{"id":1050,"date":"2019-06-20T14:55:51","date_gmt":"2019-06-20T21:55:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/?p=1050"},"modified":"2019-06-20T14:55:51","modified_gmt":"2019-06-20T21:55:51","slug":"equitable-assessment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/?p=1050","title":{"rendered":"Equitable assessment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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This week in Boise there will be an interim committee meeting on Monday. By the time you read this they will be back home, not done with their work, but maybe started. The title of the committee is the \u201cEquitable Assessment of Costs Related to Medicaid Expansion\u201d. I applaud the legislature for looking carefully at costs incurred to the taxpayer for the laws they (or in this case, the voters through initiative) pass. May I make some further suggestions?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How about the legislature study the costs of funding\nfacilities for charter schools? The legislature passed a law in 2014 to send\ncash from income and sales tax revenue to charter schools for their facility\ncosts. Public schools have to get a local bond passed to build a school;\ncharter schools get an automatic cut from everybody\u2019s sales taxes or income\ntaxes. Sixty-six + percent must approve a local bond, then it comes off the\nproperty tax of local district residents. Charter schools just get a check out\nof the general fund. That charter school facility fund has come to $40M over\nthe past seven years. And its dollars straight out of the budget for teachers\nand schools, which is what our property tax levies pay make up for, since the\nstate can\u2019t seem to find the money in the general fund. Seem equitable to you?  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

How about the legislature study the property tax exemptions\ncounty commissioners are handing out? How is that affecting home owners\u2019 rates?\nCanyon County commissioners just handed out millions in exemptions to\nbusinesses who expanded or opened new facilities. A couple years back Nez Perce\nCounty commissioners did the same for Clearwater Paper. This was right before\nthey laid off a few dozen workers in the Lewiston plant. Does it seem equitable\nthat businesses don\u2019t have to pay for the roads and services their trucks and\nemployees use? Does it seem equitable that the local property owners foot that\nbill?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I suspect the interim committee will focus their\n\u201cequitable assessment\u201d on the costs of Medicaid expansion, as the law they themselves\npassed has directed them to do. If you keep the window narrow there is no big\npicture to see. I expect my elected representatives to see the big picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The charter school facility funding inequity came about\nbecause the legislature was afraid to look at the big picture of all schools\u2019\nfacility funding. This was even though there is an Idaho Supreme Court decision\ndeclaring our current system, before the charter school facility funding\nscheme, unconstitutional. This decision has never merited even one hearing from\nour busy legislators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keeping a narrow focus on the Medicaid costs might bring\nsome comfort to the legislators who opposed Medicaid expansion. While they\ntally the costs, will they even try to balance the benefits? We all heard their\nbias before the election, before the citizens over-ruled their six years of\ninaction. Will they consider the costs of those six years of doing nothing when\nthe Federal Government paid up to 100% of the costs? I doubt it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no doubt the expansion of Medicaid will cost the\nIdaho taxpayer. And costs are the easiest things to count. But the benefits\ndeserve some tallying too. What do you think one life saved is worth? Can they\ntally savings to our prison costs when a felon doesn\u2019t return to prison because\nthey got their drug addiction treated? Can they consider the value to a small\ncommunity whose critical access hospital climbs out of the red? Is there any\nway to count the shifted costs of the uninsured onto those paying premiums?\nWill the decline in county property tax funded indigent costs be part of their\ncalculus?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m all for counting costs. But how we spend our money is an\nexpression of our values. And values aren\u2019t just about dollars and cents.\nValues should reflect the big picture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week in Boise there will be an interim committee meeting on Monday. By the time you read this they will be back home, not done with their work, but maybe started. The title of the committee is the \u201cEquitable … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1053,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[12,11],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1050"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1054,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1050\/revisions\/1054"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/danschmidtforsenate.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}