RANDY STAPILUS   The Idaho Column

The norm in campaign finance, traditionally at least, goes like this: The candidate files and sets up an account for campaign spending, receives funds for campaign purposes, then spends it, presumably to around zero by election day, on such as ads, printing and mailing, salaries, office space, polling, depending on the size of the campaign. Traditionally, campaigns are like the Snake River at Milner Dam, which is dewatered at the end of one stretch, then refills in the next one.

That still often happens when candidates are in competitive races, when they collect whatever they can and spend it down, because they can’t politically afford to leave resources on the table.

Nowadays, however, fewer congressional races are really competitive. If you’re one of those nearly impregnable incumbents – say, a Republican in Idaho (or, a Democrat in some other states) – you really don’t need but a fraction of the funds you take in. Most of your contributors aren’t donating because they think you need it to win; they have other agendas in mind. You wind up with excess cash.

The handling of that excess money has come up in the case of Senator Mike Crapo’s campaign treasury. Here’s some background.

In the cycle leading up to his last election in 2010, Crapo raised $5.1 million, which was added on to some cash he already had on hand. In the campaign he spent about $3.4 million, only a portion of what he had available but still far more than he needed, since that was about 34 times as much as his Democratic opponent, Tom Sullivan, spent. Crapo ended the 2010 cycle with about $3 million cash on hand, and has continued to raise money since, though he’s not up for re-election until 2016. As of the end of March, he had $3.4 million on hand. This is not an unusual situation; quite a few successful congressional candidates of both parties also are well padded. Continue Reading »

RANDY STAPILUS   The Idaho Column

Contrary to many expectations, Idaho has a good many Democrats, more than a lot of people suspect. More than 200,000 Idahoans voted for Barack Obama for president last year, and more than 200,000 votes in the two U.S. House races in the state went for the Democratic candidates.

Of course – and no minor point – there were about twice as many votes cast for the Republicans in those races, so in Idaho the Democrats lost. Still, the D numbers are something to conjure with.

I bore that in mind last week a report from Lou Jacobson, a writer on politics for Governing magazine who specializes on politics not on the federal level but in the states. His provocative question: Did the Howard Dean 50-state strategy actually do any good for Democrats? Short answer: He says that it did. Idaho relevance: Democrats should pay attention and take heart; and it could matter to Republicans in many places too.

The longer answer, explaining jargon and party history …

During his tenure as national Democratic chair from 2005 to 2009, former Vermont Governor Dean launched an ambitious and, to many professional pols in both parties impractical, effort called the “50-state strategy.” The norm in politics is to tightly target one’s efforts in swing areas, and secondarily build up support in the base – and let slide the areas in strong opposition. For national Democrats, that means forgetting about places like Idaho, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Nebraska … you probably know the list. (Republicans have their opposing list, too.)

Dean thought this was all wrong, that the national party could, by carefully planting enough seed money and building organization in all 50 states, change the political atmosphere in even the toughest places – maybe not turning red states blue, but shifting them to less deeply red, building a bench of candidates at local levels who eventually could run for, and maybe win, higher office. Continue Reading »

RANDY STAPILUS   The Idaho Column

UPDATE: Belatedly, I heard the original source for some of this analysis was a report by StateImpact Idaho, by Emilie Ritter Saunders. So noted.

A piece of demographic analysis reported widely a week ago, about shifting tends in the makeup of Idaho’s population, deserves some serious thought well beyond the thumb-tacked issue it highlighted.

That reason, as KTVB-TV’s web article said, was that it is “a change that’s alarming some jobs experts.” That’s not wrong. There’s a good reason the shifts in Idaho age groups – the state is losing younger people and attracting what is referred to as a “gray tsunami” – ought to concern those analysts; it really does have an effect on the labor force, which in turn affects business development.

Longer-term trend lines weren’t immediately available, and that would have helped nail down the point. But there is some evidence things are moving in this direction; labor analysts found that in March another 1,400 people left the Idaho labor force.

But surely (to reiterate here the point again, albeit that some of the numbers came from the state Department of Labor) there are concerns that range well beyond those of business executives.

The analysis grew in large part out of a look at data from the state Transportation Department records, mainly drivers and other license information, to figure out where adults (and some teenagers) come from to Idaho, and where they go from the state. Historically, those numbers have been interesting, but larger conclusions are difficult to draw. They’re not so difficult this time,

The report said that in 2012, net outmigration – people moving away from Idaho as opposed to moving in – was at higher levels, higher than in more than a decade. Bob Fick of the Department of Labor, which also tracks these kind of statistics, said “That’s the first time we’ve had an outmigration from the 80s. … Will we have the labor force to man a recovery?”

The reason for concern is not so much the overall numbers but the age cohorts: People in their 20s were disproportionately moving out, and people above 60 disproportionately were moving in.

One impact, Fick suggested, is a slowing the “goods” (partly, manufacturing) economy, which generates relatively high-wage jobs, and more service jobs – reflecting what younger vs. older consumers tend to buy. That may translate to lower overall wages (Idaho ranks high on the percentage of workers at the minimum wage), and a softer consumer economy.

Let’s look at this through a political lens. Continue Reading »

RANDY STAPILUS   The Idaho Column

As the battle over gun regulation continues, the argument most promoted as an alternative to gun restrictions is the need to do more about mental health. National Rifle Association President Wayne LaPierre, last December, making the case: “We have a mental health system in this country that has completely and totally collapsed.”

As a gun-rights state second to none, Idaho might be expected to go after the matter of mental health in a more serious way. As a matter of policymaking, concerns about mental health per se might be a hard sell, but propping up the argument on guns would seem to be front burner … if problem-solving really is of much interest.

Idaho hasn’t been doing (yet) what its neighbor to the south, Nevada, reportedly has been doing of late: Packing mentally ill patients on Greyhound buses and sending them to the other 49 states (1,500 or so from the Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Center at Las Vegas). But ….

In February, the Idaho Department of Correction, which had been seeking approval for a secure mental health facility containing 579 beds – a substantial percentage of people behind bars in Idaho as elsewhere have serious mental issues – dropped the proposal. The department said that “Director Brent Reinke decided to withdraw the proposal while the agency works with the Department of Health and Welfare, the courts, the Idaho Criminal Justice Commission and other stakeholders on developing a plan for addressing broader issues.”

Could that be a longer version of: “Let’s form a committee”? That would cost less than the facility.

The department outsources medical care, physical and mental, at the correctional institutions, and its current contractor is Corizon, of Brentwood, Tennessee. It’s a big company, providing services at 349 correctional facilities in 29 states. But as with the Corrections Corporation of America, which runs one of Idaho’s prisons, there have been issues.

Last week the Board of Correction chose to continue its Corizon contract, now valued at $27 million annually, just until January rather than for a full year. It will also solicit other bids. There were prompts for this: Idaho fined Corizon for missing benchmarks, and a federal lawsuit has added pressure for improvements. The Associated Press said in one story last week that “a federally appointed expert concluded its medical care was so bad it amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.” Continue Reading »

RANDY STAPILUS   The Idaho Column

In Idaho, one election cycle out of every three qualifies as a big campaign year for Idaho – highlighted by races for both governor and senator – and 2014 will be one of them.

Those aren’t the presidential election cycles. General election presidential campaigning in blood-red Idaho just doesn’t happen anymore, although it does see some occasional some pre-nomination stumping, which Idaho did get in 2012. And election of all the statewide state offices are on the off-cycles, the mid-terms, away from presidential years. But only some of those have elections for the U.S. Senate; 2010, 2004 and 2002 did, but 2006 and 2000 did not. 2014 will feature one of those double headers.

That year Idaho gets a senate race, a governor’s race, the rest of the statewides and the regular two-year offices (mainly legislature). In some years that’s been enough to grab all kinds of attention around the state.

It might nonetheless be a snoozer. But for some of the same reasons it might be dull and almost ignorable, it could turn into a lively scrap at the primary level.

Last week Senator Jim Risch said specifically he plans to run for re-election next year. Risch knows the value of early announcements; that part of how now-Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter got the jump on the Republican nomination for the office, despite initial interest from Risch, in 2006. By announcing early, odds are that Risch has cleared the field of serious opposition. If, say, Representative Raul Labrador had been interested, the time for a push would have been before a Risch announcement. Now the state’s Republican organizations and alliances will have time to coalesce around him, leaving few scraps for any in-party opposition. Continue Reading »

RANDY STAPILUS   The Idaho Column

If the poet John Donne and the novelist Ernest Hemingway were right, that “no man is an island,” that we should “send not to know/For whom the bell tolls/It tolls for thee,” then we all are damaged by the carnage at Holbrook.

The case has gotten some attention, but so horrific is it that national viral status would almost be expected. It was a case of terror on so many levels.

In Holbrook.

Probably not many Idahoans easily could place Holbrook on a map. It is located about 10 miles west of Malad, in high open field country surrounded by mountains, country well away from population centers. I have driven through it a few times, but never had occasion to stop, partly because there was nothing to stop for, no visible commercial or public activity. It once was a true small town, but not an incorporated city, something places with as few as a dozen people have founded, and for decades has been more a clustering of houses. Population for the area is reported as 400; if you drive through, you may suspect that seems high.

Such places may be remote from metro areas, but the people there are not remote from each other. This isn’t a matter of the vaunted small-town snoopiness, but the reality that with fewer people around, with fewer activities and distractions and less traffic, you see what goes on around you.

That’s part of what makes the events there so disturbing.

The people who lived at the crime scene were not entirely distant from their community. On March 31, law enforcement officials said, the people in the house that became a crime scene hosted an Easter party. (As of last week, investigators were seeking out anyone who attended.) They might have seen something reportable.

There was plenty to see. A big pack of dogs was housed there – 64 pit pulls were found there about a week ago, with clear indications that at least many of them were being used for dog fighting. That activity, thanks to a recent change in Idaho law, is now a felony, and the reasons for that are not just because of the horrific effects on the dogs: It is often a good indicator that something has gone deeply wrong with the people involved, too. That was outside the house. Inside, investigators found 38 marijuana plants and enough cash to indicate significant trafficking was underway, another indicator of trouble. Continue Reading »

RANDY STAPILUS   The Idaho Column

As this year’s Idaho legislative session cranked up in January, many observers noted two significant changes in it: An unusually large number of freshmen, and a new House speaker who, for the first time in decades, had ousted an incumbent who would still be in the chamber in the session ahead.

There was some suggestion that these things might be a big deal in the course of this year’s session: New people, a new way of doing or looking at things.

That legislature adjourned just before noon on Thursday, a mid-length session. Now, looking in the rear view mirror, looking at the large picture, it seems reasonable to say: Eh, not so much.

That doesn’t mean the commentary from a season ago was totally off base. In the Idaho Legislature, very little of real substance has changed in two decades, even while some (not all) of the names have, so people understandably get excited about anything new that does happen.

And it’s not that the new freshman crowd and the new Speaker Scott Bedke have made no difference. Both certainly mattered in what may be the keynote event of the session, the passage of a health insurance exchange bill. A group of 16 freshmen may have provided the legislative lubricant to ease it through to a narrow win in the House, and Bedke may have made possible progress on the bill, period; it had died a year earlier under his predecessor, Lawerence Denney.

Bedke’s administration of the House was widely touted as smoother, more efficient and less controversy-prone than Denney’s. (There even seemed to be somewhat fewer “quotable quotes,” the kind that go viral nationwide, than in the last few sessions.) The Legislature’s “climate” – emotional and temperamental – was said to have improved. People inside the building tend to notice and appreciate that sort of thing a lot more than people outside it. Continue Reading »

RANDY STAPILUS   The Idaho Column

The departure of Duane Nellis as president of the University of Idaho has kicked in a nationwide search for a replacement, standard procedure these days for filling such jobs as university presidents.

It will take about a year. It will involve dozens of people, vast amounts of time, and considerable money and angst. How much money for the search? That varies, but similar searches around the country these days tend to cost upward of $100,000, for consultants, travel, advertising and more.

The president it generates probably, if history is any guide, will have an impressive resume but little or no experience with either Idaho or the university, and so necessarily will have to spend a year or two getting acquainted and learning the ropes. Because the search is national, salary and benefits will ratchet up to the national marketplace level, which has been racheting ever higher and higher.

How long will this investment – assuming the choice is a good one, which isn’t always the case – last? Maybe not long. In the case of Nellis, chosen by a nationwide search, about four years. His predecessor as permanent president, Timothy White, also lasted four years. His predecessor, Robert Hoover, lasted a little longer, about seven years, but left under a cloud.

Something like this probably will be the university’s, and Idaho’s, experience again.

Or.

Last week an interim president – to fill in between Nellis and a permanent successor – was named. He is Don Burnett, the dean of the university’s law school.

The state Board of Education could do a lot worse than to just make his appointment permanent, right now.

If he’d take it (his age, in his mid-60s, might be his argument against). But consider his background. Continue Reading »

RANDY STAPILUS   The Idaho Column

If you’re an Idaho taxpayer, you may be an Idaho tax scofflaw and not even know it.

Probably few Idahoans know about the use tax, and probably fewer pay all of it that is owed.

The use tax is a kind of counterpart to the much better-known sales tax. When you buy a product in Idaho, you are (in most cases) charged a sales tax, which the seller in turn has to forward to the state. Suppose you buy something in Oregon or Montana (or, for that matter, Alaska, Delaware or New Hampshire) – one of the five states that do not charge sales tax – and bring it back to Idaho? That can amount to significant money in the case of something like furniture or a car. That way, you can avoid sales tax and cut six percent off your cost, right?

Idaho law has considered this, and it imposes a use tax. If you buy it over the border and bring it back to Idaho to “use,” you have to pay the equivalent of the sales tax. The state is fairly rigorous on the car front, since autos used by Idahoans have to be registered in Idaho.

Generally, the use tax has to be “self-assessed,” sort of an honor system. Every now and then the Tax Commission, to which it is supposed to be paid, issues a statement on the subject. Last week, for example, it advised (in advance of income tax filings):

“Check your invoices to see whether sales tax was collected on the following purchases, which may require a use tax payment: Magazine subscriptions; Book and record clubs; Out-of-state catalog purchases; Merchandise bought over the Internet (including digital music, movies, books, games, etc.); Purchases in a state where no sales tax is charged; Untaxed purchases of merchandise from Idaho vendors. If sales tax was not collected, Idaho makes it easy for taxpayers to pay their use tax when they file their annual income tax return, which is due by April 15.  Simply total your untaxed purchases, multiply that total by .06, and enter that amount, rounded to the nearest dollar, on the appropriate line of your income tax return.” Continue Reading »

RANDY STAPILUS   The Idaho Column

No one living in Idaho or in other states should be unaware how the cost of health care, and insurance for it, has ballooned in the last few decades, driving people into individual ruin and straining businesses and other organizations (and economic recovery). A brush with a hospital is flirtation with bankruptcy – and it has meant bankruptcy for many. That’s true even for the insured, who find their protections eroding each year. And the number of uninsured sits at about 16 percent of all people nationally, 18 percent in Idaho (21 percent among those 64 and younger). This is an enormous problem.

There is no one cause and no one answer. One tactic intended to help, one that makes use of a marketplace, is an insurance exchange: An organization allowing buyers of insurance to shop around, compare costs and benefits and get assistance, in a way they haven’t been able to. Such a plan was built into the 2010 Affordable Care Act, and in it states were given the option to set up exchanges.

That’s the background for House Bill 248, which would establish by the state of Idaho an exchange aimed at helping consumers of health insurance to locate and buy appropriate policies. Alternatively, the feds would establish one in Idaho. The bill passed 41-29, after more than seven hours of debate.

You might suppose that long debate, one of Idaho’s longest legislative debates in decades, would have centered on the problems and costs of health care and insurance. You would suppose wrong.

The bill’s stated “purpose and intent” begins, “It is the public policy of the state of Idaho to actively resist federal actions that would limit or override state sovereignty under the 10th amendment of the United States constitution. Through this legislation, the state of Idaho asserts its sovereignty …”

That framing overwhelmed the debate. The need of Idahoans for affordable health care and insurance, whether the exchange was a good solution, whether this specific model might be improved upon: These were touched upon almost not all. The course of debate suggested the health (in effect, the safety) of Idaho’s people wasn’t of significant interest. Maybe the closest graze came from the conservative Representative JoAn Wood, who aptly noted the absence of strong consumer protections in the bill. The “sovereignty” of Idaho seemed the lone general concern – that, and taking potshots at anyone federal. Continue Reading »

RANDY STAPILUS   The Idaho Column

The Idaho territorial sesquicentennial celebration is now properly underway, with ceremonies involving an Abe Lincoln stand-in and much else, much of it centered around Boise, which was one of the few stable communities then existing in the new territory.

The bash may be widely taken as an honorific to what happened back then. It should be better taken as recognition of how far Idaho has come since 1863 (and yes, I’ll say that even with the legislature in session). Celebrations of history have a tendency toward whitewash, and that may be liberally applied this year.

Consider pioneer Sheriff David C. Updyke.

Ada County (then including what are now Canyon and Payette counties as well) was one of Idaho’s first, established in December 1864. Boiseans looking for law enforcement quickly chose Updyke, electing him early in 1865 as their first sheriff, to lead that effort. He was an energetic man, open to confrontation and experienced with using his firearms. Just what a barely-settled new county needed. Or so they thought.

Updyke was a native of New York, where got into enough varied trouble as to be strongly advised to take his act elsewhere – far away elsewhere. He moved to California, hearing tales of gold, but too late for the mining rush there, and unhappily settled for work as a stage driver. When he heard about the first strike in the Boise River Valley (in what wasn’t yet known as Idaho) he raced there to find his fortune. He found just enough metallic scraps to invest in a couple of new businesses in the start-up town of Boise, but Updyke’s thirst for more was still acute. Continue Reading »

RANDY STAPILUS   The Idaho Column

Idaho voters may despise Congress, but they do not often throw out their own members – they’ve done it just four times in the last half-century. Less often than that do the voters of a party reject an incumbent of their own party for another term.

The last time it happened was almost 40 years ago, in 1974, when Orval Hansen, a three-term incumbent in the second district, was defeated in the primary by former Representative George Hansen. The campaign was messy and a number of factors, some of them personal to the candidates, were at play. But the ideological dynamic was one familiar to Idaho voters today: The challenge to Orval by George was seen as a challenge of the right against a more moderate conservative.

You wonder if the Club for Growth is doing a little research on that election.

The Club, which made a splash in Idaho in 2006, is described in Wikipedia as “a fiscally conservative 501(c)4 organization active in the United States of America, with an agenda focused on taxation and other economic issues. … According to its website, the Club for Growth’s policy goals include cutting income tax rates, repealing the estate tax, limited government and a Balanced Budget Amendment, entitlement reform, free trade, tort reform, school choice, and deregulation.” It does not much compromise on any of that.

In 2006, when Idaho had an open seat in the first district, it threw massive money and support to then-legislator Bill Sali, enough that you could fairly say it was the number one reason Sali won his primary and general election that year. One piece of evidence is that in 2008, when Sali ran as an incumbent, the Club stayed out of the race, and Sali lost.

Now the Club is signaling it wants in again, time targeting 2nd District Representative Mike Simpson, now an eight-term member and probably the member of the Idaho delegation with the most clout within Congress. He describes himself as a conservative, and certainly is a loyal member of the House Republican caucus, and close to House Speaker John Boehner. Continue Reading »

RANDY STAPILUS   The Idaho Column

Here’s an idea to get your mind around: A legislature in which you’re represented by two rather than three state lawmakers, with legislators elected from 105 rather than 35 districts. In which the number of legislators overall is the same as it is right now.

Welcome to the way Oregon apportions its legislature, and the way a group of legislators in Washington state – a liberal and a moderate Democrat and a conservative Republican – are proposing it be done there. A way that could be done, too, in Idaho.

It’s less complicated than I made it sound a couple of paragraphs back, and barely more complicated than what Idaho does now. Idaho has (and has had since 1966, with a six-year interruption) 35 districts, roughly equal in population, each represented by one senator and two representatives. Washington state does the same with 49 districts.

Oregon has 90 legislators, and like the other two has twice as many representatives as senators. But its districts are different. It has 30 Senate districts; on the House level each of those Senate districts is split in half, those halves each electing one representative, 60 in all. For a total of 90. That gives each representative a smaller group of constituents to worry about, and theoretically at least gives the voters better access to and more influence with their representative. You could argue that it makes the House “closer to the people” without increasing the number of legislators.

A bill proposed by three Washington House members, liberal Democrat Hans Dunshee, moderate Democrat Dawn Morrell and conservative Republican Hans Zeiger (inevitably, the “Hans and Hans bill”) has been introduced there instructing the next redistricting commission (which Washington, like Idaho but unlike Oregon, has) to split up the legislature in the separate-House-district way.

In Washington, that would mean House districts of about 70,000 people instead of the current 140,000. In Idaho, that would mean House districts of about 22,500 people each rather than 45,000 or so. Continue Reading »

RANDY STAPILUS   The Idaho Column

Idaho House Bill 179 is an unusual thing – a cart positioned before the horse, that actually may help pull it.

It’s what usually is called a “trailer bill,” which ordinarily is a measure intended to correct an error or clarify something in another bill that has passed or is about to. This one is unusual in that it has been drafted and introduced before the main bill has reached either the Senate or House floor, while there’s still plenty of time to amend it. Which, under ordinary circumstances and in most years, is what might have happened.

But then, HB 179 also bears a close resemblance to another kind of legislative creation – the fig leaf – and that’s where the story most likely lies.

The subject at hand is one of the hottest topics of this year’s Idaho legislative session, the health insurance exchange. Such an exchange is mandated one way or the other by federal law: Either the state can set one up (within certain requirements), or the feds will institute one. Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter, no fan of the federal health care law, has argued (along with some legislative leaders, and many business community leaders) that Idaho would be better off with its own program. Critics, including much of the structure of the Idaho Republican Party and many (we don’t know for certain how many) legislators are of a mind to say, “Hell no!” The bill (Senate Billl 1042) has cleared a Senate committee, but its future on the floor, and in the House, remain uncertain. Continue Reading »

RANDY STAPILUS   The Idaho Column

In 2001 I contracted with the Lewiston Tribune, then inconveniently between political reporters, to cover that year’s Idaho legislative session. I handled some aspects of it, though, differently from the years before when I’d covered for other daily papers. I worked out of my home, for example.

And declined to join the Capitol Correspondents Association. I had been a member of it for more than a dozen years up through 1990, and my decision not to apply surprised a few people. But I had reasons.

This is inside baseballish stuff (my non-membership was never mentioned to Tribune readers, for example, and no one saw any need to) but the latest blasts involving the CCA and writers for the Idaho Reporter web site, carry implications worth sharing outside the Statehouse echo chamber.

The correspondents association, one of many similar organizations at statehouses around the country, is an odd beast. Its members are journalists who cover the legislature. A group aimed at letting people meet and associate is not a matter for controversy (Idaho lobbyists, by the way, have one too) But the CCA also has an official standing with the legislature, it negotiates, for example, where and when on chamber floors, and some other office space, journalists – not the public, and not lobbyists – can go.

All this had more significance once than it does now. I started covering the legislature using manual typewriters, and had to have needed a dedicated land line phone at a desk in the Statehouse. Now, the excellent and extremely productive Spokesman-Review reporter Betsy Russell (for years head of the CCA) jogs with her wireless computing devices from meeting to meeting, filing stories from events as they happen. The Statehouse has a good wireless system. That clunky comm of yore is irrelevant.

Even in 2001, I found no practical disadvantage functioning as a member of the public rather than a CCA member, and I see less difficulty with it now. Continue Reading »