Guns and Porn, Oh My

Solutions in Search of a Problem The Idaho Senate will this week - choose your metaphor - cock the hammer, reload or take aim at the increasingly controversial issue of guns on the state's college campuses. The House has already passed the legislation, the Senate may think twice. Boise State University, the largest Idaho school, where football tailgate parties are arguably even more popular than guns. has played the economic card by raising concerns that events on the campus may be impacted by a proposed state law allowing students, faculty too, to pack a piece to a concert, football game or poetry reading, not to mention biology class. Idaho is racing Texas to see which state can get the campus gun toting legislation in place first. Texas Gov. Rick Perry has said he'll sign legislation working its way through, as Molly Ivins used to say, the Texas Leg. Perry is the same governor who suggested a while back that the federal stimulus legislation gives Texas a right to consider secession. Fully armed obviously. The Los Angeles Times visited the huge University of Texas campus in Austin recently, a place with an awful history of gun violence, and found a mixed reception for the campus gun legislation. In 1966 a student gunman at UT climbed to the top of the campus clock tower and systematically killed 14 people. Ancient history, I guess, in an age when proponents of such legislation argue that having more guns on campus will actually improve safety. One Texas professor told the Times he welcomed the proposed gun law and said he'd definitely consider taking his piece to class with him if it passes. Not a professor to argue with about a grade, I suppose. At another Texas school, Sam Houston State, a new research project found considerably less support among students. On a scale of zero being not comfortable at all and 100 being as comfortable as you can get, the Sam Houston students clocked in - or is it Glocked in - at 39. A similar survey at a Washington school produced a 33 comfort score. May just be that the students who are, pardon the expression, the target of this campus safety initiative aren't feeling all that comfortable about how safe they'll be in English 101. It used to be all you had to worry about was staying awake in class or understanding Milton. In times of severe economic turmoil like those faced in Idaho and most other states at the moment, I've noticed a curious legislative phenomenon. With limited ability for legislators to think big about new buildings or highways, they tend to find solutions to problems that may not really exist. The gun legislation, stoked by the National Rifle Association in Idaho, Texas and a dozen other states, seems to fall in that category. College administrators, the State Board of Education and law enforcement leaders - those closest to the vibe on a campus - are universally opposed to the gun legislation that has only come forward because, well, the NRA says its needed to protect our Second Amendment rights. As one Texas student said, college is already stressful enough, why add the prospect for even more worry by affirmatively introducing guns to the campus scene? State Representative Cherie Buckner-Webb of Boise said it pretty well: "One can only imagine a college classroom or a campus administrative situation where heated arguments about strongly held political beliefs or disputes about grades or even parking issues result in the use of a concealed weapon." Meanwhile, Idaho legislators are also debating a bill to require more actions from public libraries to filter content on computers that library patrons - as in the tax paying public - utilize in vast numbers every day. Another solution in search of a problem. Full disclosure, I am currently the president of the Boise Public Library Board, and we have long had in place a perfectly sensible policy about computer use. If a parent is concerned that a youngster might go where they shouldn't on the Internet, we take steps to ensure that won't happen. But, we also stay away from being the Internet nanny for adults who presumably are smart enough to make their own decisions about how to use a computer. Both these pieces of legislation are in the one-size-fits-all category of legislating. Not content to leave it to local library boards in individual Idaho communities to figure out the best approach in their neighborhoods and unwilling to trust a college president in Twin Falls or Moscow to know enough about their campus environment to keep them as safe as possible, legislative solutions must be found to non-existent problems. Guns and computers. Strange that in a largely educational environment - a college campus and a public library - some legislators want virtually unlimited access to one and to substantially limit access to the other.

Failing at Politics and Policy

Expelled from Politics On Tuesday, the Idaho House approved the most political piece of State Superintendent Tom Luna's "education reform" effort and sent it on to receive a sure signature from Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter. Idahoans who care about schools - and politics - may look back on the vote to strip collective bargaining rights from the state's teachers and make tenure more tenuous for new teachers as a true watershed moment. Like the great Jack Dempsey, knocked out of the ring in a 1923 title fight, the Idaho Education Association's once-powerful role in the state's politics has been knocked for a loop, perhaps never to recover. Dempsey somehow pulled himself back in the ring against Luis Firpo and eventually won his famous fight. The IEA has rarely demonstrated that kind of agility. It seems unfair to kick someone when they're down, but the reality in these events is obvious, just as the politics is raw. The IEA has failed at both politics and policy and when the legislative moment of reckoning arrived in 2011, the state's teachers were vilified, marginalized and defeated badly. This has been a long time coming. Over the last 15 years, as Idaho's politics has shifted dramatically, the IEA has clung to an old and outdated strategy. Rather than try to elect allies to the legislature or cultivate those already there, the teachers have seemed to focus, without success, on top of the ticket races like governor and state superintendent. The folly of the approach was well documented in a good piece of reporting recently by the Idaho Statesman's Dan Popkey. Popkey got the quote of the current legislative session out of former Democratic State Sen. Brandon Durst who complained about IEA's focus on thwarting Luna's re-election bid rather than winning a handful of potentially decisive legislative elections, his included. “They’re my friends, so let me characterize it a little bit more diplomatically," Durst told Popkey. "They blew it. Their decision to put all of their resources, not just financial but also human resources, behind [Luna's] campaign and his campaign alone, really hurt races down the ticket.” But this failure of political strategy goes deeper than misfiring in one election cycle. The IEA has something like 13,000 members in every corner of Idaho. That represents a grassroots organization that most interest groups would kill for, yet the teachers seem not to have been able to really mobilize these local foot soldiers and use them to build broader coalitions. This represent a failure of strategy that ignores a fundamental tenet of politics at every level: organize, organize, organize. At the same time, Idaho's teachers have become a punchline and a punching bag for what's wrong with education. Teachers have become the Idaho equivalent of the old story that everyone hates the U.S. Congress, but most of us still like our own Congressman. Most Idahoans like the teacher who helps educate their kids, they have just come to hate the teachers union. At the risk of blaming the victim, IEA must shoulder a good deal of the blame for letting this damaging perception take root. The teachers, sorry to say, didn't fight back effectively against the ceaseless drumbeat that they are a major part of the problem with education. Which bring us to policy. Whether its fair or not, perception is reality in politics and the perception hangs that teachers have not engaged constructively in the raging debate over why our education system fails to meet almost everyone's expectations. Playing defense all the time is not a political strategy and it has become for the teachers a recipe to become politically marginalized. Successful movements - and interest groups - eventually need to stand for something, educate folks about the wisdom of the position and build broad support. I'm guess that even most of their supporters in the Idaho Legislature really don't understand the IEA's policy agenda, assuming there is one. IEA's leadership justifiably complains about not being at the table when Luna's reform agenda was hatched, but the teachers also had a chance to build their own policy table and haven't. Unfortunately, this is not just an Idaho-based failure, but a broader national failing of professional teacher organizations. Look no farther than Wisconsin or Ohio for proof. At the IEA website, there is a link called "Why Politics?" A click at the link takes you to a short page that explains that the organization is involved in politics because decisions in Idaho and Washington, D.C. effect teachers. Then there is this sentence: "Time and again, over the last century (emphasis added) IEA members have won major victories to both defend and set new standards for public education in Idaho." It's hard to remember in this century when Idaho teachers won a major or even minor victory. It may be a long time - if ever - before that happens again. If it ever happens again, it will be because Idaho's worn down and increasingly hard pressed teachers, and the organization that represents them, adopts a real political strategy that can help them climb back into the ring.

A New Game

Party Registration Comes to Idaho Idaho's most conservative Republicans got what they long wanted yesterday with the decision by U.S. District Judge Lynn Winmill throwing out the state's open primary law. We'll see if this important decision becomes the political equivalent of the dog catching the car. It would seem that the immediate impact, as some Republicans exalted over "Democrats no longer picking our candidates," would be to shift the already very conservative Idaho GOP even further to the right. The after thought Idaho Democrats are left to lament shutting people out of the system. Maybe. But, if Democrats were to pick themselves up off the canvas and seize Winmill's ruling as the opportunity it could prove to be, it just might turn out to be the spark that lets the long-suffering party get back in the game. In politics you can often define opportunity as the moment circumstances collide with timing. The circumstances are the issues mix in Idaho right now - faltering funding for education and a still limping economy - the timing is reflected by the stark reality that Idaho Democrats need a new organizing principle and new blood; energy and ideas to jump start a political recovery. Scrambling the primary process, requiring party registration could be a very big deal. The current Idaho legislature will end sometime this spring likely having left many, if not most, Idahoans wondering just what happened to education. Expect more Statehouse demonstrations and perhaps even a teacher walkout in coming days focused on defining the education issue to the detriment of the majority party. If Democrats were smart they'd be in the streets collecting names and e-mail addresses of these motivated, mostly younger Idahoans. (One wag noted the irony in proposing that Idaho students become more comfortable with on-line course offerings, while the kids are organizing on Facebook.) The recent Boise State University poll says 37 percent of Idahoans now identify themselves as "independents," only 21 admit to being Democrats, while 33 say they align with the GOP. In the BSU surveys, the numbers of self-described Republicans has been in steady decline. By the same token, in a new closed primary those "independents" are, at least theoretically, up for grabs and for the first time in 2012 primary voters will have to be identified by a party label. The Republicans in Idaho have long had the money, organization and hearts and minds of, at least, a plurality of Idaho voters. But this is also true: the most faithful adherents in each party are the "true believers" of the increasingly farther right and left. These folks volunteer at the precinct level, they attend the party conventions, they vote in primaries and, at least in the GOP, some of them pushed for a closed primary. The true believers also tend to push the parties to the extremes, which is why you see GOP proposals to nullify health care legislation and repeal the 17th amendment to the Constitution. Most Idaho Republican officeholders no longer fear a challenge from a Democrat. They only worry about an assault from the right. This unrelenting ever more conservative push tends to diminish the already shrinking center were more Idahoans, if you believe the BSU poll, say they are more at home. Democrats should look deeply into the impact of Judge Winmill's decision. It just might contain the fragile threads of a return to viability. Viability will, however, require a new strategy, true centrist policies, messages and candidates and a very big dose of luck. Democrats, of course, need to supply most of that. Ironically, a federal judge may have given the Idaho GOP the thing it says it wants, but also the lucky break Idaho Democrats need.

More McClure

Man Bites Dog Lots of reaction and remembering, very appropriately, to the weekend passing of one of Idaho's political icons Sen. Jim McClure. Most of the reaction, again appropriately, has described McClure's time in the U.S. House and Senate as distinguished, thoughtful and productive. Others have noted that he was a work horse, not a show horse; a decent guy in a business that has become more and more characterized by nastiness and blind partisanship. One of the best and most thoughtful reactions to McClure's death and his career comes in a great piece by long-time Idaho Conservation League Executive Director Rick Johnson. Johnson has taken the point in the Idaho environmental community in stressing a new approach to engagement and even collaboration with some of the traditional "enemies" of the conservation community. He writes of not initially thinking much of McClure, but over time coming to realize that the conservative Republican was a fellow you could talk with and maybe even make a deal with. "I now see," Johnson writes, "how much wilderness we didn't get back then working with him and later in the under-appreciated collaboration he had with then-Gov. Cecil Andrus. Those bills were far from perfect. But bills today are also far from perfect, and today's are more limited in scale. Nothing's perfect you say? I didn't know that then. Incidentally, my older mentors didn't know that, either." It is almost a "man bites dog" moment and strong kudos to Johnson for recognizing and admitting that a guy who is a card carrying environmentalist - I say that with affection - could learn a thing or two from a senator who was often caricatured as an apologist for extractive industries. That is the beauty of politics - things are rarely as black and white, cut and dried as some try to make them. Progress is in the gray area of compromise and consensus. One aspect of McClure's career deserves special recognition as Idahoans reflect on his importance to the state's politics. The guy was a legislator. He didn't see his job as making bombastic speeches, although like any good and effective politician he could do that, he went to Washington, D.C. to get things done. Over a career that included strong advocacy for timber, mining and the Department of Energy, he also offered up conservation oriented legislation that, as my friend Rick Johnson argues, many of us would be glad to have on the books today. That alone is why Jim McClure and others of his ilk will be long remembered. They used public office to try and do things. His approach is always going to be a good model - at any time in any state.

One of the Greats

James Albertus McClure, 1924-2011 History will record that Sen. Jim McClure, who died Saturday at the age of 86, was one of the most significant politicians in Idaho's history. A staunch Republican conservative, McClure nonetheless was liked and respected by those across the political spectrum, but beyond that he accumulated a record of accomplishment that has lasting impact. A strong advocate for the natural resources industries so important to Idaho, McClure also saw the need to resolve long-standing debates over wilderness designation in his native state. He worked out the boundary lines of the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area by spreading maps on the floor of the governor's office and getting on his hands and knees with Democrat Cecil D. Andrus. He helped champion creation of the Sawtooth NRA and in the last days of Frank Church's life he got the iconic River of No Return Wilderness renamed for the Democrat. He fought tooth and nail to grow the Idaho National Laboratory and distinguished himself as a member of the Iran-Contra Committee investigating that scandal. As a reporter and in other capacities, I have had the chance to interview Jim McClure probably more than 20 times over the years. I never sat down with any person who was better prepared or who provided a better interview. He was candid, opinionated and always impeccable well informed. I also never saw the guy use a note card or a script. He was a marvelous extemporaneous speaker. He was also a complete gentleman. Once in Sun Valley years ago, while McClure was chairing the Senate Energy Committee, he sat for a taped interview for well more than half an hour. At the end of the session, while we were making small talk, the technical crew whispered in my ear that none of the half hour of Q and A had been recorded on tape. Gulp. I'd just wasted the time of a busy, important U.S. Senator and had absolutely nothing to show for it. Not missing a beat, McClure smiled and said, "Let's do it again." And we did. He didn't have to do that. Most would have said, sorry, but I've got to run. Obviously, I have never forgotten the kindness. One thing I'll never forget about McClure was his principled pragmatism. Never anything less than a loyal and conservative Republican, he also knew that progress often requires compromise and finding a middle ground. Such was the case when McClure again hooked up with Andrus in 1987 and spent weeks working out a comprehensive approach to the decades-long battles over Idaho wilderness. They flew around the state, spread out the maps and offended everyone - particularly their respective "base" voters. There was something in the grand compromise that everyone could hate and the McClure-Andrus approach ultimately failed. I've thought many times since that the two old pols knew they were far out in front of their constituents, but were nevertheless willing to risk political capital to try to resolve a controversy. It's easy in politics to say "no." It is much more difficult - and risky - to try to lead. McClure was a leader. I was pleased to have a hand in creating a University of Idaho video tribute to Jim McClure in 2007. You can check it out at the University's McClure Center website. In the Idaho political pantheon, McClure stands with Borah and Church as a among the greatest and most important federal officials Idaho has ever produced. He was a genuinely nice guy, too.

Effective and Not

Nullification or Common Sense They celebrated Jefferson Davis's inauguration yesterday in Montgomery, Alabama. Actually, it was a day late. One hundred fifty years ago Friday, Davis became the President of the Confederacy. As the Los Angeles Times noted, it was a much bigger celebration in 1961 on the centennial of the event that presaged the Civil War. Several southern governors showed up then, none did this weekend. The crowds were smaller and more people were in the ceremony than in the audience. As LA Times blogger Andy Malcolm points out, Davis - this is history, not state's rights mythology - is a curious hero for modern day southerners. He actually opposed succession, but not the "right" of a state to do so, and his wife openly opposed the war. The prickly former Mississippi Senator had a stormy tenure. He tried to micromanage the operations of southern armies in the field, advanced his favorite generals over more accomplished men and developed an uncanny ability to feud with southern governors. Still, he was the only president the south had. You go to celebration with the president you have. Apropos of the political moment in several states - Montana now seeks to nullify health care and the Endangerd Species Act - even Davis opposed nullification, arguing that just leaving the Union was a more practical and effective approach. That didn't work all that well, either. As the Idaho State Senate prepares to ignore the sound and fury of "nullification" of federal health care legislation that came over recently from the state's righters in the Idaho House, it may be worth a moment to consider how a state that depends so heavily on federal largess - INL, Mountain Home AFB, the Forest Service, irrigation projects - can wage an effective battle against the big, bad federal government. Former Idaho Gov. Cecil D. Andrus has a piece in the Twin Falls Times-News that makes the case for the quiet, but effective approach of applying common sense to our not infrequent battles with Washington, D.C. In short, fix problems by using the courts and the legislative arena, not by passing time wasting bills that garner big headlines, but don't fix problems. That approach is more difficult, to be sure, but it can work and have lasting results. All that lasts from the nullifiers of 150 years ago is the memory of a lost cause, the consequences of which we still struggle to put in context and understand. The real question may be, have we learned anything from that disasterous piece of American history?

Nullification Crisis

Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing In 1832 when the always frisky state of South Carolina objected to tariff legislation passed by the Congress and signed by President Andrew Jackson, the state's leaders decided they could just ignore the federal act by invoking an "ordinance of nullification." Jackson, not for nothing called "Old Hickory," thought his fellow southerners were nipping a bit heavy into the sour mash, while flaunting the Constitution that he and they were sworn to uphold. The president sent seven U.S. warships to South Carolina waters and Jackson told the state's residents, with a certain decisiveness, that they were flirting with treason. Asked by a visiting South Carolinian if the president had any message for the good people of the Palmetto State, Jackson replied, give them my compliments and tell them if they follow through with these acts of treason, "I'll hang the first man I can lay my hand on." Soon enough South Carolina thought better of this nullification business. Cooler heads will surely prevail, as well, in frisky Idaho - likely in the state senate - after the Idaho House of Representatives has had its fun with a futile, costly and snicker-producing effort to nullify the federal health care legislation. Ignoring the official opinion of the state's Republican chief legal and law enforcement officer, Attorney General Lawrence Wasden, who is already suing the federal government over health care, as well as the considered judgment of one of the nation's top Constitutional scholars, Dr. David Adler, the House State Affairs committee voted 14-5 on Thursday to recommend to the full House that Idaho do what South Carolina wanted to do in 1832. At least two things are missing here: Historical perspective on the 200-plus year history of our federalist system and the kind of principled political leadership that once in a great while requires elected officials to tell the folks who elected them, sorry, you're just wrong and we can't do that. The historical perspective goes back to Jackson and even farther. The principle that any state, acting on its own motion, can chose to defy the duly constructed law of the land has been rejected time and time again in American history. The legislature can hold hearings and object, it can pass a non-binding memorial voicing its displeasure, it can sue, as Idaho has, but it just can't decide to ignore federal law. Not possible unless you subscribe to an anarchist interpretation of more than two centuries of American history. Arkansas in the 1950's tried to defy a federal court order - the law of the land - to desegregate its public schools and Dwight Eisenhower federalized the National Guard to make certain the Constitution was upheld; to avoid anarchy, as Ike said. End of story. States cannot ignore federal law. At some point, genuine political leadership requires serious people to step back from these kinds of emotionally charged efforts and shine some light rather than stoke more heat. Understanding that some folks are mighty upset with the federal health care legislation and that many of them showed up to support the legislature's nullification approach does not abrogate an elected official's responsibility to not always play to the crowd. One of those testifying yesterday in Idaho said, according to the Associated Press account of the hearing, "We as citizens are tired of being lorded over by representatives. We're not conspiracy theorists. We aren't kooks. No one is going to force me to buy anything." It must be hard, in the face of such passion, to not get along by going along. But, once in a while it must be done. In 1946, a very conservative Republican, Sen. Robert A. Taft of Ohio, son of the former president, delivered an historic speech at Kenyon College in his home state. Taft sought out the opportunity to publicly oppose the extremely popular Nazi war crimes trials in Nuremberg that were just then concluding. John F. Kennedy wrote about Taft's political guts in his famous book Profiles in Courage. Here's part of what the Kennedy Library website says about Taft, a man known in his time as Mr. Republican. "To Taft, the [Nazi] defendants were being tried under ex post facto laws (laws that apply retroactively, especially those which criminalize an action that was legal when it was committed). These laws are expressly forbidden in the U.S. Constitution (Article I, section 9 and section 10). Taft viewed the Constitution as the foundation of the American system of justice and felt that discarding its principles in order to punish a defeated enemy out of vengeance was a grave wrong." Hardly anyone in America supported Taft's views. He knew his was speaking directly into a hurricane force wind of opposition, yet he courageously stood for principle over political expediency. "[Taft] was pilloried in the press, by his constituents, by legal experts, and by his fellow Senators on both sides of the aisle. The fallout from the speech may have also played a small part in his unsuccessful presidential bid in 1948. However, Taft so strongly believed in the wisdom of the Constitution that speaking out was more important than his personal ambitions or popularity. Many years later, William O. Douglas of the Supreme Court [a great liberal] agreed with Taft’s view that the Nuremberg Trials were an unconstitutional use of ex post facto laws." Only one Idaho Republican on the House State Affairs Committee, Rep. Eric Anderson of Priest Lake spoke up yesterday and ultimately voted with four Democrats to oppose the nullification proposal. "It's an outright defiance of the law," Anderson said. "If we vacate that rule of law, we simply become nothing but a collection of states that decide among themselves that they're going to nullify everything that's inconvenient to them." There is a higher principle at stake here than making a useless statement about a hated health care law. Courage and political leadership, once in a while, requires an elected official to say: "I hear your concern, I may even agree with your concern, but we can't go this far." The Idaho State Senate will likely have a chance to take that stand and not follow the Idaho House in making a statement of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Budget Blues

Lessons from The Beehive State The Utah state budget is far from flush. The Salt Lake Tribune laments, as legislators do, a $313 million "structural deficit" in Utah. Having a "structural deficit" essentially means the state is spending more than it takes in. Most states have this problem, Idaho included. As noted here yesterday, the Brookings Institution's Mountain West Project has identified a variety of reasons for the fundamentally unbalanced nature of western state's budgets. The reasons range from tax policies that gave away the farm in the form of tax breaks during flush times to antiquated tax structures - like Nevada's - that overly rely on tourism and home building. As for Idaho, some have long argued that the state's tax structure, essentially unchanged since the sales tax was put in place in 1966, no longer reflects an economy built around high tech, services and recreation. If you buy that argument it begins to explain why Idaho, even given the deep cuts in state budgets over the last three years, is likely to continue - post-recession - to have revenue problems. That is a structural deficit. Still, even with its underlying budget problems, Utah looks pretty good right now having avoided much of the fallout from the burst housing bubble and having in place a sound approach to budgeting and managing state government. And, by comparison to most of her neighbors, Utah is ahead of the game in addressing its structural problems.

Utah lawmakers so far are resisting further dips into the state's rainy day fund and the state's overall approach to budget and policy making continues to earn kudos from independent analysts.

In 2008, the Pew Center on the States called Utah "the best managed state" in the nation. Utah got a A- (so did Washington) in the sober, technical Pew study. Idaho, by contrast was back in the pack with Wyoming with a B- grade. Nevada, Montana and Oregon got gentlemanly C+ grades.

One reason Utah scored so high in this analysis was the management systems instituted during the governorship of Jon Huntsman. Huntsman, who recently resigned as U.S. ambassador to China in order to reportedly launch a Republican presidential bid, instituted a number of wonkish, but effective management approaches that impressed the Pew folks.

Here's some of what was said: "Utah manages all facets of state government well, emphasizing long-term goals and performance outcomes. The executive and legislative branches work together effectively to align expenditures with the strategic direction of the state. Utah has also changed the organizational structure of agencies in order to ensure success, embedding human resources and information technology staff in every state agency to better assist with long term management needs."

The Pew study concludes with this about Utah: "In sum, routine, evidence- and process-driven review has enabled one Mountain West state to catch an incipient structural deficit early and act intentionally to rectify it before it becomes entrenched."

Words to budget - and make policy - by.

The State Fiscal Crisis

It's Worse Than You Think California's new - old - governor, Jerry Brown, delivered his State of State address to the legislature last night. Lots of gloom and doom, not surprisingly, and calls for more drastic spending cuts and the extension of taxes. California's budget deficit is $25 billion - with a B. That amounts to 30 percent of the state's budget and, if that problem and the certain prospect of additional cuts in education and social services weren't bad enough, the painful reality for California and many other states is that a sizable portion of these huge deficits are literally baked into the fiscal cake of state governments for years to come. The Brookings Institution's Mountain West project, in cooperation with the Morrison Institute of Public Policy at Arizona State University, recently analyzed these so called "structural deficits" in four western states, California included. Researchers concluded that the structural portions of the current state deficits are "the more or less permanent imbalances of revenues and expenditures that can arise from flaws in a state's fiscal structure, fundamental changes in the regional economy or the state's demographics, or, especially, imprudent or shortsighted policy choices." The study also looked at Arizona which "gave away the store in better times by handing out a series of ill-advised tax cuts (total value, adjusting for inflation and growth: $2.9 billion since 1993);" Nevada where a "narrow, consumption and real estate-oriented revenue system may well now be ill-attuned to a post-Recession "new normal" in which migration, homebuilding, and gaming are permanently depressed;" and Colorado were a "taxpayers bill of rights" has crippled revenue options and the funding for public education. As for California, the study concluded that the state had "basically enacted too many permanent spending increases (notably on education) during the dot.com boom and more recent good times even as it left in place a series of rigid voter mandates and tax limitations." To put the situation even more bluntly, many states have for two decades been spending, tax forgiving and limiting their fiscal options; in essence behaving as mini versions of the federal government. So, while the economy will eventually recover and grow again, some of these state policy choices involving taxes and spending are truly "baked" into the system. Idaho lawmakers had a rude awakening to this structural reality with the sudden discovery last week that a renewable energy tax credit coupled with routine conformance with the federal tax code is costing the state huge amounts of money. Many folks would rush, as the legislature did a while back, to embrace a tax credit to encourage renewables and the policy obviously worked. What is often missing when these policy choices are adopted is the long view. It is one thing to embrace an immediately attractive tax policy today, it is something else to consider that the diverted cash, now missing from the state budget, will come at the expense of an education or human services budget in the future. The Brookings report offered four sensible policy suggestions. States should, and I quote from the report:

• Commit to a balanced approach. Massive budget gaps cannot be responsibly closed by only cutting spending. Budgetary balance and revenue diversification are crucial. In addition to balance and diversification, broad bases and tax system responsiveness should be mantras of fiscal system repair. Tax policies that increase the base and elasticity of state tax systems reduce the need for discretionary and unpopular rate increases.
• Maintain adequate rainy day funds. Most of the Mountain states exhausted their rainyday funds well before relieving their acute fiscal stress. As the economy gets back on its feet, state governments need to not just replenish, but increase their rainy day funds so that they can better weather protracted economic downturns in the future.
• Increase local flexibility and control. States have a history of passing measures that constrain local governments’ ability to raise revenues and respond to changing fiscal circumstances. Those local governments need greater control over revenue generation and public service.
• Improve budget processes and information sharing. Good policy decisions rest on good information and common-sense processes for delivering that information to the people who need it. Decision-makers need to have good data clearly presented about real and projected conditions, the range of policy options, and their consequences.

It must be noted, in contrast to those policy prescriptions, that Idaho lawmakers are still vowing to hold the line on any revenue diversification even as the state's economy has changed dramatically in the last 30 years and more drastic cuts loom. The state's reserve funds are gone and the idea of more local control for local governments is about as popular as a skunk at a garden party. In fact, the Idaho Statesman's Dan Popkey reported that some lawmakers have hungry eyes focused on that portion of the state sales tax that flows to local government. That's not more local control, but less. And, while Idaho has a long history of transparency in its budget process, missing until last week the multi-million dollar impact on state revenues of an established tax credit indicates there is a lot of room for improvement. The Brookings report is a sobering assessment of the state budget troubles that loom ahead even as the economy starts to recover. Tomorrow, why Utah is in considerably better shape than much of the rest of the west.

The Moral Test

Hard Cases "The moral test of government is how that government treats those who are in the dawn of life; the children, those who are in the twilight of life; the elderly, and those who are in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped." The quote is most often attributed to the liberal icon Hubert Humphrey and dates to a time when there was a broad consensus in American life that government had a very precise role to play in trying to improve the plight of those fellow citizens "in the shadows of life." The lingering Great Recession more than ever has called that role of government into question and, at the same time, made Hubert's eloquent quote more relevant than ever. A massive human hurt is unfolding in nearly every state as governors and state legislators contemplate unprecedented reductions in spending on various services paid for at the state level by Medicaid. In states like Idaho, all the easy stuff has been cut. Now the real pain begins, as illustrated by the estimated 1,000 Idahoans who showed up on Friday, some in wheelchairs, to show state legislators, more eloquently than words ever could, just what the American social safety net really means to real people. With the 50 states collectively facing a budget gap estimated at $125 billion, the New York Times reports today that Medicaid is "ripe for the slashing" from New York to California, from Idaho to Texas. The times are tough - very tough - but I doubt that even tough-minded, fiscally conservative legislators can live with the implications of ending services for a guy in a wheelchair or an 8th grader with autism. In Idaho, 20 lawmakers, the members of the powerful Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee (JFAC), make most every spending decision for the rest of the 85 members of the legislature. It is an awesome power and responsibility. The committee has co-chairs, Sen. Dean Cameron and Rep. Maxine Bell, and no one has ever credibly accused these experienced lawmakers of being big spenders. They run a tidy ship and one has to be impressed with the diligence they and their committee have lavished on the hard choices the state faces with both Medicaid and education. Cameron and Bell deserve a lot of praise for showing the political courage to open up the committee to those thousand people who came calling on Friday. It had to have been a sobering experience for anyone paying attention. Here's a fearless prediction. Arguably the most conservative legislature in the nation won't be able to make the $25 million in Medicaid cuts that Idaho's governor has proposed. It will take a while yet for the reality to sink in, its still early in the legislative process, but Friday was an important day. Not only did the thousand show up, but the budget numbers that have been in dispute since the first day of the 2011 session just gained some clarity and not in a good way. All this will eventually lead to a frantic search for some barely acceptable source of new revenue to help plug the budget holes. The legislature will come to embrace, in tried and true fashion, the method of patch and scratch tax policy making. Some how, some way, Idaho's very conservative legislature will "find" some new revenue to avoid these awful choices. It won't be easy, and people elected never to raise taxes will anguish over the choices, but it will happen I think. Idaho's lawmakers have come face-to-face with their fellow citizens who really do, through no fault of their own, live in the shadows. In the end, it will not really be much of a political test. No one is likely to lose an election by making a vote to preserve home care services for an elderly, wheelchair bound neighbor. It will be quite a moral test, however, for lawmakers who infrequently see so clearly the impact of their votes.

Heir Apparent

There's a Trend Here... Now that Idaho's statewide elected officials have taken the oath of office for the next four years, we can safely start the speculation about four years from now. You won't find many "political observers" in Idaho who wouldn't make book on the fact that the state's current Lt. Gov. Brad Little is the prohibitive favorite to be the state's next chief executive when current Gov. Butch Otter is ready to ride to the sunset. While Gov. Otter is, appropriately, receiving most of the attention at the moment as the state struggles with another year of bleak revenue forecasts, shrinking budgets and many, many tough decisions, Little grabbed a bit of the political spotlight with a very well attended fundraising breakfast in Boise on January 7. That just happened to be the morning that he, Otter and the rest of the statewide electeds were sworn in for their new terms. While it is dangerous to assume anything in politics, I'm betting that nearly everyone at the Lt. Governor's breakfast earlier this month entertains the expectation that the affable Little is the odds-on heir apparent. After all, while taking nothing away from his obvious political talents and demonstrated appeal, Little seems to be part of the now established trend in Idaho of the "Light" Governor having the leg up on moving up. Four of the last six Idaho governors, including Otter, have served as Lt. Governor before gaining the big job. This trend really began when John Evans succeeded Cecil Andrus in 1977 when Andrus went to Washington to serve as Secretary of the Interior. Before Evans got his chance to move into the big office in the west wing of the Statehouse, you have to go all the way back to Arnold Williams in the late 1940's to find an Idaho Lt. Governor who become Governor. Andrus returned to the governorship in 1986 and Phil Batt, who had been Lt. Governor under Evans, followed him. Jim Risch, now in the U.S. Senate, was appointed Lt. Governor and moved up when Dirk Kempthorne went to the Bush cabinet. Then it became Otter's turn in 2006. Kempthorne is the outlier in this group. He went from the U.S. Senate to the governorship, the first person in Idaho history to do that. Interestingly, only one Idahoan, three-term GOP Gov. Bob Smylie, moved up from the Attorney Generals' office. Prior to Evans moving up in the 1980's, conventional wisdom held that the surest road to the governorship was through the state legislature. Andrus made that move, as did Don Samuelson before him. In fact, of the 19 men who have served as Idaho's governor since 1920, 13 of them served in the legislature before becoming governor. So, you want to be governor of Idaho - this sounds simpler than it is - do your time in the state legislature, as Little has done (the Senate is a generally a better stepping stone than the House) and then get yourself elected to the Number Two job. Nothing is ever pre-determined in politics - nothing - but that path is now pretty well-worn in Idaho.

Nullification

We Fought a War Over This... As Idaho and a half dozen other states prepare legislation to attempt to "nullify" the federal health care law, including apparently sanctions against anyone trying to implement the law, it may be worth remembering that 150 years ago this week the future President of the Confederacy stood on the floor of the United States Senate and spoke his farewells. A good part of Sen. Jefferson Davis' speech on Jan. 21, 1861 was devoted to the doctrine of nullification. His home state of Mississippi was leaving the Union, Davis said, and, in his mind at least, it naturally followed that he had to leave the Senate of the United States. Davis explained his theory of his duties as a citizen and made it clear that his allegiance to Ole Miss came before his country. "If I had thought that Mississippi was acting without sufficient provocation," he said, "or without an existing necessity, I should still, under my theory of the Government, because of my allegiance to the State of which I am a citizen, have been bound by her action." My state right or wrong, apparently. Davis went on at some length to draw a distinction between what he and Mississippi were doing - leaving the Union - and the theory, widely advanced in the 1830's by John C. Calhoun, of nullification. "Nullification and secession, so often confounded, are, indeed, antagonistic principles," Davis said. "Nullification is a remedy which it is sought to apply within the Union, against the agent of the States. It is only to be justified when the agent has violated his constitutional obligations, and a State, assuming to judge for itself, denies the right of the agent thus to act, and appeals to the other states of the Union for a decision; but, when the States themselves and when the people of the States have so acted as to convince us that they will not regard our constitutional rights, then, and then for the first time, arises the doctrine of secession in its practical application." In his somewhat tortured assessment of nationhood, Davis explained what Calhoun was trying to do by advocating nullification, or as he described it a state "assuming to judge for itself." "It was because of [Calhoun's] deep-seated attachment to the Union - his determination to find some remedy for existing ills short of a severance of the ties which bound South Carolina to the other States - that Mr. Calhoun advocated the doctrine of nullification, which he proclaimed to be peaceful, to be within the limits of State power, not to disturb the Union, but only to be a means of bringing the agent before the tribunal of the States for their judgement. "Secession belongs to a different class of remedies. It is to be justified upon the basis that the states are sovereign. There was a time when none denied it. I hope the time may come again when a better comprehension of the theory of our Government, and the inalienable rights of the people of the States, will prevent any one from denying that each State is a sovereign, and thus may reclaim the grants which it has made to any agent whomsoever." In other words, disunion in the mind of Jefferson Davis was a logical follow on to nullification for a sovereign state. The trouble with Idaho's approach to this fundamental Constitutional guestion is that it neglects a good slice of the last 150 years of American history; those years since Davis made his passionate defense of state's rights. Our ancestors fought a bloody and protracted Civil War to resolve these very questions. As a result, the United States became a singular nation, as the great historian Shelby Foote loved to point out. Prior to Lee's surrender to Grant in 1865, it was common to refer to the "United States are." But our history and our courts have consistently held since that the "United States is." Still, every few years nullification comes roaring back. During the civil rights era, ten different southern states sought to nullify the historic 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court ultimately ruled in 1958 in Cooper v. Aaron that the Brown ruling, ending segregation, could "neither be nullified openly and directly by state legislators or state executive or judicial officers nor nullified indirectly by them through evasive schemes for segregation." Idaho's foremost Constitutional scholar, Dr. David Adler, recently told the Associated Press that nullification proponents are conveniently overlooking a lot of our history. "The premise of their position and the reasoning behind it are severely flawed and have no support in our Constitutional architecture," Adler said. In their zeal to overturn an act of Congress, the proponents of nullification cite, as Jefferson Davis did on the brink of the Civil War, the "high and solemn motive of defending and protecting the rights we inherited," not to mention the wisdom of Jefferson and Madison. Funny, they rarely mention that old fire breather, Calhoun. Through a terrible Civil War and on through the long and continuing struggle for civil rights, the United States gradually and imperfectly became one country of many states. Through elections and court cases, debate and discourse, we have arrived at a federal government that makes laws and attempts, not always ably, to apply them fairly to all the people. If folks don't like those laws, they do have recourse - legal recourse. They can sue in the courts, as Idaho has done over the health care legislation, or they can have an election to change the Congress. Neither available legal approach, historically or Constitutionally, sanctions nullification. Maybe that is so because wise leaders, at least since Jefferson Davis, have been able to see where such a doctrine logically can lead. The great Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote a concurring opinion in Aaron more than 50 years ago and captured the essence of what is at sake in preserving our federal system. "Lincoln's appeal to 'the better angels of our nature' failed to avert a fratricidal war," Frankfurter wrote in 1958. "But the compassionate wisdom of Lincoln's First and Second Inaugurals bequeathed to the Union, cemented with blood, a moral heritage which, when drawn upon in times of stress and strife, is sure to find specific ways and means to surmount difficulties that may appear to be insurmountable."

Billy Collins

The History Teacher When I saw the story that Idaho's State School Superintendent Tom Luna had pulled a pop history quiz on lawmakers on the legislature's education committees, and that 17% couldn't name the year Idaho became a state and that 15% didn't know Lewiston was the original capital, I thought immediately of Billy Collins' wonderful little poem - The History Teacher. Trying to protect his students' innocence he told them the Ice Age was really just the Chilly Age, a period of a million years when everyone had to wear sweaters. And the Stone Age became the Gravel Age, named after the long driveways of the time. The Spanish Inquisition was nothing more than an outbreak of questions such as "How far is it from here to Madrid?" "What do you call the matador's hat?" The War of the Roses took place in a garden, and the Enola Gay dropped one tiny atom on Japan. The children would leave his classroom for the playground to torment the weak and the smart, mussing up their hair and breaking their glasses, while he gathered up his notes and walked home past flower beds and white picket fences, wondering if they would believe that soldiers in the Boer War told long, rambling stories designed to make the enemy nod off.

Idaho became a state in 1890, by the way.

Wipe Out

Idaho GOP More Firmly in Control If yesterday's election in Idaho had been a Little League baseball game, it would have been called on account of the ten run rule. Republicans gained four seats in the state House of Representatives, held all the Constitutional offices and recaptured the Congressional seat held for the last two years by Democrat Walt Minnick. As elections go, this one was a tidal wave. The huge Republican majorities in the Idaho Legislature will soon enough face big challenges, including more budget cutting - potentially including education and social services - but the GOP and Gov. Butch Otter can bask, for a while at least, in the sure knowledge that voters were in no mood to punish them for historic cuts in school spending or for presiding over a still struggling economy. Quite the contrary, Idaho Republicans seem more dominate than ever against a dispirited, disorganized opposition. Otter's victory was nothing short of astounding. He won just over 59% of the vote against four opponents and held Democrat Keith Allred to the worst showing for a Democratic gubernatorial candidate since 1998. Allred's eastern Idaho and Magic Valley strategy was a bust. The governor polled nearly exactly the same number of votes in Bonneville County (Idaho Falls) as he did in 2006, but Allred didn't come close to matching the vote Democrat Jerry Brady managed in the same area four years earlier. With his LDS faith becoming a focus of attention in October, Allred carried not a single county in heavily Mormon eastern Idaho. He only came close in Bannock County (Pocatello) where Brady beat Otter four years ago. When all was said and done, Allred won only two counties - dependably Democratic Blaine (Sun Valley) and Latah (Moscow) by a narrow margins. In the Raul Labrador - Minnick race, there will be, I suspect, a good deal of analysis of Minnick's hard hitting television attacks on the Republican, but the backlash factor - and there was a backlash - can't entirely account for Labrador's comfortable ten point win. Minnick, always an uncomfortable Democrat in a very conservative district, won by the wave in 2008 and lost by it, as well. In a year when the GOP was headed to a nearly 60 seat pickup in the U.S. House of Representatives, it was - in perfect hindsight - nearly impossible that one of those seats was not going to be in the First District of Idaho. Take nothing away from Congressman-elect Labrador. Out spent 5 to 1, he pulled two "upsets" this year - a primary and a general election win, neither of which he was expected to accomplish. There was nothing anti-incumbent about this election. It was anti-Democrat. Idaho is painted deep RED today and it is likely to stay that way for a long, long time.

Clint Stennett

A Nice Guy and Pretty Fair Legislator I long ago began to apply a simple test to any Idaho Democrat who aspired to statewide office. Could the wanabee candidate walk into the VFW Hall in an Idaho rural community and "work the room" effectively or could they campaign at the Bear Lake County Fair and not look out of place? If you could be authentic and comfortable in those kinds of settings, you might have a future in Idaho politics. Clint Stennett, who died last week at age 54, was nothing if not authentic. He passed with flying colors the VFW - Bear Lake County Fair test. He wore his cowboy boots naturally and under this Stetson was a sharp mind, a good sense of humor and the rare ability, particularly in today's political world, to find and keep friends across the aisle. Stennett was dealt a very, very tough hand when he was diagnosed with cancer early in 2008, but by all accounts he bore the personal and health burdens with grace and determination. His partner in life and politics, Michelle, carried on for him in the State Senate and she now seeks the seat he occupied so well for so long. I was touched, as many will be I suspect, to read this letter from former Idaho House Speaker Bruce Newcomb, a Republican, endorsing Michelle Stennett. It speaks volumes about Mr. Speaker Newcomb, but also the Stennetts. This, my friends, is decency and substance trumping party and partisanship. We could use a good deal more of that. Clint Stennett's passing is a big loss for the Idaho Senate, his central Idaho constituents, his friends, family and, of course, for beleaguered Idaho Democrats, but it is also a cold, hard reminder that life is very short and full of only the sureness of uncertainty. Stennett toyed more than once with those inevitable statewide ambitions that tend to swirl around a person with smarts, style and charisma. Too bad he didn't take the plunge and sad for all of us that now we won't know just how good he might have been on a statewide stage. I suspect very good. It is too true, the good do die young.