West of the Rotunda

When we think about supply and demand we tend to think demand drives supply, but it can go both ways. Sometimes, if you create a supply, demand will follow. Think of high fructose corn syrup. The supply was created and now there is a demand.

I believe public policy often gets caught in this trap. We legislators try to do the right thing and create a supply of support for people struggling or needing a hand, and then it becomes a supply of “entitlement.”

In the Commerce and Human Resources Committee the director of the State Unemployment Insurance Fund brought us a bill trying to solve a situation. Ponder this: From 2007 to 2009 corporate officers for businesses paid $5.8 million into the Unemployment Insurance fund and took out $42 million in benefits.

These are usually small companies where the “corporate officers” may be the only employees. When I showed this to my attaché, he laughed. “My friend does that. He has a landscaping business he owns. He lays himself off every winter and gets unemployment.”

I want to promote personal responsibility in every endeavor. But that does not mean I don’t think people need help. It is all about balance. So now we are working on a law to address this problem. I have already gotten two emails opposed. And it has not even reached the floor. Maybe this is why folks want to starve the beast. They do not trust us to do the right thing. I believe we can.

Thank you for comments. I read them all but do not post them.

We had a visit from Senator Risch last week. He had been a state senator, then Lieutenant Governor for a long time. He assumed the Governor’s office when Kempthorne moved on to his DC appointment. Now Risch has been elected a Senator for Idaho.

Senator Risch had cautionary advice for us about the federal deficit. He tried to put it in perspective, but trillions of dollars are hard to imagine. Indeed, the curve is going up sharply.

Total public Debt and Debt/GDP

So what was his advice to State Government? Honestly, I think he was saying, “Quit whining.”

When I hear speeches like this I am moved to DO SOMETHING, even if it is just a little thing. I remember my father talking to us kids and my mom about wasteful spending. “We’re being nickel and dimed to death” was his phrase when he thought our ways weren’t frugal.

After Senator Risch left the chambers we got to work on bills. These early bills in the session are often called “housekeeping” in that they make minor corrections to code or clarifications but do not really change policy or set a new direction. For example:

1. A bill to protect a businessman who is called away to active military duty and has to lay off his workers from having his unemployment insurance tax rate increased.
2. A bill to allow Idaho PERSI members in the uniformed service to be considered for benefits.
3. A bill to provide a property tax exemption for the first $400,000,000 if a company invests a billion dollars in a county.
4. An exemption from use tax for property stored in the state by out-of-state military personnel.

So you can see we chip away at revenue, giving small deals here and there to certain folks. Sometimes we shift the burden from someone we favor to the general group. Other times there is a direct exemption. These are all small slices in the great revenue pie. I doubt that in aggregate they would lead to the great deficit we face. Still, they brought my father’s phrase to mind. I will be vigilant to save the dimes and nickels.

Thank you for all comments. I read them all. I have chosen not to post comments.

Sometimes I forget Boise is a small town. Heck, Idaho is a small state. Everybody seems to know everybody within a degree or three.

I have been staying out east, off Warm Springs Avenue. It is a short ten minute bike ride to the Capitol. I have been stopping on the way at a popular coffee shop for morning coffee and granola. I can read the paper or just sit and crunch, then pedal the three or four blocks to the dome.

For the last few weeks there has been an early morning TV interview going on in the corner of the coffee shop. I guess the live interview suits the pre-commute crowd and legislators are the standard fare. It seems every reporter wants to know what is going to happen. Like we might know.

Last week it was the Pro Tem of the Senate. The only seat I could find in the place was right behind him. I tried to hunch over my bowl so my face would not be on camera. No sense striving for the spotlight.

This week when I came in I saw they were interviewing Tom Luna, Superintendant of Public Instruction and the author of several major education reform bills that we would vote on later in the week. I had not yet read the paper so I did not know about the vandalism and threat he had experienced. But I sure could feel the vibe in the coffee shop. A tall guy with a pony tail was pacing around, obviously upset. I stood in line to order my breakfast. The guy in front of me glanced at Luna and smirked at me. “He used to work for me,” the guy offered. “We have a car dealership. But we had to get rid of him because he wasn’t honest with the customers.” He shook his head and looked at the bright TV lights. “Now look at him.” He moved off and I ordered the usual.

The guy behind me offered, “He’s killing me,” with a nod toward Luna. I looked at the speaker. He had cropped gray hair and a casual shirt. “I’m a teacher and I can’t buy what he’s doing to education.” I kept listening as the bowl of yogurt and granola came next to the cup of coffee. He continued, “I didn’t come to it early. I was a banker for 20 years before I started teaching.” Come to think of it he did look Republican. “But I just think his ideas about education are wrong.”

I moved behind the kiosk to stay off camera and start the morning bowl. The pacing man moved through the line at the ordering counter until he was behind Luna and the camera. He said loudly, “He’s a liar. Why don’t you ask him about his lies!” Then he migrated back to his seat and sat. When I opened the morning paper I read about Mr. Luna having his tires slashed and spray paint on his car.

When the two of the bills came up for a vote on the Senate floor we made them read the bills, as is in the rules. Then we debated for hours. We lost 15-20, but the process was civil and according to rule. So the bills will go to the House. I predict they will become law. I hope we can stay civil. I hope this flawed process inspires committed involvement, not despair.

Labor and Lazy

I have never been in a union. This may make me less sympathetic or less passionate than those who have. Still, I think I understand the importance of valuing the working person and if unions are the way that has to happen, I am for them.

My mother was in the teachers’ union for a while. She had a bit of a love-hate, guilty feeling about membership. She was a lifelong Republican as was my dad and the words and concepts of an organized union made them think of communism and thuggery. I think my mom joined the teachers’ union because a lot of her fellow teacher friends belonged. I think Mom believed if she did her job well she would be rewarded appropriately. Both my parents believed in the bootstrap theory of social justice, that is, you get what you earn.

That attitude sure inspired me to work hard in school. It even inspired me to get a summer job in the orange groves of Southern California. I was the only Anglo on the crew. It was hard work. Cesar Chavez was organizing in the fields of California at the time. After that summer I decided paying twenty cents more for a can of orange juice so those guys would have running water and electricity and not have to sleep on the ground might be a fair tradeoff. At the time it seemed like the union was the only way to make it happen.

I also worked construction for a while but never joined any trade unions. It was always interesting to watch the boss play one worker against another. I always knew there were guys coming by daily who wanted my job. It kept me on my toes, but it also kept workers from speaking their mind to the boss. Maybe that was how he liked it.

Doctors do not unionize, although it might be a good idea for family docs. We have been undervalued by the government directed-payment scheme, even though there have been multiple attempts to address the inequity. Family docs do not lobby the payment-setting agency as hard as the specialists. Maybe we should have formed a union.

So I was amazed at the first two bills that came before the Senate very early in the session. They were both about making it harder for unions to get involved in state contracts. In the debate it was shared that >95% of state contracts were awarded to contractors who used nonunion labor. But still, these bills were designed to “level the playing field” since the perception was that unions were contributing to unfair bids.

I got a chance to review the bills before the floor debate. The first (SB1006) seemed simply mean-spirited but I was pretty sure the second (SB1007) was illegal. I mentioned this to my attaché. He asked,” Would you like me to get an attorney Generals’ opinion?”

“You could do that?” I asked, impressed.

He smiled, “No, you can do that.”

“I can?”

“Of course. You’re a Senator.”

Now I was smiling. “OK. How do I do this?”

“You ask me to do it. I’ll write it up. Then you’ll need to sign it.” He waited while I ran through the possible down sides. “So do you want me to?” He was tapping his foot, ready to get to work.

“Sure, do it.”

The Attorney General thought 1006 was probably defensible but was pretty sure that 1007 would get the State of Idaho into federal court as a violation of the Labor Management Relations Act.

It did not really matter to my colleagues, because it was “just one lawyer’s opinion”. The bills passed the Senate 27-8. I am sure learning how Idaho thinks from getting to know their elected representatives.

And now we are facing the “Education” bills from Superintendant Luna. The key element to these bills is not the addition of technology (laptops and online class requirements) but rather how negotiations between school districts and the teachers’ representatives will be handled. This bill (SB1108) is really about taking teachers out of the professional realm and making them at-will workers. I see the Republican Party strategy to dismantle organized labor as a political force playing out across the nation, not just here in Idaho.

History goes in cycles. The miners in the 1890’s in the Silver Valley could only get a living wage and stable, livable conditions with organizing and unions. Mine owners had organizers killed, and it all came to a bomb on Governor Steunenberg’s garden gate in Caldwell. And maybe we are still spinning through the cycle. Teachers across the state organized and struck 50 years ago. Maybe it will have to come to that again. I hope not. I would hope we could learn.

Last Thursday I took lunch in the cafeteria. We are often entertained for meals by agencies or lobbying groups that provide a spread and make a pitch. But this day I wanted to just sit for a bit.

Coming into a cafeteria with tables of people all talking can remind one of high school. In high school I always ate a sack lunch and would sit on the lawn to avoid the “who to sit with” lunchroom dilemma. Sometimes people would join me.

This day in the Capitol cafeteria I chose not to join anyone but put my tray down on an empty table.  Before I was done with my salad I looked up to see another freshman legislator. I had met him in orientation. Our eyes met and he joined me. We talked about calving a bit because that is what he had dealt with on his ranch when he went home last weekend. I learned a little about calving from the time I worked with a veterinarian before medical school. I can talk generalities and understand some of the problems.

As I was finishing my pita and shaking the ice in my glass he looked at me and said, “So you’re a doctor. Would you mind me asking you about House Bill 1028?”

“What’s that one?” I have not studied the bills on the House side by number yet. I figure to let them percolate through and just study what will be on the test.

“It’s the one that makes the doctors follow patients’ Advance Directives.”

“Oh yeah, that one.” I had heard of the attempt to fix the Freedom of Conscience for Health Care Professionals Act. (See INSPIRE post). The Act had allowed health care professionals to follow their conscience and this brought up a fear among folks that their end-of-life wishes would be ignored. This bill was an attempt to fix this, when, in my opinion the “Freedom of Conscience Act should never have passed in the first place. My cattle-rancher colleague got to hear me talk about the history of the bill, my objections to it and the difficult spot we are in trying to fix a flawed piece of legislation.

He did not act bored. I might have gone on too long but I can get pretty passionate about our duty to our fellow man and the futility of legislation to enforce this.  I think he heard me. He thanked me as we toted our trays to the cart.

A veteran colleague on the Health and Welfare Committee tells the story of setting regulations for Day Cares about 8-10 years ago. He refers to the process as the “Day Care Wars”.  Strong feelings and passionate testimony surrounded the details of child/adult ratios and safety regulations. A person’s kids and livelihood can raise one’s passions.

Well, we got a small taste of it again this year. The subtitle to this piece could be “Unintended Consequences”, since I do not believe the problems we were dealt were intended. We somehow got Montessori schools over a barrel. The statue that was established during the “wars” was amended a couple years ago. The amending was not without conflict and took two years to get through. Montessori schools did not testify because they did not think the amendments would affect them. When the department reviewed a local Montessori school it was found that their practices were not in agreement with the new amended law.

New rules were proposed last year to conform to the amended law but they did not pass. So the department rewrote the rules this year to be verbatim like the law. This puts the Committee in a difficult position. We had a room full of people here to testify how wonderful Montessori schools are for their children. They did not want us to pass rules that would place their schools in violation. But here’s the kicker. Statutes always trump rules, and the statute and rules are identical. If we did not confirm the rules, the Montessori schools would still be in violation and the department would just have to write the rules again. The law needed to be changed. We could do nothing helpful for the Montessori schools by rejecting or confirming the rules. We could make the H&W Department rewrite the rules if we rejected them, but that seemed pretty silly.

So we approved the rules. Now Montessori schools will have to find some legislator with the guts to open up the difficult can of worms that is the source of the “Day Care Wars”.

Not Fraud

On Tuesday and Thursday afternoons I go from the Commerce and Human Resource Committee to the Health and Welfare Committee. It is rare I can see an overlap, but maybe I was looking for it this day.

The Commerce and HR Committee had a presentation about fraud and what different agencies are doing about it. There were many descriptions of the scams perpetrated on folks. We also approved a draft of a law to address a private transfer fee covenant scheme that has been sweeping the country. Sometimes a developer will place a covenant on a property that requires that every time it is sold in the future, the buyer must pay a “fee” to the original author of the covenant. Apparently it is legal, even though it sounds crooked. So we are making a law to make it illegal. Good for us.

I had time only to get a cup of coffee before The Health and Welfare Committee meeting started. We were still reviewing rules. We approved a rule to allow for negotiation in the Nursing Home assessment. Here is how this works: Medicaid charges are paid with state funds and federal funds at a fixed ratio. In Idaho’s case, this is currently set at 77/23, due to go down to 70/30 next year. Idaho is strapped for cash. But if we reduce the direct payment to nursing homes they lose over 3 dollars of Federal money for every dollar we cut. So instead, we “assess” the nursing homes a fee, say 6 cents for every Medicaid dollar. Thus they get the maximum from the federal government and we get some back. Let me be clear: THIS IS NOT FRAUD. There is nothing secret about it. All states do it. It just doesn’t feel right. I expect I will learn to tell the difference.

 The Health and Welfare Department has undertaken an extensive two-year redesign of how they deliver services to children with disabilities. There were two main objectives of the changes. First, the new system was to have capability to individualize care plans. Currently, all children are eligible for two kinds of therapy, maximum 22 hours per week. Under the new plan a budget would be developed for each child and then the parents would decide how to best spend the allotted hours. The second aspect of the redesign was that the plan was supposed to be budget neutral; that is we weren’t cutting services to this group, just changing how they were distributed.

We took testimony in the Health and Welfare Committee last week since we need to approve the department rules that will make these changes occur. The children who receive these services usually have a diagnosis of autism or a related disorder. From my years of practice in Moscow I know the difficulties some of these families can face.

We had testimony on both sides, the department of course asking for support, two agencies in favor, but with some reservations, and two or three families and agencies opposed. I had received a dozen or so emails, mostly opposed. Almost everybody agreed the concept was good, but the details were vague. Some just saw that their services would be cut. I was confused by this, since the plan was supposed to be budget neutral. If some kids’ services were reduced, another kid would get more, I thought. Testimony ran long and the chairman delayed the vote until Thursday.

I was fortunate that I had constituents with a good perspective on this. I was of two minds. I like the change of delivery system, but the details were disturbingly vague.  The department sent us more details and examples on Wednesday. They showed how some kids now got 22 hours a week with mild problems, and also with severe problems. They called this the “One Size Fits All” model. But under the new plan even the most severely disabled only got 14 hours of therapy a week. I asked the presenter for H&W why. He replied, “Under the new plan the parents will be trained and can do up to 10 hours of therapy on their own a week.”

It dawned on me right then, the Department was planning to shift more care to the parents. This was not revenue neutral from their perspective.

With all my struggle to understand and make the right choice, it came down to not really making any difference. The vote was 7-1 in favor.  I voted for it. I vow to pay attention to how this affects the families I know in my district. I have to pick my battles.

More H&W Cuts

I heard four hours of historic testimony Friday before last. Over 80 people spoke, almost all saying cuts to state services would negatively impact their lives. One lady, a well-dressed 70-year-old paraplegic in a wheelchair told us how she valued her independence. She told about the cattle truck accident 40 years ago that left her legs paralyzed. It changed her life in a second. But it didn’t end her life. She wanted us to know the support she got from the state helped her recover and kept her active. She is involved in state commissions and county boards and district review panels. She’s got spunk. It was a long Friday morning I will never forget.

This public testimony to the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee (JFAC) was in response to the governor’s proposed $38 million budget deficit, which he outlined in the State of the State address. As the week has progressed we find he was mistaken. The figure is now $155 million. So H&W budget cuts will need to be at least $50 million from general fund monies. Add to that the federal matching funds lost and we’re looking at a 10% cut.

Many who testified before JFAC offered suggestions for revenue (raising taxes or collecting taxes owed and unpaid). They must not realize that choice was removed from the discussion November 4^th. We elected a governor and many legislators who see government as the enemy, an oppressive force that has shackled us with a “tyranny of entitlement.”  

I have seen people who made bad choices because they thought they had a good deal. A kid who will not move out onto his own because staying in his folks’ basement is easy. I have seen folks stay at a boring, unfulfilling but well-paid job when they could start the business of their dreams.  One of the most common “tyrannies of entitlement” I see has to do with workplace paid health insurance benefits. It is not uncommon for people to stay in a job to “keep the benefits”, especially if there are health issues in the family.  So entitlements (or “good deals”) can be a tyranny, I suppose.  I would call them more of a trap, a hole one can fall into and need to climb out of. We all need to be looking for the right choices in what we do.  I sure don’t want to be setting traps for people.

But the paralyzed young woman in the cattle truck wreck sure needed a hand. I was glad the state could help. I think we are headed into a time when we do a lot less of that. Our governor spoke of churches, communities, volunteers stepping up to the plate and helping those in need. I see a lot of that now in my community. I cannot imagine a volunteer taking on a 5-year-old autistic kid that screams and bites when upset. And these kids will be facing some changes.

For the first time on Wednesday we had bills for the third reading. That is when they are before the Senate for debate and a final vote. For some of you the arcane meandering through committee and procedure may be second nature. I am still learning. And I expect to be for a while.

If you ever want to watch what happens in the Idaho Senate there is streaming video here. We usually call roll 11:00 – 11:30 a.m. (MT) each weekday. Don’t expect much drama.

The Senate votes each bill by roll call. The first bill to come to the Senate for a vote was regarding the rules around juvenile incarceration. The bill is first begun to be read by the Secretary of the Senate. But the floor sponsor soon stands to interrupt and the President (Lieutenant Governor) calls on him or her. Bills are tedious to read. The sponsor will ask for unanimous consent that “further reading of the bill be dispensed with and let the record show the bill was read section by section and line by line.” We all say “Aye” and the President recognizes the sponsor to begin debate. The sponsor describes the bill and pitches for support. There may be questions asked of the sponsor or people may rise to debate, or speak for or against the bill. In this case there was no debate, no one spoke, and with a thump of the gavel debate was closed. The secretary called the roll. (It is done alphabetically.)

“Andreason.” “Aye.”

“Bair.” “Aye.”

I am right after Pearce.

“Schmidt.” “Aye.”

My colleague leaned over and touched me. “Your first vote?”

I nodded.

“Congratulations.”

I smiled.

Later in the week another freshman senator arose to open debate on a bill. “My fellow senators this is a housekeeping bill that corrects language in a bill passed last year. It has no significant change to intent or action, I urge your approval.”