Notes From The Floor

Just Like Me

I was struck today while we debated a bill to stiffen penalties in order to protect domestic violence victims, how very colored our values are by our experience. I see in debate that what we've never experienced we really genuinely might not understand.
    The committee was hearing two bills from the prosecutor's association. Both allowed for a felony charge if a person is found guilty of breaking a domestic violence protection order or a no contact protective order for a third time.
    In debate, Phil Hart was concerned that his ex wife's own past behavior and accusations would land him a felony charge even if he did nothing wrong.  Raul Labrador thought that it was too easy for people to get a protection order just to try to get custody of the kids in divorce proceedings. Lynn Luker moved to kill both bills because he says that judges can put people in jail enough already under the existing law.
    None of these legislators I suspect has ever experienced domestic violence or stalking. None has spent long months with every day feeling like a dreaded test of your will to live. Every day a question of whether you can survive psychologically  long enough until you are no longer followed, no longer haunted by phone calls, impersonated, no longer tired of having the police on auto-dial, filing report after report, no longer exhausted waiting for your stalker to maybe snap and kill you with a gun, a car or fist.
    How many of my colleagues have lived in fear? Have some of the older ones been to war perhaps? It seems that those who have been in combat might know even better that I do just what living in fear of violence does to a person's life.
`    I look around the room in judiciary and rules and it is like many committees. Three women on a committee of 16. What are the chances that the law will often not reflect our unique needs in areas like domestic violence?
    We all seem to value what we know, and fear what we know to fear. Today by the skin of our teeth and with Raul Labrador's help eight of us passed just one of the two laws to allow women who are victims of systematic harassment or threats to seek some additional help from the court.
    Still many women will wait in agony, enduring repeat offenses for a year or more while three charges slowly reach convictions and the felony comes to play. But it will be well worth it I hope for the sake of those few women who now will find safety sooner or get a rest from fear for a year or two while their perpetrators are in prison. I have hopes that prison will work better than jail time because it provides actual treatment for that sort of obsessive control and gives offenders and a better chance that psychological healing (if not the deterrent) will make more Idaho women safe and prevent even a few deaths by violence or the suicide that can follow despair.

Giving License

Sitting on the floor in my big black seat with my electronic voting board on my computer in front of me. We are beginning debate on a long list of bills. This is the first day since Rep. Lake's stroke that we will begin again to tackle our backlog of legislation and send substantial numbers of bills to the Senate.
    The chair of JFAC, our Budget Committee is arguing we don't have the money to make misdemeanor probation a priority. This is the kind of argument which has filled prisons. It is also a bit of a turf battle for JFAC as they don't want to have funding detour around the Budgeting process and come automatically from liquor funds. More successful  probation and support for minor offenders will lead to fewer serious offenses, especially for substance abuse and mental health related crimes which make up a large portion of the crimes which fill costly prison cells.
     The other key issue for saving long term prison costs at more than $50 a day would be helping the children and families of Idaho get kids off to the best start in education so they find meaning in their lives, success in school and positive experiences and support to stay off drugs.
    We should be looking to find what every student has a talent for, what every student is good at, what will motivate them to become engaged. That is the best of education. That is how we can finally address the root causes and finally be successful at keeping them motivated to learn, keeping them strong emotionally and out of the state of despair which leads to drug use, depression, suicide and juvenile crime.
    It amuses me looking at today's agenda, that Idaho law appears to require a license for caring for plants but I know does not require one for the caring for young children in day care centers. http://www3.state.id.us/oasis/H0392.html
    We graze a huge range of issues today. Fertilizer, trucks, colleges, health care, juries. I just voted no on a bill to release the state from a requirement that Idaho based contractors be included in those who are hired to work on the state Capitol restoration. It seems foolish not to hire as many Idaho based contractors as possible since that is the most sound policy for our economy, keeping state tax dollars in state to re-circulate.

Stressing Treatment

It has been a long road. I've found that legislation that is going to survive this process, requires that.   
  Yesterday House Judiciary & Rules Committee introduced a bill I've been working for months with co-sponsors to negotiate and finalize. The bill allows judges, in certain cases, to use drug treatment focused alternatives to Mandatory Minimum Sentences. Specialists with the Department of Corrections have told our committee that prison sentences of six months to a year coupled with supervised parole which includes treatment is the best way to ensure people recover from meth addiction or addiction to drugs.
    Prison is a pretty violent place. Violence can be contagious, like desperation. We have struggled as a state to offer women and men a chance of recovery and better chances of returning to their families as productive members of society. It is becoming more clear that, for non-violent offenders, whose main issue is addiction, more than eight months in prison can be counter productive. Our system struggles to ensure that offenders leave prison less likely to return to drugs or commit other crimes. Treatment and parole supervision with random drug testing and resources for re-lapse are important for that. With more hard work, Lynn Luker, Raul Labrador, Phil Hart and I will try to make this change to allow judges to use these types of treatment focused sentences where appropriate. We are now joined by co-sponsors Dick Harwood and Eric Anderson. Having Senate co-sponsors would have been wise as the Senate Judiciary and Rules Committee is where the largest hurdle may be.

Childhood

Republicans on the Senate Education Committee today blocked introduction of a proposal I drafted to allow school districts to offer optional all day Kindergarten in Idaho public schools.

    Currently there are 21,778 Kindergarten students enrolled in Idaho Public Schools. The vast majority of these attend half day Kindergarten classes either in the morning or afternoon part of the day. Typically, a single teacher instructs both the morning and afternoon class.

    According to the education Commission of the States, full day Kindergarten produces higher math and reading scores. Offering parents access to more extensive educational programs which improve reading readiness, and advance social, emotional and cognitive development, reduces the need for remediation and speeds the development of important skills which help students excel in elementary and secondary programs.
    Currently, for the portion of the day when children are not in public Kindergarten classes, parents are paying for childcare in a variety of types of day care programs. In Idaho none of these programs is licensed and required by law to meet state health, safety and educational standards, though in a few areas, some are required to meet certain local standards imposed by city ordinances.
    Ten states offer full funding for all day Kindergarten programs. These programs save tax payer dollars by reducing the cost of daycare, providing more solid educational content and by ensuring more children enter elementary classes ready to learn.
    Idaho ranks 46th in the nation in per pupil spending for education. Our lack of funding for all day Kindergarten contributes to the low ranking. This legislation was intended to begin the discussion over how to more effectively spend Idaho tax dollars to create a strong education system which focuses on readiness and skills rather than expending large sums of tax payer dollars in efforts to correct early failures in our system. All day kindergarten is one way we can use preventive means to fill the need for remedial programs, to lower drop out rates and address the corresponding issues which relate to juvenile crime and the cost of Idaho’s over burdened corrections system.
    In my mind, together with lowering class sizes for students of all ages and extending the school day for some students, improving early childhood education is one of the most powerful and effective changes we could make to strengthen education and help Idaho's young people reach their full potential.

What We Fear

If you pull back and look at us from a distance,it is interesting what we as a legislature would seem to be afraid of.
1. Wolves: not for their teeth but for the fact that, to a sizable number of us as legislators, they embody the Federal Government. They represent that struggle locals feel as the back country is designated wilderness and federal law changes to reflect coming population demands, pollution and contamination and human health problems already urgent in cities. It is a struggle over change and over power. Some fear the wolf because we are accustomed to being almost invincible in the wilderness. We are accustomed to grazing sheep and cattle and making of wild places what we will, not what another creature wills. Even if we implant birth control devises in wolves and see their populations level, there will be tension. Even if we watch them strengthen elk herds, culling the weak and making wild game meat lean and strong, there will be those who still will wish wolves exterminated. Even if we are able to use federal dollars to pay for losses to ranchers, pay to cover investment and the future market value of calves, there will be some who will never see a wolf as magnificent or sacred, only scary.

What else might we as lawmakers fear?
2. Being without a gun. Unless recent legislation is only about the politics of gun rights, then I suspect that it is frightening for some of my colleagues to picture their own son or daughter on a college campus without a gun. Let's set aside that moments of passion and drunkenness are perhaps the greatest threats to public safety, even for those who remain sober, and to insert guns into such an environment might not help make it safer. Never mind that suicide by a fire arm may be one of the higher risk factors of allowing concealed weapons on campus. I suppose too we had best set aside the notion that a concealed weapons permit is an adequate test for emotional stability or any indicator of its owner's ability keep that gun out of the hands of others on a small campus with shared dorm rooms, open doors, and many parties. This week, as the legislature debates prohibiting colleges from banning concealed weapons on campus, we will contemplate what we fear and what we don't fear. Will a change in the law create more fear or less?

Bootstraps

Some days committee is just depressing. Today a stream of Idahoans testified eloquently to the overly punitive nature of Rep. Bayer & Senator Fulcher's grocery credit bill (it says no grocery credit for any month a person gets any food stamps -- even if the amount of food stamp assistance is small and they have paid tax on the remainder of their groceries for the month.)
    Just as I was feeling good about the day, Bryan Fischer got up to testify as to how the Idaho Values Alliance aims to "Make Idaho the friendliest place in the world to raise a family." According to his testimony, it will make Idaho friendlier if we make sure that no grocery credit at all goes to families struggling to feed their children and getting even $50 a month in food stamps.
    But that wasn't the hardest part of our committee meeting. Next, the discussion digressed into an estimation of which form of tax policy more effectively keeps "illegal aliens" from benefiting in any way from a grocery credit to the income tax (which many pay when they have taxes withheld from their wages using made up social security numbers --trying to do the right thing mind you by paying their income taxes.)
    Never mind that many of the 30,000 or so people in Idaho who don't have proper documents may have lived here for decades. Never mind that many parts of our economy depend on them or that they are frequently wives of legal citizens or others who have struggled for years to maintain legal status or were at some point in the long, long, sometimes ten year long, impossible waiting line for citizenship.
     It was a depressing day. On the floor debate stayed just short of ugly on a bill to further complicate driving for those who do have legal status. If a person's legal papers lapse (which happens frequently due to the nature of temporary visas) they must wait six months for a new drivers license. In the mean time how do they drive for work, for taking children to the doctor in rural Idaho?
    Some work places will have the resources to help employees keep up with the new requirements so that they do not lose their drivers license and insurance. Others will not and this will become just another hurdle to working in Idaho if you come from India, China, Britain or Mexico.
    For a state trying to bring in collaborative talent to our universities for research and trying to be a safe haven for refugees, for a state struggling to maintain rural economies, we are going to find ourselves with ghost towns where once there were vibrant, bustling communities. If we are not careful we will allow our hostilities over immigration to generalize further and will only incite more of those awful incidents around the state when a student at a university, a mother with a child with brown skin and an accent is harassed or even shoved or beaten, called a wet back and made to feel afraid for her life. What kind of a nation are we that we allow our concerns over broken federal policies to spill over to hatred of people working hard to make a living, working to hold families together and make a better life for themselves. Where is our humanity? Where is the soul of our nation? A nation where the vast majority of us are immigrants.

I wonder if perhaps too few of us know someone who has struggled to maintain legal status. Maybe more of us need to sit down with someone who came to Idaho as a small child or decades ago on a work visa, married here and stayed. There are heart breaking stories out there. People who worked hard to maintain proper legal status and all their paperwork for years, getting caught at the boarder trying to return to Mexico for a funeral or birth and losing their status because as long as they wait for citizenship we don't let them leave the U.S. Even if that wait is ten years we make them jump through impossible hoops just to stay and remain legal as they long to. No, I suspect we don't hear these stories in person often enough.

Greener Pockets

Today the House Energy, Environment and Technology Committee, which I serve on, approved a bill to require 30% more energy efficiency in the construction of state buildings in coming years. The bill, swallowed by the committee last year on largely partisan lines, passed today with only Rep. Steven Kren and Rep. Curtis Bowers voting no. I am sure Steve and Curtis have reasons for voting against saving state dollars by building structures which use less energy. I might not know what they are exactly but I know they have them. I might hazard a guess. It may be that deluge of fun publications which offer article after article about the evils of government regulation of everything from day care centers and water quality to building construction, carbon emission and fuel efficiency. I'm pretty sure that the Heritage Foundation, which publishes these newspapers, is largely an organization by and for businesses which are making strong profits for their shareholders doing things exactly as they do now. Not surprisingly they work hard to try and persuade legislators that there is no sense to arguments that human health or taxpayer dollars may be at stake if things (designs, materials, emissions, effluents, or the ingredients of their products) stay as they are right now. But that's just a guess. We all have our own legislative priorities and values systems within which we operate. We each have to weigh out how we prioritize human health, our feelings about government regulation, short term vs long term costs and what ever else enters our reasoning from the recesses of our minds.

Energetic Disagreement

The Idaho Legislature's efforts at energy planning in recent years leave much to be desired. As legislators, we ranchers, teachers, small business owners, insurance salesmen and retired farmers gather in committee and try to learn some of the basics. What are the limits to how much electricity we can carry on our existing power lines? What new energy producing technology is being developed? What are the true comparative impacts to our health and our environment of coal, nuclear, wind, hydro, solar and geothermal power generation?
    Sadly we rely heavily on presentations from industry to answer our questions and school us in the basics. Ultimately it is Idaho Power, Idaho National Lab, coal producers and the very corporations who stand to gain from energy projects who take committee chairs to lunch, feed us information and set policy for us behind closed doors so that we end up with plans which are designed more to improve companies viability than they are to create energy independence and security for uncertain times.
    For example, our interim committee on energy did not set firm targets for renewable energy in Idaho's portfolio of energy sources, instead our state energy office has been set free to focus on nuclear power whose lobby has been relentless in trying to convince the state that, though practically no other state wants to build new nuclear power plants, that Idaho should embrace the idea in spite of the fact that it ensures the storage of new nuclear wastes within our boarders.
    I'm quite certain that our new energy czar does not have a set of proposals or options from every possible type of energy producer on his desk. Solar turbines, tidal and micro hydro never seem to enter into the conversation. And what if we really thought outside the box and decentralized energy production somewhat, especially for residential usage? What if we heavily incentivized solar water heaters, passive solar heat and small energy projects on ditches, ranches and roofs across the state?
    Diverse and decentralized production makes more sense for creating energy independence and energy security for our state than giant nuclear project or new coal plants. Both coal and nuclear rely on limited resources and even with recycling of nuclear fuel, very dangerous wastes remain as by-products which will continue to accumulate and will have to be put somewhere for hundreds and even potentially thousands of years.
    In committee I ask questions and watch some of my colleagues roll their eyes at strategies to address the impacts of climate change, air pollution, and water contamination. We can keep feeding the folly that says we will be fine when gas reaches $5 a gallon. We can pretend we don't really need public transportation and that the public will accept radioactive waste being stock piled next to the Snake River. We can pretend we can keep building subdivisions out to the horizon and never run out of water, never find a time when the freeways can not be widened any further.
    Without question energy and environmental issues are the toughest ones I deal with. They have become sadly the most partisan -- I think in part because, as legislators we don't know enough about science to ask the right questions. We don't demand to know the other side of the story or demand to know who paid for the glossy publications or the monthly "climate" and "environmental" newspapers which appear everywhere we go. If we are to guard the interests, the energy security and health of our state and our population we have to be more critical and creative. Too much is at stake for us not to.

Finding Home

Sitting in Rev & Tax Committee. Our Minority Leader, Rep. Wendy Jaquet has waited three years to get permission to arrange today's speakers on workforce housing. Workforce Housing. That's the term resort communities use for affordable housing even though in many places its not just people in the service industry who need a place to live, it's seniors, young families, people who face a health crisis and can not work. I know we face a tough audience in here on this issue, especially if its not clear that people struggle with rents and mortgages far beyond Boise and Ketchum They struggle in Teton County, McCall, Coeur d'Alene, Bear Lake and Stanley.
    The questions from the committee are telling. Our Chair, Rep Lake, asked it it were not more wise to raise wages rather than buying land and building housing so as to create a class system where some people live in special houses or buildings set aside while others live in homes. He makes a great point. I passed him a note to ask if he would support a locally adjusted minimum wage up to say $21.50 an hour so that even those laboring for years in resort communities could have a chance at affording their own home.
    However, if saying we need to raise wages to address the problem is going to be an excuse to kill any efforts as helping set aside land and funding for affordable housing efforts, then we should all come clean.
    In the past two legislative sessions bills to raise Idaho's minimum wage a dollar or two above the present $5.15 an hour and then to index it so it keeps pace with inflation have been killed pretty much on party line votes. I'm just hazarding a guess that there will be no real legislative effort to bring wages anywhere near the level where someone trying to work in a restaurant in McCall can own a home in town or anywhere near by.
     And Rep. Wood's point about loss of land for trailer homes and later about how farms and ranches build on-site housing for workers is interesting as well. If only a school or gas station or cafe had an abundance of land, affordable, extra land, they could build a house or two on in downtown Victor, Stanley or McCall. But I think that is the point. Lots of businesses rent and don't have land to build homes on for their workers. And as Rep. Ruchti from Pocatello pointed out, the whole town benefits from having people live where they work and having people housed rather then homeless or driving fifty miles to work each day. So a whole town or city should help ensure housing is available for those who work there.
    One can't help but think of the city of McCall which recently mandated that a portion of all new developments include affordable housing. This policy keeps neighborhoods mixed, protects areas from air pollution, commuter traffic and sprawl and protects communities from potential economic instability that comes from having all members of a neighborhood or community belong to one single economic strata or class.
    Real estate developers were none too pleased with McCall's policy. The Idaho Association of Realtors in fact sued the City Council to stop implementation of this particular ordinance. I suspect that if developers, builders, real estate companies, ski areas and down town merchants do not step up to create proactive plans soon, we will need more mandates. Either that or we can live with homelessness, live with dishwashers driving hours in the early morning dark through a storm, live with streams of traffic as people commute from distant parts of the county to work, live with more people turning down Idaho jobs because they can not find a place to live near by on the wages we offer.
    There are consequences to prosperity that benefits only some but does not pay adequate wages or at least offer adequate help with the necessities to benefit all. Idaho's growth bumps us up against that problem, finding homes for those who need them most. Like homelessness, it doesn't seem to go away just because we build one small shelter, make a few arrests or buy a ream of bus passes. There are root causes and eventually we will have to tackle them.

Prison Tour

Dr. Mary Perrin, director of programing. Idaho's work at real rehabilitation.

Control Room

Maximum security segregation cells

Heath and Welfare Chair Sharon Block and Boise Rep. Sue Chew leave the prison in the snow

Sentences

The Capitol Annex is alive even on Saturdays now. Keys click at a desk or two on the floor and the budget analysts and bill drafters roam in jeans and base ball caps. Mike Nugent the lead bill drafter and long time veteran of legislative services looked like he'd come from a ball game.
    I'm working with Republican colleagues Phil Hart and Lynn Luker on finalizing legislation to change Idaho's sentencing laws to ensure offenders get supervision after they leave prison. This also for many inmates means better access to drug treatment, support and accountability to keep them healthy, productive members of their communities and families once they leave our state prison system. We hope it will help keep them from returning to an addiction, committing another crime and coming back.
    Hopefully too it will mean less crowded prisons as Judges specify how much of a sentence can be incarceration and what might be set aside for transition and supervision after release onto Parole. This is particularly important for sex offenders, but for some of those whose main issue is addiction, we have a separate bill to help focus on treatment as an alternative to long mandatory minimum sentences.
    Here in the statehouse we are wired and filmed. But nothing like the prisoners we watched from behind the glass on Tuesday. Rep. Margaret Henbest and I watched one man, shuffling, cuffed, long-haired and disheveled, he was moved from one cell to the next clutching some sort of white leather bag or purse. Everything about him screamed despair and bewilderment. What ever he did must have been horrible. But now his life is in that place, behind the glass with all those cameras, guards and all the pastel colors and white paint. 
    Downstairs here in the Capitol Annex, legislative services has set up viewing rooms where big TVs wait so the public can watch us when we assemble to vote on legislation in the House and Senate. The feed is now broadcast on Idaho Public Television as well as on the web at the IPTV web site. The cameras now are dead eyes staring wildly and blank at walls and empty seats. Most days they will click to life at 11 or 11:30 AM. At first boring procedural sessions will in weeks turn into long sessions of debate and parliamentary maneuvering which at last most people around the state will be able to find somewhere on the dial.

http://idahopublictelevision.com/leglive/

Lines Drawn

It is surprising how early lines are being drawn this session. Before we've even see any bills, editorials against the utility of public transportation are being xeroxed and circulated on desks. Everyone is digging in. Perhaps because over the summer so much work was done to show legislators good public transit systems like Salt Lake's, the stakes are upped. It has sounded sensible these last months so of course those who have built political careers signing anti-tax pledges and painting urban areas as axes of evil are now ready to make sure anything that benefits Boise is not signed into law. What kind of respect for the Democratic process and for true bipartisan problem solving does it show when the House Majority leader talks about ensuring that any place that elected Democrats will find its interests thwarted by this Majority. What of all the people in other districts who have similar needs. What of the Democrats and Independents in the minority in Republican districts whose communities are intertwined economically with these now Democratic areas? What of seniors and people with disabilities who rely on public transit to get to jobs, to medical appointments and for every aspect of their lives? What of commuters who are sitting in parking lots of traffic trying to reach work or home each day? Does none of this matter as much as ego or partisan politics? I think those who presume so much will be surprised in the coming week when they hear from angry voters and when they meet a brick wall in the often sensible Senate. We will see. But lines are drawn and we are all digging in.