increases and Democrats holding a block of 18 votes that the Governor has refused to negotiate with, it is yet to be seen how the Senate will vote on tax increases for roads. Our Senate Caucus is unified even more than the House's Democratic caucus on this issue. If the vote is going to be close here as well I'm a bit surprised the Governor hasn't been chatting with us much about what he wants out of this session. There are a few things he wants, like lesser cuts to state employee pay which we might agree on. In years past he has been open to local option authority and I'd hope he might consider that and public transportation in particular as a worthy piece of any state wide transportation plan.

But he hasn't really called. So we'll keep at this staring at a board full of appropriations bills someone is worried about sending him. Until things start moving no one is going to budge. Until the first bill is vetoed we won't know how willing anyone is to take the heat of making this session go longer. Every day is probably one state employees' pay, one lay-off you might say.

We won't win a waiting game, only maybe a game of public chicken.

Not About Salad Bars

Salad bars. That's the metaphor being used for seniors being assessed charges for services in assisted living centers. Senator Hill likes iceberg lettuce and dressing. That's it. He doesn't want beets and cauliflower.

H146 changes the way assisted living facilities charge elderly and disabled residents. Assisted living services for the elderly and disabled are not optional services, they are frequently critical medical services residents have no choice whether to or whether not to accept. If you live on a fixed income isn't some level of predictability important? Wasn't the previous tiered rate structure letting providers make as much as they do in other states?

Under this bill residents get a plate for roughly $2,500, a plate, no salad. A room to rent, no services. If they want salad or dressing they have to pay more. I'm sure most assisted living centers would give them lettuce with the plate, maybe dressing. Maybe not. Maybe some facilities will decide to charge for every leaf of lettuce and every gram of dressing. The bill doesn't say they can't. We will trust that accountability to a rules making process and an oversight board which I think assisted living facilities have so far ignored.

And if you know you can not afford more than a little lettuce or dressing, will you maybe then go without care you need even though it is critical to you health? Physical therapy, oxygen, travel assistance. If you are struggling with recovery or health issues, might a provider easily tuck a bunch of caviar under your cauliflower and charge you even though you never wanted it and knew you could not afford it?

And here I play with a really broken metaphor. I'll stop. The bill passed at something like two to 33. Those of us who opposed it were criticized for cruelly scaring seniors.

Once a Senator

Last week I crossed paths with no less than 20 former lawmakers. There are hundreds of us out there across Idaho in small towns and across the valley. So many that each year we have a memorial day in both the House and Senate for the ten or so who pass away.

Sometimes alumni of the legislature retain their titles. Certainly in more formal settings some like former Speaker Bruce Newcomb do. Newcomb works in Government relations for BSU. His wife, Celia Gould is also a former legislator and was appointed by Butch Otter to head the Department of Ag. Other former law makers have become so familiar in other roles that we might forget that they were once Senators and Representatives.

Roaming the halls of the Capitol are the many Republican law makers who have become lobbyists. Chris Ellis, former legislator is now a lobbyist for the Health Care industry. Kent Kuntz. Steve Ahrens. Clete Edmundson works in legislative relations for the Governor. Kathie Garrett Lobbies on mental health issues. Former Senator, Majority leader and lobbyist, Bill Roden was invited back on the Senate floor for a tribute to Alan Dingle last week. Former Senator Skip Brandt, a sort of John McGee type rising young star of sessions past stood at the podium in our Senate Commerce Committee trying to abolish use of the International Fire Code. Brandt lost a primary race for congress and is now a County Commissioner.

Lee Gagner, former JFAC member roamed the halls this week for a few days. A former moderate and powerful member of JFAC, he lost a tough primary race and went from being a fixture to being gone.

Most those Republicans who have lost primaries are moderates. Some, like Otter appointee, Curtis Bowers made foolish mistakes. Bowers published a John Birch society anti-gay tirade in the Nampa paper and was shunned by the many lawmakers who were embarrassed by his words.

Well loved, long time Pocatello Senator Edgar Malepeai's wife, Brenda, recently passed away after a two year battle with cancer. Edgar, one of my favorite law makers, is still an elected Senator but has stayed in Pocatello these past two years to be with Brenda every minute he was able. Her funeral in Pocatello was lovely and graced with spectacular vocal trios and quartets. The Senate took the day off to attend. Lawmakers present and past sat in the balconies of the ISU's huge new music hall and watched tall men in Polynesian print shirts usher visitors.

In the balcony seats reserved for legislators, sat men I might have forgotten were lawmakers, Democrats, like Mayor Chase and educator Alan Anderson. Republicans from Eastern Idaho. They came to wish Brenda goodbye, to be there for Edgar.

I looked out across the hall and realized what an unusual club the people of my district have elected me to. It is not just a two or four or six or eight year membership. For life you are in part a legislator, just as the female spouses of the male lawmakers will always be "legisladies." You can hide from it I imagine, but in a book somehow or on the walls of the capitol your name and picture remain. I suppose even if we die eighty years from now, someone will say our names and try to come up with something nice to say for the annual memorial service on the Senate floor.

It is an odd thought for me, having never belonged to a club with official members, having never been part of such formality and tradition. Once a Senator, at least on some roll book somewhere, Senators we remain.

Roads or Schools

Over one billion in stimulus dollars is flowing into Idaho over the next months. It is divided up into several different parts that can only be spent as directed.

--$90 million is dedicated to education (but schools are still being cut deeply because the money is mostly being kept in reserve.)

--$180 million in stimulus is specifically for roads and transportation.

--$400 million is provided for healthcare but healthcare is still being cut because we will pull back our $400 million in state healthcare dollars and spend it on other parts of the budget.

--$44 million in stimulus has been saved to the end. It is money that the Governor can choose to spend on anything he wants.

On the Joint Finance Committee yesterday we made a series of motions to spend the Governor's $44 million in flexible stimulus funds. In a fiscally and economically prudent motion which is bound to anger the Governor, Wednesday we broke the glass on these funds and used what is now about $7.2 million of the $44 million to restore part of the huge state employee pay cut.

The remaining millions could have restored a statewide vaccination program we cut from Health District budgets, it could have restored therapy hours for people facing mental health issues, restored services to people with disabilities, paid for school field trips we are eliminating statewide, put back huge cuts in teacher pay the Education Chairs are making, paid for teacher aids for teachers with huge classes of students, kept the lights and heat on in some districts or even put back an early teacher retirement program Tom Luna is eliminating.....

But no. We sat in the temporary Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee room, here in the old cement and marble Courthouse and, after Shirley Ringo and I moved to send $19 million to schools, the motion failed on a party line vote and that last of the flexible stimulus money was spent on roads.

Good News

Sometimes good things do happen. This year it is pretty rare but a few good things did happen in the past few days.

1) This morning we reduced the cut to funding for state employees from the deep 5% cut to only a 3% cut with no mandatory pay reduction. For the record, Senator Cameron and Senator Keough are my heroes for today. It is extremely worth noting that the proposal that passed did not put budgets at risk should the economy worsen because it used just over $6 million of the governor's $44 million in flexible stimulus funds which he again insisted that he wants to use mostly on roads. (To be clear that's on top of the other tens of millions in stimulus he got from the feds specifically for roads.) The House Republican caucus is clamped down hard. Not a single House Republican voted for the proposal. I wonder what they tell their districts when they go home? Yes, I voted as party leadership told me even when I thought it was wrong?

2) Yesterday the Senate Commerce Committee which is a frequent bane of my existence for its very great deference to insurance industry lobbyists wishes, that committee did something good and on a 5 to 4 vote actually killed a bill I disliked. The bill would have allowed the State Insurance Fund to skate from under a judgment of the Supreme Court. The sponsor, Senator Goedde, it turned out, is a member of the State insurance Fund Board, and was a named defendant in the Supreme Court case.

3) Senator Kelly, after years of work on ethics issues, passed a bill to require some disclosure of personal finances for candidates for public office in Idaho. Yep you might know a little bit in advance about the many conflicts we may have in voting on legislation in Idaho. As to a preview of my own disclosure, I'm pretty sure I don't own single share of stock or have investments in anything anywhere. I'm hoping someday I might make enough to have something to disclose but for now I'm going to be really boring.

Really a Bill

The following is really the real language of the actual bill brought by the Chairs of the Legislature's two very real Education Committees, Representative Bob Nonini and Senator John Goedde. The bill really does eliminate actual state funding for actual educational field trips statewide, and cuts actual funding for transporting actual kids almost only in the Boise School District. Really.

(7) The state department of education shall calculate the amount of state funds lost in
41 fiscal year 2010 by each school district as a result of the decrease in the state reimbursement
42 from eightyfive percent (85%) to fifty percent (50%) of certain eligible costs, including the
43 reduction calculated for districts that contract for pupil transportation services, and excluding
44 any reductions made due to the limitation on reimbursable expenses, all pursuant to subsection
45 (5) of this section. The amount so calculated shall be distributed to each school district in fiscal
year 2010. For each fiscal year thereafter, the amount distributed pursuant 1 to this subsection (7)
2 for each school district shall be determined as follows:
3 (a) Divide the amount distributed to the district pursuant to this subsection (7) in fiscal
4 year 2010 by the district’s support units for fiscal year 2010;
5 (b) Multiply the result of the calculation found in subsection (7)(a) of this section by the
6 number of support units in the current fiscal year;
7 (c) Determine the percentage change in statewide transportation reimbursements as
8 provided for in subsection (5) of this section since fiscal year 2010;
9 (d) Determine the percentage change in statewide student enrollment since fiscal year
10 2010;
11 (e) Subtract the result of the calculation found in subsection (7)(d) of this section from
12 the result of the calculation found in subsection (7)(c) of this section;
13 (f) Adjust the result of the calculation found in subsection (7)(b) of this section by the
14 percentage result from subsection (7)(e) of this section....

I'm sure it wasn't easy coming up with a formula that hurts only one district.

We spent more than an hour debating and fighting through various amendments to this bill yesterday and will again work on amendments today or tomorrow since those quite inadequate changes that we did pass yesterday "have problems." Democrats will again try to amend the bill so it does not retroactively cut all field trip funding or gut transportation funding for Boise schools. Fun procedures Senator Kelly and the rest of us may use include deleting the enacting clause, which renders the bill null and void.

In the Realm of Politics

Do the Co-Chairs of the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee, Senator Dean Cameron and Representative Maxine Bell really decide how much to cut Idaho education budgets or how much and in what way to cut state employee and teacher pay? No.

Wednesday night Dean Cameron and Maxine Bell sat on the stage in front of more than 600 teachers and parents and had to defend cuts to education and teacher pay because Governor Otter and House Leaders Mike Moyle, Ken Roberts and Scott Bedke didn't feel obligated to come defend their own parts in really deciding how these budgets will be set.

Wednesday night Dean Cameron sat in the middle of a huge line of silent law makers under the lights and read from a script. I know he didn't relish it. He is a kind, reasonable man who I believe tries hard to do the right thing in a place that has changed much over the past five years. He said he had no choice but to cut education. In the realm of politics he did not. In the realm of the real world there are ways to keep education budgets whole for 2010 and 2011 even if the economy worsens.

But some Republican leaders refuse to put education higher than roads or business tax cuts in their set of priorities. These people ran on smaller government platforms and if it means cutting schools, laying off teachers and state employees and cutting pay till it all unravels, they will do it.  They have done it. Privatizing broken government services puts our tax dollars in the hands of businesses, which may or may not do a better job than government.

These leaders, along with Tom Luna, Bob Nonini and John Goedde I believe would privatize education, like we've privatized health care, even if such a system would benefit only those with enough money to pay for a good education. Even if those with less money would get something less for their children.

Wednesday night Governor Otter didn't come and defend why he will not spend his $44 million in flexible stimulus dollars to keep our schools whole. Representatives Moyle, Roberts and Bedke in the House did not come and defend their work to force their 8 House members on the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee to try to cut education and teacher pay even deeper than we actually have.

In the realm of the real world, Republicans in the House of Representatives have elected leaders who now decide how the House will vote on certain issues, local option taxes and public transit funding being one of those issues and education funding and policy being another. 

In the realm of politics, Republican legislators in the House of Representatives do not get to vote their conscience or in the interest of their their districts. To keep committee assignments or avoid a Republican primary election, you do as your leaders say.

You have no choice.

In The Words of Teachers

Boise High Auditorium is cavernous. It is like an old opera house, with a big balcony, hundreds of lower seats, and a large, deep stage. Almost 40 Senators and Representatives sat on that stage under bright lights in the dim hall. We sat in a big semi circle behind tables set with table cloths and silent microphones. Dean Cameron, Chair of our Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee, gave a long and very incomplete rational as to why we cut the public school education budget by 7%, cut teacher pay, froze pay advancement and eliminated much of the state's reimbursement for educational field trips and busing. Tom Luna was cut off from going on longer on the same subject by a bell operated by three women stationed in front of the stage. I am guessing they will long remember getting to ding this Superintendent of Public Instruction into silence.

After the introductions, teachers from all over the state stepped to the microphone one after another to tell stories of what it is and has been like in their classrooms these past years. They described their students or trying to pay their bills. Together the 30 or so of them gave the most amazing State of the Schools I've ever heard.

--One male teacher described his school without walls, how for years they saved up to buy walls to make actual classrooms. He said that was before the budget cuts.

--A local teacher, the only one from Boise, described her work with at risk teens. She was inspiring. You could feel how much she cares, how talented she is with these kids. She was just laid off.

--One woman teaching in a school near the Wyoming boarder said she pays over $1,500 to buy classroom supplies for her kids. Otherwise they have to write letters explaining why they need them. She has tried to save them the embarrassment. She could make $20,000 more dollars a year more, an hour away in Wyoming.

--A teacher who has been teaching for decades and still works 11 hours a day, told a talented scholarship student to get certified in Washington not Idaho because the pay and the teaching conditions are better.

--One teacher described teaching for 19 years, feeling undervalued and underapprecaited. She said we could spend dollars when the kids are young and it's easier, or when they are older and it is intolerable. Schools or prisons. Our choice. Clearly young and energetic, she said she has had it, and may not teach again in Idaho.

--Others reminded us that we are 41st in the nation for teacher pay and have the 4th highest class sizes in the U.S.

--One teacher said she does not need Tom Luna's expensive programs and technology, his reading and math "initiatives," she knows how to teach.

--Some described being parents as well as teachers and worrying or even moving to keep their kids out of some of the more underfunded districts. They talked about crowded classrooms.

--Some described schools where art and science and civics has been cut and what might spark some kids to stay in school or be inspired to learn is lost.

--One powerful speaker challenged us as lawmakers to come to her class room and watch her teach.

On that stage, squirming in the hard chairs, lawmakers sometimes looked uncomfortable. Split almost evenly between Democrats and Republicans for once, it felt odd that not a single member of Republican House or Senate leadership was there, not the Chairs of the education committees John Goedde or Bob Nonini, yet all six members of Democratic leadership for the House and Senate were there. The only one allowed to speak was Dean Cameron. He was tasked to speak for all of those whose hands are dirty with this mess we have made of so many schools. And he conveniently neglected to mention the $44 million in discretionary stimulus dollars that Governor Otter has and wants to spend on roads and sewers, over and above the stimulus dollars Idaho was given specifically to spend on roads. Otter can spend that $44 million on anything.

No we didn't have to do this to teachers or schools or kids or to State employees. Someone chose this course. Dean, you can stand and say we had no other options, but you know better. We do not have to cut schools when we've already starved them to the bone.

To Ask, Debate or Explain

In debating a bill on the floor of the Senate we have a few options for speaking or making a point in opposition or support of the bill.

1. You can ask a question (usually of the sponsor.) To do that you ask of the Lt. Governor, Brad Little (or of the Pro Tem if he is in the chair running session), "Mr. President, will the good Sponsor yield to a question?" The Sponsor can choose to yield and answer the question, or not. On Monday Senator Kelly chose not to yield to Senator Davis. That is the first time I've seen that in the Senate. With Bart Davis it may be wise not to yield because if he gets that look in his eyes, he may be up to mischief and the result may be that he makes you look silly.

2. You can ask the President permission to debate the bill. "Mr. President to debate against the bill." That in the Senate is far less common than in the House. Frequently if someone here has a problem with a bill they ask questions, or if they are powerful, and the sponsor is reasonably powerful, we go at ease to work something out. Otherwise if the body is divided and nothing can be worked out by sending the legislation to the amending order, and going at ease can no better determine the fate of the legislation, then we proceed, debating to persuade our colleagues to make yes or no votes to the best of our abilities.

3. In the Senate, if you did not debate a bill, you can explain your vote. This is a 60 second chance to debate yes or no, right in the middle of the verbal roll call for the vote itself. It can be a useful persuasion technique if your name is somewhere in the first part of the alphabet or if there are many people who have passed or declined to vote in the roll call, giving themselves more time to make up their minds or just passing to wait and see how others will vote.

Bad Mussels & Betsy's Ugly Tie

Today on our first bill we had a long delay on the pea and lentil commission while several members of Republican leadership slowed things down so Senator Cameron could get back to the floor to vote. Senator Davis described how much Senator Cameron appreciated peas and lentils and the lentil commission. Senator Stegner extolled the virtues of lentils, their fiber and flavor and protein. The delay was effective enough to get Senator Cameron on record as voting Aye with the rest of us.

We met early today at 9:30 and so blazed through many bills. Two I was the floor sponsor for, meaning I was assigned or offered to take the bill in committee and to present and argue for it to the full Senate. I also asked questions about the $5 Kayak/Rubber Raft Mussel Tax bill as well. I wish I had voted no. Someone voted no. I don't know who. I know that the mussels are a threat and that rubber rafts COULD conceivably carry the young mussels, but it is hugely unlikely, especially as I remembered how few boats ever leave the state to be infested where the dangerous invasive mussels actually live. I voted yes, tugged along in the long roll of yes votes.

The bill was not an ideal solution for raising money to pay for education, enforcement and inspections of the motorized boats that are most likely to carry mussels. However Betsy Russell has donned an ugly tie, so the end is near and I suspect we are getting to the point where more and more imperfect legislation will be set before us, rushed with the force of time and the daily cost of our staying here in this building. What $30,000 a day did I recall?

Hate, Spit & the Word Gay

A few weeks back I asked people to post signs on their cars, homes and places of work that said in big letters, "Protect Our Gay Friends, Amend Idaho's Human Rights Act." The word gay was particularly big, maybe 7.5 inches wide by 4 inches tall. You couldn't miss it.

My partner Carol and I put one of these paper signs in the back side window of our car. We are gay people and it would be surprising if anyone living around us had not noticed by now that we are gay. Yet still I guess I was taken aback when one morning after we posted the little paper sign, that someone clearly spit on that window of our car. And if a day or two of the spitting was not enough, I drove to a meeting one night and someone put an obscene little flier on my windshield. I admit some places I started parking lately, I wondered if the car would be safe. I knew we would have to take the sign down to go to my mom's place near Challis.

This is all to say that I do recognize that perhaps I was asking too much. That even I might forget how much anger or hate or cruelty there is in the world, that I would ask people to open themselves up to hate, especially straight allies or gay people in rural areas where there is so little safety, that I would put anyone at risk bothers me.

I figure I have grown isolated living in the north end. But if I am isolated to what happens, my legislative colleagues are far more so. They might not see the gleeful cruelty or seething in Bryan Fischers web posts and missives. They might not have visited the web sites where people talk about me as a gay person and about guns in threatening ways. They might not have read the recent email to me saying I should leave Boise because there are people who moved here from places like California to get away from gay people like me. The email was a bit more harsh in its language. I won't quote it.

In essence I reel with trying to comprehend how many of my colleagues do not believe discrimination happens while all around them it does and I only wish they would put one of those big gay signs on their cars and see what happens.

But I don't want to ask that. I don't want to ask that of anyone. So I found better signs. They say "Human Rights for ALL: Amend Idaho's Human RIghts Act." I don't think they will put anyone at risk. As a nation we do believe in Human Rights. As a state the vast majority know people need them. I feel better asking people to post these signs. I think more people will. I know I was asking too much with the other ones.

It was like with talking to one of my colleagues about how best to go about passing the changes to the Human Rights Act we need in order to protect gay people. He said we needed to find a way to do it so that we don't have to say gay, or sexual orientation or gender identity. I'm thinking it is a bit hard to write a law that won't mention the people it is supposed to protect. There is a lot of room for misinterpretation there. If anyone has ideas I'll take them.

Short of that, it is just going to have to become a bit more safe to say the word gay. A lot more people are going to have to say the word (kindly) or wear those signs that say gay someday. Straight people too, until it gets more safe and normal for all of us to see people be OK with the word gay. For the word gay to be boring would be ideal. For now I have the signs that say "Human Rights for ALL" and don't say gay in big letters. Because we are not there yet.

You can get a sign to print for your car or house. While the words don't have the force of law, with time they can show more people care, ordinary people everywhere around Idaho. That's what matters. And I feel pretty sure that, even without the word gay, people will know what we mean.

Breaking Our Schools

I'm trying to understand the ideal school in the mind of Tom Luna, Butch Otter, John Goedde or Bob Nonini. These men are the four most powerful education policy makers in the state of Idaho, none have ever been public school teachers and I'm pretty sure that at least four of them don't even believe in traditional public schools. But what they believe we should have instead of our current system of free public education mystifies me.

Tom Luna has advocated for vouchers so that more kids can attend private schools. He must feel private schools do a good job. I've taught in private schools and public schools. I can tell you a key difference. Some of the best private schools in the state tend to have far smaller class sizes and more money for field trips and travel to ensure kids get hands-on experience so that they can finally figure out how all those words in their text books apply to the real world. Yet here we are this year with proposals that specifically cut field trips out of public school budgets and slash funding so far that many districts, already struggling, will have no choice but to lay teachers off and increase class sizes just to keep the lights on and the buses running.

This morning we met in the attic again before JFAC. The staff passed around color coded packets of paper representing three different proposals for funding public schools. There was the depressing-enough pink proposal from Democrats Wendy Jaquet and Shirley Ringo, who tried to do as little damage as possible given the budget situation. Then there was the "wisteria" purple proposal which tried to make a 5% personnel cost reduction for schools on top of stealing an extra $20 million in state dollars to use for other projects besides education. A yellow (code name "daisy") packet was supposed to represent the compromise which in itself was a grim mimic of Tom Luna's budget proposals including a two year phase out of early retirement and a massive cut in transportation for Boise schools.

There was no winning with this budget and this set of motions. But the votes fell entirely on party lines. Republicans had made a back room deal to actually put forward only one set of motions, including stealing the extra $20 million from schools to use on other projects, and failing to challenge Governor Otter on the $44 million in discretionary stimulus funds he wants to spend on roads and sewers. When the 4 to 16 votes were all called, it was clear that our current education leaders have a very sinister plan for our schools.

John Goedde has been recorded as saying, in essence, that public schools have failed. Bob Nonini has put forward some of the most anti-teacher, anti-public school legislation our state has seen. Butch Otter is sitting on $44 million in stimulus he could use to keep schools from laying off teachers and dooming kids to classrooms stuffed to the gills, frustrated and clamoring for help from single exhausted teacher. But he won't.

If there were ever an argument for saying that Republicans are not fit to lead our state on education, this year is it. After a decade of living so close to the bone that there is nothing left to cut, these cuts we are making this year could really leave a generation forever set back in its progress toward learning, its skills and enthusiasm for acquiring knowledge, its access to teachers who value what they do for work and, for decades, have given everything they've got to make sure kids learn in spite of the condition of our schools. This year, with the incredibly ugly set of priorities our four Republican education leaders have displayed, I can only believe they hope to finally once and for all break our public schools.

An Un-Do

Yesterday morning Senator Keough, a soft spoken, well respected long time JFAC member and co-chair, made a motion that we re-open the budget for the Office of Species Conservation. She explained that she rarely supports doing this. She doesn't support "Un-Dos."

Last week I'd joined Rep. Ringo and 8 Republicans in voting for a substitute motion to cut two staff from the Office of Species Conservation. The move was wildly unpopular in my district since the office mostly administers grants to private land owners to help them comply with the federal Endangered Species Act. My childhood home of Custer County is one of the largest beneficiaries of these grants. There in the mountains, ranchers and farmers along the many forks of the Salmon River get funds to hire local contractors to install fish screens and other contraptions on irrigation ditches along the river banks and tributaries where endangered salmon spawn and smolt often swim and face sudden death in pastures and alfalfa fields.

So, yesterday, Senator Bert Brackett made a motion to restore staff to the Office of Species Conservation and as I did last week, I seconded his original budget motion for the office. Bert looked sad and apologized to the committee for not explaining adequately how important the office is so that the committee might have supported his earlier motion. He owed no apology.I told him so and apologized to him and the committee for abandoning him to vote for Senator Siddoway's motion to cut the budget. There is a respect we owe each other to let our colleagues know when we change our minds having said at first we will support them. It is about your word. I take it seriously. Not all do.

Ironically the Director of the Office of Species Conservation got up after the motion and before we voted nearly unanimously to add two new staff back into his budget. I think he hoped to persuade the committee that he is a good guy and that his office deserves the existing attorney and 7 other staff. In any case, he, the director of the Office of Species Conservation, whose work it is to help protect endangered species, smiled at the committee in anticipation of our vote, proclaiming the Endangered Species Act the most draconian law in the nation.

Boxes & Neck Ties

I think it is time to put on big ugly neck ties and get this legislative show on out of town. Downstairs the brown packing boxes have been delivered. Still flat, they occupy a part of the hallway on the first floor.

Crocuses have faded and my spinach is a green fuzz across the garden, having miraculously survived the freezes and frosts.

One of my afternoon committees has gone "call of the chair" or adjourned until further notice. The bills yet to come are ones I dread. So I think it is really time for the neck ties. We have less than a week more of budget setting. 7 am meetings, lunch meetings, 4 pm meetings for just a little longer. In total we may be two, three or some say four weeks from finished depending on how serious the governor is about vetoing bills to get his tax and fee increases on top of his nifty new compromise of $82 million in GARVEE borrowing and tens of millions in federal stimulus. The governor is amassing one heck of an empire of roads.

And we are cutting education..........

We'll be paying for the GARVEE debt for a long long time, even when we can least afford it ... mostly to widen a stretch of Nampa-Boise freeway that could never be wide enough. I voted no this morning with a hand full of conservative Republicans. But it passed anyway. I'm not much of a borrower. Especially with the economy so volatile. This is a good time to pay things off and get back closer to the black.

I need to track down that tie. Time get us all headed in the direction of home.

Horrible Power

No where in the legislature is our power as legislators more evident than on the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee. There more than anywhere we are like godzilla-sided toddlers roaming across the landscape of government, too tall to see the detail of what's below, too big to look in the windows and figure out through the course of a year what's really going on. We rely on staff and I picture them some days like all too generous parents, gently trying to keep us from doing damage while providing us with everything we need in order to do what we will do each day.

With a single motion we can unexpectedly lay people off as we did with the office of species conservation last week. In my pink onesies I burped out the final deciding yes vote and they were gone.

With a single motion we can build a bit of a fervor around something and kill a whole agency as we did with the women's commission this morning. The $23,000 agency is gone. I was the only Democrat to vote yes for getting rid of it. My reasons were very different from my colleagues who claimed budget constraints and duplication. I voted to eliminate the Women's Commission because it is an absurd joke to expect a $23,000 agency with one part-time staff person to achieve pay equity and end disparities in the status of women in Idaho. Ending inequalities is not supposed to be like playing house. I don't think we as a legislature should get to put forward this agency to help us pretend this state government really cares.

Bad Motions

I got in trouble for wearing a band aid on my forehead yesterday during floor debate. Perhaps it was recognized as political statement on behalf of fellow teachers rather than as a real sterile dressing designed to protect a wound.

Today we came to the attic of the old courthouse where the Joint Finance Committee meets at 7 am on budget setting mornings. We gather with coffee or orange juice around several big folding tables where the heat rises. Typically we share our “motions” or give each other a bit of fair warning as to where each of us proposes that a budget should be set. How many employees will we give an agency? How much for rent and utilities? Any replacement items, new computers, cars, servers? And what money are we cutting? Where will funds they do get come from? From the federal government, a dedicated fee, a grant or from the big $2.4 billion state tax bucket called the general fund?

This morning we had to make a decision we have been putting off while the world adjusted to what the more than one billion in stimulus funding will mean. We had to decide how much to cut state employee pay. There were seven motions or proposals. In the heat of the attic in this big old cement and stone building anything seemed possible. As we passed out the motion sheets in that room that used to be part of the county jail, the options seemed to contract.

By the time we got to our committee room in front of the cameras our choices were down to three. Three bad motions made on the table in that comparatively cold and empty room. All three motions proposed to cut state employee costs by 5%. The worst one of these passed. It cut every state employee’s pay by 3% and then mandated 2% more in employee cost be cut through furloughs, keeping positions vacant and if necessary through layoffs.

The House members were lock step for this motion and its 3% salary reduction and 5% net cut in personnel funding. Why in any rational way they would want that, I do not know. We could have given more room for agencies to use furloughs more or vacant positions. We could have used dedicated funds or stimulus funds to keep it at 4% or even 3% total personnel cuts. But leadership in the House has been twisting arms for weeks. I’m not sure what any state employee ever did to them or if it is just that those particular Republican leaders need to keep hating government, even when government is our tax dollars, people’s jobs, people’s lives.

So I feel awful. I tried to make a motion that was only so slightly better than the motion that we did pass. It was a band-aid for a gaping wound.  Our Democratic votes are band-aids on gaping wounds in a state government run by people too often angry at living in a nation increasingly blue and progressive. We serve here at the mercy of a political party increasingly hateful toward cities, astoundingly favorable to big industry tax breaks and deregulation at the expense of the families, farms and small businesses upon which our economy and unique existence as a state depends.

Some days, while I love my colleagues as individuals, the politics get so sad and ugly that I feel like a twig in a big red river flowing ever more quickly toward the edge of the earth.

Role of Government

One of the pages is playing the bag pipes. Legislators are clapping and foot tapping outside the Senate chambers. Many JFAC Senate members have been up with budget staff trying to understand how we ended up with a 5% state employee reduction after all the work we have done to blend stimulus dollars into the budget and keep us from laying off people state wide. But the governor seems to be saying that since so many state workers are in Boise, he'd rather spend the money on highways. The House leadership has buckled down on their members to try to cut deeper into all parts of what the state does. The old starve the beast mentality, as if childhood health care, teachers in class rooms and people making sure that our drinking water does not get contaminated are some evil entity because they are paid for with tax dollars. This is the work of the state which we as tax payers pay our taxes for. We expect this of state government because we don't want a country in which the very wealthy get the kobe beef education, water and health care and the rest of us get the grizzled, greasy, big mac patty version. We know our state and nation are stronger if our people are well educated and have the skills they need to use their ingenuity to advance our economy and care for their families. We know crisis is expensive, that letting something simple go untreated because you can't afford care, means more cost for government and taxpayers down the line.

So we clap and the bag pipes play while the battles go on behind the scenes.

What is the role of government? How much can we cut before efficiency becomes inadequacy? How much costly crisis do we create when we underfund basic essentials and when let class sizes grow?

Bicycles on Highways

Pleeeeez Mr. Hammond and Mr. Governor, do you really think that all the people forced to ride bicycles because they can't afford or can't drive a car live in the North End? What do you think people in Middleton or Shoshone or Post Falls do when they don't have the money for gas or car repairs? Does it really help these people that you still propose to raise registration fees to as much as $120 after spending every penny of the stimulus you can, borrowing hundreds of millions through GARVEE and raising gas taxes to build more roads.

Mr. Governor your people talk about bike lanes like they are a luxury item. Have you ever tried to ride to work on a rural highway, especially one where the transportation department has eliminated bike lanes and further narrowed shoulders at your request. I grew up in Custer County and I am not talking about he North End of Boise, I am talking about trying to figure out how Idahoans get to work when they don't have a working car.

It might be OK if you'd dedicated some funding to making sure there was some bus or van or some public transit in every community, but you and people like Mike Moyle say public transit doesn't work. What do you mean? Doesn't work for you because you can't imagine leaving the comfort of your giant new pick up truck to ride a bus? What if you had no choice?

What choices to Idahoans have left? Walk, bike, hitch hike? What about kids in rural communities? They walk and bike along state highways everyday. Are bike paths a luxury for them? How many kids and adults in Idaho die on highways every year because they have no safe place to walk or ride? I  bet someone knows.

All for Roads and Roads for All

Headed into the Joint Finance Committee where arms have been twisted so the Governor can cut State Employee funding by 5%. Every dollar he can funnel into the world of concrete and asphalt is going there. As if the road construction industry's boom alone will revive the economy while we lay off state workers, make them take deep furloughs, cut teachers and teacher's aids, grow class sizes and weaken our ability as a state to serve people when they need it most. An economy needs small businesses and I'm wondering where we are working to help them. Little home energy efficiency companies, tech companies who scan documents and do data entry will boom, but not because Governor Otter wanted them to. The strings in the stimulus are accountability measures. Congress tried to make us prepare a bit to avert an energy crisis, be more efficient and independent finally as a nation in healthcare and energy. But this governor wants to tax us more for roads, borrow more for roads, spend all the stimulus he can on roads while his Superindendent of Public Instruction cuts deeper and deeper into Schools with every passing day.

Deducting Property Taxes

If you own a home and you've already done your state taxes, you might want to look into getting a form to file an amended return... you may be able to subtract more from the the amount of income the state taxed you on this year.

Over the last few weeks, we amended a House bill one way and then back the other way in an attempt to decide what was better for tax payers. We call it "going to the 14th order" here in the Senate when we amend a bill. Senator Hill as chairman of the Senate tax committee patiently spoke first for and then against letting more people NOT pay income taxes on the money they spend on property taxes.

Obviously this is good for modest income homeowners who might not be able to deduct a bunch of charitable donations on top of big mortgage interest, medical bills and the like. What it does though is take $2 million out of budgets that will mean deeper cuts in state employee pay, lost jobs or larger class sizes in schools or college classrooms.

Not a fun choice for any of us to make. As a property tax payer who does not have enough spending to itemize, I might have benefited from a yes vote. As a member of the budget committee who has watched the knives fall into place, slicing through parts of state budgets that Idahoans depend on for jobs and medical care... I was one of ten Democrats and Republicans who couldn't vote yes.

I'm still torn. Most the time it is clear as the desk in front of you, on occasion though some people gain while others clearly lose. But as you sit there on the Senate floor and the Senate secretary calls your name, you have to choose one word: yes or no.

We Can't Do it Alone

Carol and I ran up in the foothills this morning. Frozen sandy trails thread up along ridge tops for miles. We found ourselves in snow, brilliant white in the sun, cold on our tennis shoes.

Rough week trying to decide where to go from here as human rights issues appear so clearly to be slipping backward in Idaho.

There is irony in all this. Bryan Fischer says my election to the legislature means there is no problem with discrimination in Idaho. I had to laugh and then cry this morning on the trail running behind Carol on the frozen ground because that is so much like saying that, because we elected a fine man who happens to be black as our 44th president of the United States, that it follows logically that there is no longer racism or racist people in the United States, that we can just take black people out of Idaho’s Human Rights Act or federal anti-discrimination laws because no American will ever again perpetuate acts of racism, violence or discrimination against black people in schools or businesses or anyplace in our nation ever again.

....

So to that end I am going to ask a favor. If you care that gay people are ever fired from our jobs, denied raises or promotions, kicked out of our apartments, are harassed as teens and made unwelcome in school classrooms anywhere in this state, please do something about it this year.

1.    Email your friends these two links and ask them to help. 
Support your gay friends: http://www.4idaho.org/HumanRights/
POST THIS WINDOW SIGN: http://www.4idaho.org/vote/OurGayFriends-WindowSign.pdf
2.    Post a “Protect Our Gay Friends” Window sign in your car, house or workplace.
3.    Let YOUR three state legislators know that you feel it is time to end discrimination against gay people in employment, housing and education.
4.    Write a letter to the editor.
5.    Get involved this year when there is a chance to help an organization on this issue. (Show up, donate, take action.)

.....

It kills me that my work on sentencing or health care may suffer because it is not really the role of a legislator to be a community organizer. It kills me that some of my colleagues have said I have to make a choice, be a gay activist or have no future in politics in Idaho. Really I have no choice.

I think of the straight people I meet who clearly care and want to help.

The burly firefighter who told me he buttonholed Senator Fulcher at a recent reception to say firmly but politely how upset he was as a constituent that Fulcher had opposed the Human Rights act. I think of the man who came to me to talk about health care issues and, as he was leaving, mentioned how wrong it was that some radio talk show hosts were say such awful things about me and gay people.

I think of my friend Emilie Jackson-Edney and her wonderful conversations about gender identity with Senator Coiner.

I think of Mountain Goat, the blogger in Canyon County whose partner fears being fired from her job. I know this woman only by her pen name and her posts and I picture her these days settled next to a radio watching the hate stream out day after day because she knows someone has to say that this is wrong. She is so right. How can we as a state stand by when others incite violence and hate. Why are we not outraged? Or maybe we all are outraged and we don’t know how to express it.

Well, I’m offering some ways to express it. And I’m asking for your help. Because I can’t do this alone. The tiny cluster of under-funded, human rights oriented, non-profit groups who have worked on these issues for over a decade and have three staff between them, they can’t do this alone.

We all need your help this year because if we don’t have your help things will keep getting worse, not better. And like you, I just can’t bear that.

Economic Quandaries

The Senate chamber is empty but for Senator Dick Sagness next to me and the voice of secretaries in the back rooms. Outside, spring froze and is again thawing.

It is Friday. The place emptied early. JFAC this morning was about the economy. How can anything not be. Or maybe for sanity we should all find something that is not. It is an oppressive force in here but more so as people around the state try to plan for next month or next year.

There is a danger in that hesitancy to plan. If we are employed and so save our wages and pay off debt, the businesses around us suffer. We don't go down to Jim's appliances to replace the refrigerator that is turning the milk sour, or decide to suffer with the clothes dryer that takes four hours to dry a pair of jeans. We wait, not knowing if we will have a job to pay off that credit card bill.

But in the long run, our savings, or more critically our lack of credit card debt, makes our families more stable. We pay less in interest and fees. This is very hard on Jim's Appliances. But if it and other businesses do OK with the help of those who are still spending, if the employed go to local shops where their dollars circulate better in the local economy, then when the clouds break a bit and we breathe again, less debt hanging over us, a bit of saving to buy that refrigerator with, the economy will rise with all that "pent up demand." We will all benefit as families across the nation end all that "waiting as long as we possibly can to buy what we really need to buy."

For those traditional economists who say we need to personally borrow more so we can spend more now. I say that will only perpetuate a problem at the root of our economic woes. Americans are smarter than that. We recognize that we can't keep running up personal debt at this rate and not fall off an edge some day. The minimum wage can not stay as out of whack with the cost of living as it has been.

Yes, millions are without jobs, hanging on by that thread of little unemployment checks. They may be lucky to pay for food and rent and doctor bills, and are not going to be the ones buying new refrigerators or saving money. But roughly ninety percent of American workers still have jobs. We will make this economy suffer while we save and pay down debts, but when we are ready, this revived middle class may again become a middle class that sets to work to fill and even create new jobs in manufacturing, energy efficiency and alternative power generation.

I sit at my desk in the empty Senate and I know this is an economic quandary of epic magnitude. Who will suffer and pay for the rearrangement of our economy? Will it be families spurred simply to borrow more to buy more things? Or will it be the box stores and restaurant chains we abandon for corner groceries and little diners? The banks and mortgage brokers? Importers of foreign made goods? The credit card companies? Someone will pay. Things will change. If our determination is to hunker down and support the little shops and growers and appliance stores right around us, then local places may not be the ones to go under. We may see a trend away from generic downtowns where the food and shopping is so nearly identical that one might be in New York, LA, San Francisco, Boise or Chicago and not even know it. We may see the rebirth of an era where cities have character and people take pride in what local people make and sell.

That could happen. But it depends on what we do.

Regardless, huge things are happening around us. Banks may go under. More stocks could fall to nothing. But eventually we all do have to replace the hot water heater, the furnace or the car. If we save or at least owe less, we may feel we can do more than that. Maybe we will even save enough to put dollars back into banks, some will start new businesses. The ground will thaw. As a nation we have huge resources, huge ingenuity. Millions work very hard and if we pay them enough to live on and ensure they don't fall behind every time they need a doctor; if we take the weight of providing health insurance off the shoulders of business and families, we will endure. I'd place a bet even, that if we do these things, pay off some personal debt, buy more locally, fix our health care system, invest as a nation in manufacturing and energy, we will thrive.

Crazy Highways

Here's what's crazy: By my best reckoning Idaho is getting over $15 million it could have spent on public transportation statewide. It can only buy infrastructure with this money, nothing but buses, bus stops, material stuff like that. No drivers, no gas, no operating costs to pay drivers to make the buses go anywhere if we buy them.

At the same time the Speaker of the House (I'm sure with a bit of strategic help from Mike Moyle and his leadership team because Lawence Denny is the man, but he is not the arm twisting type) the Speaker has said no hearing on any local option authority legislation. No hearing to let voters in local communities around the state decide if they would like to tax themselves to fund something urgent that we as a state legislature just won't give them money for.

The most glaring example would be public transportation. No state dollars go there. No local funding source exists because local governments are not allowed to ask voters what they want to fund and how they want to fund it. The state dictates that. So since Mike Moyle, a single man from Star, elected to a powerful position by an increasingly conservative Republican caucus, since he is still not a fan of public transportation, the entire state has no way of funding public transportation operations.

So, no matter how long the people of Nampa wait in traffic, no matter how long it takes some days to get from Boise to Star or Eagle, if we have no money to operate a bus with fuel and a driver, we can not use the stimulus to solve the problem of Nampa to Boise buses running at capacity, or a bus system so poor it does not even run after dark, in early mornings or on weekends. Who can depend on a system like that? Who can afford to miss the bus to work or a job interview when the next one does not come for an hour or so?

So, instead of using the stimulus to allow little cities around Idaho to fund new van pools or real bus systems; instead of putting more buses on that corridor between Ada and Canyon counties we will instead replace old buses and then go on as we were, infinitely widening freeways and overpasses between Nampa and Boise. We will spend billions on that stretch of highway because a few powerful people don't personally like or believe in public transit. We will waste millions infinitely and futally trying to unclogg a clogged stretch of freeway, money that could be spent to fix rural roads from Soda Springs to Sandpoint.

I would think my rural colleagues would be more annoyed about that.

Leading the Senate in Prayer

The Constitution aside, every day before the Senate we are led in Christian prayer. Hank Webb is our Chaplain. He has a wonderful accent, warmth and gentle kindness which makes me smile every day.

Our Democratic leaders have asked that the prayers be more universal to all faiths and at very least ecumenical in nature, but it seems still that the Chaplain has been instructed to give a Christian prayer which ends with "In the name of Jesus Christ our Lord." While Chaplin Webb is gone this week, a few Senators have led the prayer. I was asked by my caucus to lead the invocation this morning. Those of you who know me may think that is funny. But how could I pass a chance to speak to the body of the Senate about values, belief, humanity and what we as a state should aspire to.

Please join me in a moment of reflection or prayer.

Let us be thankful for the kindness of strangers, their compassion and generosity.
Let us see abundance not only scarcity.
I ask, let us see in this difficult time the strength and beauty in one another’s eyes, the pain in the story of the man we would condemn, the suffering of the woman we would judge, never having walked in her broken shoes.
Let us love this land, its expanse of tilled soil, pungent, its farms aging, tilted sage-covered hills, canyoned deserts and peaks of cold granite and snow.
Let us love the beauty of its wild as those whose ancestors first set foot here loved and respected the land as the source of all life, food and spiritual strength.
Let us seek the difficult path of judgment to discern whether there is freedom without justice, liberty without restraint, whether the pursuit of happiness is afforded equally and we have been judicious in the exercise of the powers we are given.
For what great society can celebrate the freedom to amass riches while others starve?
What people would not extend the tithing and generosity of our faiths to the world at large?
What exalted leaders in good conscience can choose which brother or sister, son or daughter is worthy of justice and freedom from prejudicial acts --and which is not?
Let us look up from our day, as we as a nation and state face the difficult months or years ahead:
May we choose the path that helps those who will struggle in loss. 
May within us we find compassion and the generosity that makes us a nation strong enough to endure the greatest hardships as one, as a people who refuse to be divided by petty politics, generous and gentle, unified in purpose and in strength.
May we seek that all will prosper.
……..Peace be with you.

Rights and Freedoms

No small number of Republican lawmakers have Democratic wives. They are fabulous and in some cases outspoken and lead the legislative ladies on adventures to places some of the Republican women otherwise might never go.

One legislative husband, Skip Smyser, former law maker himself and lobbyist but not a Democrat has done more for Human Rights education in the legislature than I will ever do in my lifetime. He rents out the Egyptian and gets lawmakers together to see a movie each year. This year it was Amazing Grace a film about ending the British slave trade. Actually it is very much a movie about the legislative process as men in powdered wigs battle in a chamber that makes even Idaho's house of Representatives look sedate and dispassionate.

Skip's movie nights kill me emotionally. I sit eating candy and cry as discreetly as I can possibly manage. Other law makers cry too. Progressive law makers say kind things to me after. My socially conservative friends instead quote the few lines from the film that keep them sternly entrenched where they are on the other side of any Human Rights issues at hand. Talking afterward it is hard to believe they saw the same movie I did. But they did and I can only hope that later in dreams more will come back to them, that they will soften and see something like the shadow of pain in the eyes of others for a brief moment in time.

Tonight at the Dairymen's dinner, a colleague quoted to me a line from the movie Amazing Grace. It was about having to give up your freedoms because someone else is in a hurry to have government protect someones rights.

I had to grip my beer glass tight to really hear the assertion that slave owners gave up their "freedom" to make money off the labor of men and women they never paid a salary to. How do I fathom someone seeing that as a "freedom" to be taken from slave owners rather than as a thing they had stolen from some other human beings... I do not know. I do know that these are the same lawmakers who see Idaho's human rights act as a law that robs them of the freedom to fire whom they choose, a restriction on their business and beliefs that remains intolerable to them so far to this day.

Gifts and Promises

Last week the Potato Commission sent a box of potatoes to the House and Senate for each of us. A Technical training center from Cassia County gave us a beautiful laser- and router-carved wooden paper weight with our names carved into the side and an Idaho Quarter set in the top. At a lunch for the anniversary of the Idaho National Lab we were given a thumb drive and sticky note holder along with a mini nuclear waste barrel that functions as a squishy stress reliever/forearm exerciser.

We get gifts as legislators. I usually feel funny enough about them or the expectation of a promise or vote that I give them away to interns or statehouse staff. We did vote last week to pass a memorial commending the Idaho National Lab on its anniversary. I voted for it because it seemed to reflect the lab in a genuine rather than a wishful way. It was a good memorial. I'd vote for it even if I'd not been offered the nuclear waste barrel/stress reliever/forearm exerciser gift.

The anniversary lunch where we got the Lab's gifts was a blur of slides and very brief admirals and contractors speaking in front of a big back curtain. Normally these folks at the INL focus public presentations on the great promise of Nuclear Power and their mission to build the next generation of nuclear power plants. Anymore they seem to go to great lengths to avoid talking about all the radioactive waste buried and stored out there in the desert of South Eastern Idaho.

But at lunch, in celebrating that nuclear reactor technology was first tested and developed here in Idaho, celebrating our role in nuclear weapons production and nuclear waste storage, the lab did focus on waste and on the thousands of people who have labored for decades under often dangerous conditions to try and clean up what is one of the largest nuclear waste dumps in the nation.

I've met many people who worked out there at "the site" over the years. Most recently a fire fighter who I worry about after having heard what he has breathed and how he no longer fears that odd feeling of heat and gamma rays radiating off of spent fuel and high level waste.

I will be a big proponent of nuclear power when we do finally solve the issue of waste. We will need to figure out how to neutralize it, not just recycle part of it. We can't keep leaving the most highly radioactive remains to burn somewhere in a mountain or building or pool of water for decades, centuries or millennia. I hope our government continues to invest money in solving the puzzle of how to render radioactive materials harmless. I even hope our lab gets that job and does it well.

But to talk of building new nuclear power plants before that task is done is beyond my comprehension. To talk about how this energy is clean or carbon free when in truth it is mined, refined, processed, transported, reprocessed, stored, cooled, monitored, repackaged and labored-over using decades of fossil fuels, that makes no sense. We still have no idea what to do besides piling more radioactive waste next to every nuclear power plant we build in every city or town from New York to California. To revive the industry means billion in profits for a few and a gift of consequences for the rest of us.

Nuclear waste is a gift our state still keeps getting. Most Idahoans don't know it but the nuclear navy's nuclear submarines still send all their radioactive "spent fuel" waste here to Idaho. Dangerous materials so radioactively hot that they are literally deadly to behold. Three Mile Island has waste buried out there in the soil over our aquifer. Decades of taking other state's nuclear weapons waste have left the soil so hot in places that even now it catches on fire sometimes. Workers in big tents use robots and cranes to dig it up out of the soil and put it in barrels to become New Mexico's problem.

If we want more gifts, we will believe the industry when they promise us it is a clean and safe form of energy now. They say they have solved the issue of the waste by recycling part of it. But ask them where it all goes. All of it. Ask what precisely we are left with afterward and is this something Idaho wants or is it something we're hoping someday to pass guiltily on to some other state or community with our own hollow promises and wishful thinking.

That's another gift I will decline. I will leave that one, like I left the mini squishy stress reliever/nuclear waste barrel on the INL luncheon table.

Disgusted

Some days I walk myself to the statehouse in the dark, sit attentive through long committees, ask unwelcome questions, end up the sole no or yes vote on a bill, look at the long list of evening events we are supposed to attend and wonder what I am doing.

I forget how many kind people have written to tell me how much better it makes them feel that I am here. I forget that on occasion I do make a change that affects lives, I give voice to what isn't heard or those who will be harmed. And that is something.

It is hard though.

Today when we heard a simple bill to mandate that insurance companies cover "elemental formula" as if it were medicine so that kids (whose lives depend on eating this formula instead of food) can afford it and can stay alive.

So that you know, some kids can't eat regular food. At about two months their bodies reject their mother's milk and if they are lucky their doctor figures it out and puts them on special formula and then about 1/3 of them get better quickly, another bunch get better in a year or two and a very few need the formula for life.

But Idaho insurance companies don't cover this stuff. And after today's vote they still won't. The companies promise though to try harder and we believed them. We don't like mandates I guess. This is something new for me to know about the Commerce Committee. It governs health insurance. Or, I know now, doesn't govern health insurance. All the things we COULD do to make health insurance companies do a better job, stop denying claims, be more accountable for making people wade through so much red tape to get something covered they know should be covered... we don't do that. We trust insurance companies instead.

I sat there today and listened to those parents' stories. I can only ask what kind of nation makes people lose everything because someone in their family is sick? What kind of government tells them to get a divorce so they can maybe qualify for Medicaid so their child does not die? What kind of state makes people go through this? Run up tens of thousands on their credit cards, sell everything? What kind of people refuse to do anything because the insurance company lobbyists are really nice people and they promise us things if we will only agree not to make them do what they don't want to.

I'm disgusted because we have no backbone, because I work in one of the few places where we COULD fix some of what is wrong with healthcare and we won't. I'm disgusted because I work in one of the few places in the state where the people I work with mostly don't seem to think there is anything wrong with insurance companies or the way health care works. Or worse, they use how broken the system is to agree to do nothing at all.

On a similar insurance coverage issue, Lot Watts, social worker from St. Als Hospital testifies as to how some cancer patients are unable to pay for a chemotherapy drug because insurers classify it as a pharmaceutical rather than a cancer therapy. Watts and the chemotherapy bill's sponsor Senator Joyce Broadsword are opposed by not fewer than seven seated insurance industry lobbyists.

Ayes and Nays

When the Senate secretary reads the roll for a vote, typically if you are listening in on line or through the television, you will hear a long stream of Ayes. The controversial stuff is killed in committee, never introduced or stuck in a drawer. What gets to the floor, has jumped through a lot of hoops, made it by many gate keepers and has enough of a force behind it to be considered by the whole body.

When a Democrat brings a bill to committee, there is a bit of a disadvantage. We have possibly not had much of a chance to chat with the committee chair about the bill at functions over the summer. We may have co-sponsors but this year we can not longer list them prominently so that anyone would know anyone but one of us is supportive. We may be asked to get an attorney general's opinion or feedback from Governor appointed department heads.

We rely on the kindness and respect of our colleagues to be allowed to have a bill printed, to get a hearing on the bill or to have it sent once printed to the committee where it is supposed to go. Lots of things can happen to a bill. It can indeed be sent to hostile committee, on purpose or inadvertently.

I had a bill that simply makes it an employer's, not an insurer's decision to allow a business' employees to buy health insurance for their unmarried partners, boy friends of girlfriends and other family members if they are not married. The bill is a benefit to the state because it increases the number of people and their children with access to insurance. This improves preventative care, reduces emergency costs, catastrophic fund costs and other taxpayer funded health care costs.

The bill went to State Affairs Committee, not Commerce where insurance related legislation usually goes.

Beer and Wine

When we get a phone call from a constituent to the Legislative information desk, someone sends us a little yellow piece of paper with the brief massage typed out and a return address where we can call or write back. Last week the yellow phone call slips started flowing, a constant stream of "Don't tax my beer and wine" messages rippling out from the alcohol distributors, to the bars and restaurants to the patrons, riled like colonists at a tea party.

I understand. No one likes to pay more for anything, especially in hard economic times. But I ask, would we rather pay more through some other part of state government to build more prisons, pay for more emergency care from car accidents, more child protection and domestic violence shelters -- all because we do not offer nearly the treatment we should to prevent or end alcoholism and substance abuse in the state of Idaho?

I promise we will all just pay more if we don't someday create a dedicated funding source for treatment. And I'm talking about treatment, not about advertising or bill boards here. We will all watch people in our communities suffer year after year because we didn't help this year, because we didn't see the larger issue here.

I don't like the temperance argument. Moderation is what most people use in their approach to beer and wine. But if those of us who do drink beer and wine are not asked to pay for treatment, then who should pay? If we could tax Meth, believe me, we as a legislature would. We can't. Not Meth or Heroin or Cocaine or any of it. But when someone's family member is addicted and they can not afford an expensive treatment center, where will they go? Who will pay?

Let me say this, I don't know about you, but I would have paid. I would have stepped up and shelled out the seven cents a glass of wine or bottle of beer, and I would have paid so that finally the state of Idaho has a chance to fund real drug treatment as we never have before.

But here on the afternoon of this cloudy spring day, when the Senate floor is subdued and people file in and out on their way to and from committees, it is too late. The beer and wine tax went down, five to thirteen in the House Revenue and Taxation Committee this morning.

Top Ten About the Stimulus

I know the stimulus plan puns are getting old. Stimulating conversation. Less than stimulating conversation. In any case, our Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee today spent the first of three days discussing Idaho's share of / potential for/ obstacles to / failures related to / and deadlines for.... the federal stimulus. Hoping eagerly for something that will help the 50,000 Idahoans looking for work.

Top ten things I learned:

10. This money is from Idahoans, past and future, to be sent via Washington DC via federal agencies, grants, direct appropriations and requests which many pray are going to be made by the Governor...

9. Goals include avoiding job losses and lay offs in state government, avoiding state tax increases, creating new jobs, making the nation more energy independent and preventing the immediate implosion of a hand full of Governments in states from one coast to the other.

8. It is true the governor can reject this money. But we as a legislature can override his objections, as long as he doesn't veto them. (Of course 2/3 of us could always vote in favor of a veto override and that would be that.)

7. If you have an idea, you need to apply to a state agency and the Governor's Department of Fiscal Management (DFM). These budget analysts have some flexible money to use for creative economic development, energy and job creating ideas. Can we put the money in to fill all the holes in our state budget? No. Might it free up money we now spend on Medicaid to prevent the deepest of state employee pay cuts? Possibly yes, for now.

6. People can have ideas. Non governmental entities can come up with shovel-ready (can be permitted and ready to grind into motion in 120 days) job producing ideas as long as they do not involve: casino gambling, aquariums, zoos, golf courses or swimming pools.

5. The governor is asking other governors, including Democrats for help. This is good.

4. If you have ideas that use American made products or resources (steel, iron, some manufactured goods), that is encouraged.

3. Everyone's ideas have to be turned in by noon on March 4.

2. Not until March 19 will the Governor's advisory committees have their reports done.

1. The legislature will sort of be sitting around until then. Sitting around for this body, and especially the body across the hall there, is not a good idea. Legislators can hatch crazy ideas when we are bored. Bad ideas generally. With the exception of the Napoleon Dynamite Resolution which was one of the best bored things anyone ever passed through the legislature.

Read it if you need some cheering up. 
http://www3.state.id.us/oasis/2005/HCR029.html