Notes From The Floor: 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.