West of the Rotunda

Sometimes irony is everywhere.

We had a full agenda in Agricultural Affairs this morning. I did not expect such a hubbub over raising fees for brand inspections. But such is senate life.

Brand inspections are done by state brand inspectors. These inspections record transfer of title to, or possession of, livestock.  Inspectors authenticate ownership, and are also called to investigate theft. The Idaho Brand Board registers brands and keeps track of them. Fees are charged for these services. The Brand Board is funded only with fees; it receives no General Fund money.  The Brand Board was bringing a bill before us requesting an increase in their fees.

I made a mistake questioning the brand board director. I was trying to figure out what animals get brands. I should have read the bill more carefully, for it was right there. The director responded soberly, “By statute, livestock in the state of Idaho are defined as all cattle, horses, mules or asses.” There was tittering in the early morning audience.

A committee member commented that “Some out there might be thinking some here on this committee need inspecting.”

The Brand Board director offered to check for rib marks if such was called for. He was blushing.

“No, it wasn’t that kind of asses they were saying.” The joke took a while to die down.

But soon the question at hand became quite evident. In these times, while we are cutting funding for schools and Medicaid, should we be raising fees on brands? Aren’t we supposed to be shrinking government?

The Brand Board explained they had met with the Cattlemen’s Association and the Dairymen’s Association, both of which agreed a fee increase was reasonable. They would be paying it. And there hadn’t been a fee increase for over 20 years.

I watched this one closely and did not speak. One Senator was quite bothered that we would increase these fees when “times are tough”.

We voted 9-1 to raise the fees. We will see how it does on the floor of the Senate. Then there is the House. Times are tough for growth of cooperative effort.

Thank you for comments. All are read but I do not post comments.

I have heard this term used with respect to our federal government and the degree of debt we face as a nation. It sounds alarming. I wonder if alarm is the intent.

I remember the frugal ways of my parents. While we may have qualified for bankruptcy at one point (that is unable to pay debts) my parents never went through the process of “declaring”, although I remember hushed discussions around the kitchen table. For my parents, such a choice of legal declaration would have been an emotional burden greater than the 18th century debtors’ prisons that populated our early colonies. I admit to embracing my parents’ ways.  The specter of debt still frightens me. And the shame of being unable to pay looms large. But I have outgrown the unreasonable fear of debt.

It was hard to spend the money I had as a child. This miserliness was just the child’s illogical extension of the fear of debt. I guess I could have become a hoarder, but I am not sure if this is the path for such a condition.  I had a difficult time accepting the debt of medical school because I could not see it as an investment that would reap the reward of a career I now treasure. It was finally as a businessman and partner that I came to understand debt as a measure of commitment.

Our country has a large debt.  It is hard to know what to compare the debt to, that is, how to measure our assets. Often debt is compared to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). As you can see from the graph, back in 1947 we had a higher ratio of debt to GDP.  

Historical Public Debt and Debt/GDP Ratio

I doubt there was a lot of worry back then. We had just won a world war. A common enemy can unify and focus.

I write this because I think our situation is manageable, not dire. I believe we will need to change a lot of our thoughts and our ways. Continuing to do the same in the face of such a curve would be foolish. 

I was motivated to this reflection after a breakfast with a young 4H student. He was in Boise to learn about the legislative process. At the breakfast gathering we were addressed by our Lieutenant Governor who spoke again of looming federal deficits. I wondered what this young man thought.

  He shared with me his thoughts that our country was bankrupt. He sounded a bit down, like we had our future sealed in a dismal way. Here he was at a 4H gathering but he sounded hopeless.  I wanted to talk with him more to understand his thoughts and hopes but the program and the schedule would not allow. Here is what I would have said:

Well, yes our country does have great debt. But we can pay this debt. I am committed to do so. I believe you are already paying on that commitment with me. You are building your skills. You are growing your character and your spirit. Don’t lose hope. When you are in touch with your best self, when we all are, our accomplishments will astound.

 My generation must not get in the way of your success. Our old answers will not fit for you. We must not cling to old ways out of fear.  We must not stifle your education nor steal your hopes. We must not let our fears cost you your future. Nor should you be alarmed by our fear. We boomers have had a wonderful run. I believe you have a bright future. But, yes, things will change, no doubt. And shouldn’t they?

I wonder what he would have said.

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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.