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Posts published in “Stapilus”

Deadly extremism

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I confess to not being a close follower of the Chad Daybell and Lori Vallow murder investigations and court actions; criminal cases ordinarily aren’t my top area of interest.

In this instance, that began to change as I learned more about the background of these two. My interest spiked when I spoke at a book signing with Leah Sottile, author of the new book “When the Moon Turns to Blood”, and then read this compelling book, which is about Daybell and Vallow.

I asked: This book isn’t really about the criminal case, is it? She acknowledged it wasn’t.

Which makes sense, since the criminal case has not reached a climax yet: There’s been no conviction or acquittal. The married couple Daybell and Vallow, who have been charged with murder of her two children, whose bodies were found in Daybell’s back yard, are still enmeshed in legal proceedings, likely for some time.

The book is less about the criminal allegations than about what led up to the more recent developments. Both Daybell and Vallow, who once seemed to have easy, conventional and prosperous lives, were swept into religious extremism, into believing - and, critically, acting on the belief - that they personally were the anointed saviors of the world. Efforts by the leadership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, to which they belonged, to push back against their extreme ideas (along with many other kinds of extremists), were of no avail.

From there, it’s only a short step to justifying any number of acts ranging from the immoral to the stupid to the horrific.

Sottile suggested that Daybell, “had been bolstered by a large community of LDS people who indulge in anti-government ideologies, who take prepping to the extreme, who consider the words of the LDS prophet as mere guidance when they don’t boost what they already believe. It’s a world that views conspiracy mongers as visionaries.”

The book is a compelling read for anyone who has heard of the Daybell and Vellow case and wondered what’s behind it. But the lessons from this story reach much further.

Extremism has led and continues to lead directly to tragedy of all sorts. There are plenty of examples in recent years, but the QAnon network - highly live and active in Idaho - has provided more than its share.

Another book just off my recent reading list, The Storm Is Upon Us, How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult and Conspiracy Theory of Everything, by Mike Rothschild, made the point in fuller detail - to the point that seemed to suggest the topic is so expansive and complex a shelf of books could be written about it. The author noted (with plenty of factual support) “Long before Q-pilled insurrectionists sacked the US Capitol, Q believers were committing violent crimes, kidnapping children, and even killing people. The Capitol attack was far from the first sign of Q’s potential for chaos.”

Most recently, there’s the case of Igor Lanis of Michigan. His surviving daughter reported this on Reddit (the basic facts have been confirmed elsewhere):

“In 2020 after Trump lost, my dad started going down the Q rabbit hole. He kept reading conspiracy theories about the stolen election, Trump, vaccines, etc. He always said he wanted to keep us safe and healthy. It kept getting worse and he verbally snapped at us a few times. … Well, at around 4 AM on September 11, he had an argument with my mother and he decided to take our guns and shoot her, my dog and my sister. My mother succumbed to her wounds and my sister is in the hospital right now. My dad also fired back at the cops and they killed him.

“I'm shocked and I don't even know what to say.”

The politician Barry Goldwater once might have said (and maybe reconsidered later): “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” He was wrong: Real extremism almost always winds up at war with liberty.

But not only that. Extremism leads to any number of bad results, disrupting our society and our self-government.

It can even kill.

 

Two of the three corners

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In a group of three, two usually line up – and did in the latest Oregon gubernatorial debate

A two-way contest of any sort is a relatively simple matter of one side gaining more than the other. Add a third side to the picture and it becomes much more complicated.

In Oregon’s race for governor, for example, there are three complex strategies – all of them probably too complex to readily resonate with most voters. Republican Christiane Drazan argues that opponents Tina Kotek, a Democrat, and Betsy Johnson, who is not aligned with a party, are simply two of a kind, stand-pat liberals. Kotek argues that Drazan and Johnson are just two lookalike right-wingers. Johnson contends that Kotek and Drazan are both extremists on opposing sides, and she represents a center point.

That’s been the core message of many of the ads and statements from the candidates so far. How did it play out on Tuesday, when the candidates ran head to head in a debate at Bend on KTVZ-TV?

The candidates almost always agreed with the premise of the questions asked, with many of them coming from central Oregon television news viewers. Almost a score of topics were specifically raised.

There weren’t – and this is maybe a little surprising – any clear cases (the debate on homelessness could be an exception) where all three candidates broke apart in three clearly different directions, though they all had distinct ways of expressing their views. The closest case would be on taxes, where Kotek generally defended recent legislation while calling for some change, Johnson offered a limited defense but emphasized a need for review and probably overhaul and Drazan summed up, “I’m on this stage with two people who have voted for billions of dollars of taxes.”

All three candidates were in agreement on no more than two or three issues. They agreed with the premise that many people outside the Willamette Valley feel the western metro areas get most of the attention and benefits, and each made a case for why they would best address that. They concurred on the need for better funding and organizational structuring for higher education and general public school policy, but even while coming to similar conclusions the three took shots round the edges.

In nearly all cases, question by question, it was a two-way split.

In two cases – although there was conflict all around – the answers largely put Kotek and Johnson on one side, Drazan on the other.

One of those – to no surprise – was abortion, where Kotek highlighted her legislative record and support from groups supporting abortion access, and Johnson noted her history as a Planned Parenthood board member and legislator supporting abortion access. Drazan said she is against abortions, but beyond that only that she would enforce Oregon’s abortion laws. That led Kotek to point out that a governor could do a great deal to effectively restrict abortion even with the laws on the books. None of the three answered the moderator’s question about when life begins.

On water management and limited water supplies, Johnson and Kotek both called for working with local people, but Drazan dismissed them both: “All of what you just heard is a lot of campaigning. … There will be more regulation.”

Beyond those subjects, all of the other questions – on topics ranging from guns, homelessness, affordable housing, the state’s pandemic response and health resources, drug addiction, school standards, climate change and support for small business – broke down mainly with Kotek on one side, and Drazan and Johnson on the other.

For example, talk about guns was keyed partly to a recent shooting incident in Bend and partly to Measure 114, which if the voters pass it in November would mandate permitting and safety training before purchasing a gun. Kotek endorsed it, and noted that both of her opponents had top ratings from the National Rifle Association. The other candidates were opposed. Drazan said that Oregon has enough gun legislation at present, and Johnson argued about release of some violent prison inmates, but appeared to oppose further gun restrictions.

Asked about climate change, the substance of Drazan’s and Johnson’s answers were remarkably similar: Both focused heavily on wildfires and forest policy. Kotek didn’t specifically argue with their points, but said forest management and fires accounted for only a small portion of what the state can or should do about climate change, and said they were unwilling to look at any other options, which, she said, she has.

A few other impressions of the second debate, which overall was not drastically different from the first:

No one made much attempt at humor or even lighten the tone: The mood was serious and intermittently angry; Johnson particularly came off as a scold. Johnson and Kotek both offered plenty of policy specifics, though Johnson weighted her answers more toward criticisms of what the state has or hasn’t done; Drazan spoke almost exclusively in broad strokes with no new specifics, even after the moderator specifically asked for details rather than blue-sky aspirations.

All of that said, there was quite a bit to be learned from the debate. One clear point: The two of the three who appear most often aligned are Johnson and Drazan.

Debates of course only influence final election results, ordinarily, in a limited way. But if the indication from this one, that Drazan and Johnson are in effect sharing much the same message and in effect mostly splitting one sector of support, that would be a big advantage for Kotek.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.

 

Gag order

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I can think of three realistic reasons for the University of Idaho’s recent memo about abortion.

Maybe all these reasons played a role in the decision-making, in some relative mix. You decide.

This memo, prompted by the change in Idaho’s strict anti-abortion law, quickly turned into international news, throwing the university into the brightest spotlight it may ever have seen. That probably wasn’t the intent: The spotlight isn’t flattering. It’s a little hard to imagine many people being encouraged to study or teach at the university after reading about it.

It’s been less noted but also true that other Idaho institutions have been moving in the same direction; the UI will not be an outlier.

The September 23 memo said staffers cannot (at least while on duty) do anything to provide or promote abortion, or speak or write in favor of it, or provide a referral, or direct students to sources of information about it outside the university, or provide training for someone to provide the procedure, or contract with anyone who does provide abortions. (Say: Is the medical education exchange at risk?)

Because the law refers to “prevention of conception” the memo said the subject of whether all forms of birth control should be avoided “is unclear and untested in the courts. Since violation is considered a felony, we are advising a conservative approach here, that the university not provide standard birth control itself.” (How long before attorneys and insurers of pharmacies all over Idaho reach the same conclusion?)

Condoms apparently are still okay for distribution as long as they’re used for protection against sexually transmitted disease and not for birth control. (Yes, they actually said this.)

The situation is serious, the memo noted, as consequences that could result from violations include felony conviction (“with imprisonment and fines”), loss of employment and bar on future employment with the state … and who knows what else.

I’m not arguing their analysis is wrong, especially with the comment, “The language of this statute is not a model of clarity.” No kidding.

So why might top university officials (this must have had the awareness, at least, of the president) do this? I can think of three reasons.

First, as a genuine warning about legal liability. This is legitimate enough, as a UI spokesman said, “Employees engaging in their course of work in a manner that favors abortion could be deemed as promoting abortion. While abortion can be discussed as a policy issue in the classroom, we highly recommend employees in charge of the classroom remain neutral or risk violating this law. We support our students and employees, as well as academic freedom, but understand the need to work within the laws set out by our state.”

Second, as a move to placate the anti-abortion and right wing culture crowd, which has a heavy representation in the Idaho Legislature. The memo may generate some (very mildly) warm feelings in the majority caucuses next session. Those, of course, won't get the university far.

So also maybe, third, arriving as this memo does about a month before the November election, there was some incentive to kick into higher visibility the state of abortion-related law in Idaho - maybe encouraging voters to react against it.

Abortion may be a major political factor this fall. Even the Biden White House weighed in: “...nothing under Idaho law justifies the university’s decision to deny students access to contraception. [Editor’s note: That’s debatable.] But the situation in Idaho speaks to the unacceptable consequences of extreme abortion bans. The overwhelming majority of Americans believe in the right to birth control, as well as the right to abortion, without government interference.”

The White House would not have delivered such a strong comment about an internal memo from a remote mid-sized state university, in a small and non-battleground state, unless it saw serious political advantage to be gained.

Idaho Democrats may notice that too.

 

Ranked choice in Oregon

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With three serious gubernatorial candidates on the ballot in November and the theoretical possibility of a new governor elected with 34% of the vote, Oregon might consider an election tool that recently got a lot of attention in Alaska and seems ripe for consideration here: ranked choice voting.

The probability – at least, if polling so far is anywhere near accurate – is that none of the candidates for Oregon governor will reach 50% of the total vote. If so, the winner will be whoever pulls in the strongest plurality.

But would happen in the case of ranked voting?

This is a different kind of election approach, related to but different from the top-two approach used widely in Washington and California. In ranked choice, a voter first marks their preferred choice for an office, but then – depending on how many candidates are on the ballot – can also choose a second-place preference if the first falls short, and maybe a third or fourth as well. These alternative choices come into play whenever no candidate receives at least 50% of the vote or a majority.

That’s how it worked in the recent election in Alaska. In the nationally watched special election race for the U.S. House (Alaska has only one seat), three well-known? candidates were competing: Republicans Sarah Palin and Nick Begich and Democrat Mary Peltola. The first stage involved the counting of top-choice votes, and if one of them had reached 50%, that would have marked a win. Instead, after the votes were counted, all three fell short, Peltola came in first, Palin second and Begich third. Begich was dropped from consideration, and the second-place choice votes from his contingent were distributed and counted. Some of his voters opted for no one, but the others were split between Peltola and Palin. Peltola got just enough of them to prevail.

Other places around the country have work with ranked choice, notably the state of Maine.

This makes me wonder what would happen in Oregon’s three-cornered governor race if such a system were in place. It could mean a governor with voter support from more than half of the electorate.

Oregon doesn’t have this system on a statewide level, but the state could be moving slowly toward ranked choice voting down the road.

Ranked choice is a factor in the proposal for a change in Portland city’s form of government. Oregon Capital Chronicle columnist Tim Nesbitt recently wrote, “I was surprised to learn that the commission thinks its most popular reform will be the shift to ranked choice voting in city elections, where voters get to vote for more than one candidate in order of preference. Apparently, that sounds cool to Portlanders.”

As he also noted, though, that the Portland proposal would be a much looser system that wouldn’t necessarily require 50% to win, and might not be well understood by Portlanders.

A closer fit to the normal ranked voting approach can be found in Benton County.

There, a group of activists including state Rep. Dan Rayfield, D-Corvallis, persuaded voters in 2016 to pass Measure 2-100 (on a 54.2% to 44.8% vote) which provided for a ranked voting plan, on a limited basis: As it was structured, only county commissioners would be elected under it, and it would be used only in general elections. The measure went into effect in 2020.

It hasn’t gotten a full test yet. In 2020, voters were able to make first and second choices for the two commission seats on the ballot, but in both cases the Democratic candidates won on the first round with more than half the vote (Xan Augerot with 58.7% and Nancy Wyse with 63.6%), so no second round was needed.

And this year, only two candidates, a Democrat and a Republican, are competing for the one open commission seat, so voters won’t even need to make a second choice.

Ranked choice voting may not have gotten much of a workout yet, but that could change.

It’s gotten some serious promotion at the Oregon Legislature. In the 2021 session, Senate Bill 791, which “establishes ranked-choice voting for all nonpartisan statewide and local government offices, and for (the) winner of (a) nomination by major political parties for federal and state political offices, beginning after January 1, 2023,” was backed by Sens. Senators Michael Dembrow, D-Portland, Jeff Golden, D-Ashland, and Rayfield. It fell short of passage, dying in committee, but had a substantial hearing.

Oregon likely hasn’t heard the last of ranked voting. Especially with one of its most veteran backers, Rayfield, now in the House speakership. Especially with this year’s gubernatorial election providing such a compelling case study.

This article originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle. (photo: Ron Cooprt/Oregon Capital Chronicle)

 

Younger voters

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Here’s a political statistic about Idaho I wouldn’t have guessed. Which doesn’t mean you can’t suss out what accounts for it.

It comes from the Tufts University (in Massachusetts) Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, which has made a specialty of researching voting and other civic engagement by young people of voting age. In one study, the center (it’s acronym is the cutesy CIRCLE) looked into “Ages 18-19: Youth Voter Registration in September 2022 Compared to November 2018 - The difference (%) in the number of young people, ages 18-19, who were registered to vote in each state in September 2022 vs. in November 2018.”

There was some focus on the state of Kansas, where the Center noted, “Kansas is also one of only nine states where registrations among 18- and 19-year-olds have already surpassed November 2018: they are three percent higher. That represents a major increase from June, before the primary and the abortion vote [on whether to remove the state constitutional protection of an abortion right], when youth voter registrations among this age group in Kansas were 43 percent lower than in November 2018.”

Not hard to understand, given the very pro-choice result in the Kansas election.

That was striking. But guess what other states were included among the nine that already have surpassed their 2018 young voter registrations: a mixed bag of Alabama, Michigan, California, Illinois, Nevada … and Idaho.

But not only that. Idaho’s rate of increase was higher than any other state, not by a little but by a lot. Second-place Michigan, where (as was the case in Kansas) another abortion measure is on the ballot in November, chalked up an increase of 20 percent. But Idaho left everyone else in the dust: Its increase, good for a national first place, was rated at a 66 percent increase a few weeks ago compared to election day in 2018. Tufts called it “remarkable.” (An apples to apples increase in the election schedule, obviously, would show an increase even higher.)

The ranking of states is a little bit skewed, because in many states massive numbers of younger voters were registered in 2018 and 2020, which means fewer are available to register freshly this time. (Washington and Oregon, for example, probably rank lower in the list mostly for this reason.) Still, if the Tufts information is even ballpark correct, something interesting is happening in Idaho.

You imagine what some of the incentives might be.

The Supreme Court's Dobbs decision on abortion created a political shock wave nationally, but some of the larger impacts may have happened in some of the states which quickly have moved to restrict abortion in its wake. Idaho would be a prime example of that, and many people still remember what happened in 1990 when the Idaho Legislature moved to make a sharp, drastic restriction on abortion. This isn't 1990, but the immediate effects then - including a string of Democratic wins, which were followed by Republican silence on abortion for several years after - were clear and dramatic.

The education and culture wars, which have put colleges and universities and libraries on the defensive in Idaho, may be about due for a backlash, and a cadre of younger voters would be a likely place to see the reaction materialize - if it does.

We can't really know that for sure, not until the election happens. But there was another important indicator here:

"CIRCLE data has shown that young people without a voting history are less likely to be contacted by campaigns. The fact that most states are behind in registering youth in this age group highlights that outreach is still lacking, and that there’s a need for organizations, schools, and campaigns to redouble their efforts to register the youngest potential voters," the report said.

That means we might not know what the real impact is … until November.

 

Varying arguments

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A few weeks ago I wrote about the regional reaction to the proposed Lava Ridge wind power development in the northern Magic Valley, and suggested much of the outrage against it was based on cultural animus against energy production approaches like wind power - that is, a “liberal agenda”.

My intent was to spotlight the regional political reaction, the way the crowd response to the proposal took hold there. But that could easily be understood as arguing that everyone came to the same position on the issue in the same way, and for all the same reasons, that all minds were in lockstep, and that’s surely not the case.

That point underlies a number of responses I received, and the point was made in various ways.

The best of the replies - and arguments against the wind proposal - came from Roy E. Hubert, a Lincoln County Commissioner. Here’s what he said:

You wrote:

1. You can't imagine opposition to a large CAFO if it were to be built here. The truth is that a huge CAFO was built here in Dietrich and it went into litigation. We didn't want it either.

2. All three county commissioners signed a resolution stating that we are opposed to the Lava Ridge Project.

3. You mentioned I was flat against it right away. At first I said "Why not build these towers?" Then I did my due diligence and researched about these towers. I have traveled to places that have wind power towers around them. The only ones that were in favor of them were the people who had them on their property and receive monthly checks for having them on their property. All the others hated them, saying they were noisy, ugly, people were having health problems such as headaches because of them, they were losing sleep because of the noise and lights flashing. The company that built them would not hire local people to work, but brought in their own employees.

After further research about how ineffective and undependable that these wind farms were, and how they can't run except on government subsidies, I decided this would not be good for our area, and now vote 100% against it. People in our area don't want them around and ruining our habitat for wildlife, hundreds of dusty roads that will be driven on every day by huge trucks, very annoying flashing red lights 24/7 on top of these huge towers (over 750 feet tall) , the noise coming from over 400 of these towers night and day, and limiting our use of the desert for recreation, cattle grazing, and hunting. You don't realize how many different animals live out in this desert. To name a few: antelope, deer, elk, coyotes, badgers, several kinds of rabbits, bats, hawks, golden eagles, owls, rattlesnakes, sage grouse, and various birds. Do you honestly think they will stay around these towers?

Let's give the people that live in this area some credit! There are enough facts out there for them to do their own research and come up with intelligent answers as to why they are against it. There are hundreds of pages out there to research. Many are the same pages the BLM have in their files.

There are, of course, responses to the commissioner’s response. (No doubt the company proposing the project has some.)

But my main reaction comes to this:

I still think the cultural and political atmosphere had a lot to do with the reason for the large and fast - wildfire-like - public response; you rarely see that kind of reaction, whether on the political left or right or elsewhere, on the basis of policy arguments alone.

But that doesn’t mean those policy arguments don’t matter or that they’re not part of the mix for individual people - in different ways for different people. I have some confidence in reading trends but not in reading individual minds.

Thanks to Commissioner Hubert and my other respondents for the reminder of that.

 

Those partisan unaffiliateds

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If Oregon’s registered Democrats vote Democratic in this November’s general election, and the Republicans vote Republican, those numbers alone won’t come close to settling the deal.

A big reason: The largest group of voters in Oregon are the NAVs – those who register as “nonaffiliated.”

(Disclosure: I’m one of them.)

But what does that mean for the outcome of the general election in another couple of months?

If you dive into the numbers – which is where elections are won and lost – you find fewer answers than you might first think.

The NAV move to the most-numerous ranking came just this year, but it’s not a dramatic or sweeping development. Today – that is, according to the August voter registration figures compiled by the Secretary of State’s office – nonaffiliates comprised 34.4% of all voters, compared with Democrats at 34.2% and Republicans at 24.7%; the Independent Party came in at 4.7%. (You’ll notice the Democratic and NAV numbers still are close.)

Four years ago in 2018, the Independent Party had almost exactly the same percentage as it does now. But the Democrats (at 35.4%) and Republicans (at 25.8%) both had larger shares of the electorate; the NAVs (then at 32%) since have grown at the expense of both, apparently drawing from both parties about evenly.

You can see similar patterns if you go back a full decade to 2012. Then, the Democrats accounted for 40% of the voters, and Republicans 31.4%, while nonaffiliated were a mere 22%. The Independent Party accounted for 4%, not far off where they are today.

The sector of the nonaffiliated, in contrast, has grown by more than half in the last decade.

A variety of reasons may account for this, beyond dissatisfaction with the major parties. Political science professor Paul Gronke at Reed College pointed out in 2019, “There are at least 300,000 new registrants since 2016 because of (the Oregon Motor Voter Act), and 80% or more of these did not respond to a postcard allowing them to affiliate.”

Whatever the causes, this has been a long-term, not a sudden development. The shift has taken years, and it has affected both political teams almost proportionately.

What can we tell about the people moving away from the parties?

Today, exactly half of Oregon’s counties have a plurality of nonaffiliated voters. The most nonaffiliated county in Oregon is one often considered the most Republican in the state: Malheur in the far east, which is 45.9% unaffiliated.

But don’t be too quick to jump to partisan conclusions: The least-nonaffiliated (or, you could say, the most partisan) county, with just 25.5%, is another strong GOP place, Wheeler County. The next three least-most partisan counties – Wallowa, Sherman and Grant – also are strongly Republican in their voting patterns. But the fifth most overall partisan county is strongly Democratic Benton.

If you look at which party leads the other for second place, you find a mix of Democratic and Republican counties. Counties where Democrats outnumber Republicans but trail the NAVs include Wasco, Marion, Lincoln, Columbia, Clatsop, Tillamook and Deschutes. Their Republican-oriented counterparts are Malheur, Umatilla, Morrow, Jefferson, Curry, Coos, Josephine, Linn, Yamhill, Jackson and Polk. The coast seems to like not affiliating, and so do large sections of eastern and central Oregon. But these counties are widely varied.

Part of what’s worth noticing is that the parties in second place almost always continue to register wins at the polls: Ordinarily, whichever party registers more voters tends to win overall, however many NAVs there are. That suggests nonaffiliateds are not necessarily as independent as you might think. They still tend to break between the parties much like the rest of the counties around them.

The biggest regional exception to the move toward nonaffiliation has been the Portland metro area along with Lane County.

A decade ago, Multnomah County registered 23.6% of its voters as NAVs. That has risen since to 31.8%, an increase well below the state average. But the percentage of Democrats in the state’s largest county has stayed relatively steady over that time, declining just a little from 53.4% to 51.4%. Republicans, however, took a hit in Multnomah, falling from 15.8% to 10.6%. Since the Independent Party percentage barely budged, that suggests Multnomah expanded its NAV ranks mainly at the expense of Republicans.

Washington, Clackamas and Lane, while less Democratic than Multnomah, all have Democratic pluralities, and as a group show a somewhat similar pattern. Washington County does have a percentage of nonaffiliates close to that of Democrats, though Republicans now trail far behind, a massive shift from 2012, when Republicans were in a competitive second place.

The nonaligned vote is one of the ways metro Oregon varies from the rest of the state.

In Oregon as a whole, nonaffiliated simply means voters who didn’t join with a party. It doesn’t mean they vote a lot differently from those who do.
 

Actual purposes

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On July 20 of last year, Idaho Governor Brad Little reported on the state revenue that had gushed in over the last year, and it was a lot more than had been expected.

The state received more than $5 billion, the first time it ever hit that mark, but as significant was the almost $900 million above what was expected, an immense amount far beyond any surpluses the state had seen before. As one news report said, Little and his staff “have hinted that some of the money is likely to be returned via tax cuts and some will likely be invested in Idaho’s K-12 public school system, along with other one-time capital and infrastructure projects.” Generally that would happen, but those decisions would have to wait until the next legislative session in January.

Nothing unusual there. The amount of the surplus was abnormal, but this is normal budgeting.

This year, something unusual happened. It wasn’t the size of this year’s surplus, which was even larger than 2021’s (enormous in fact) at $1.4 billion. It was this: In mid-August, Little decided that it had to be dealt with right away. And more unusual yet was that the Idaho Legislature, despite the timing (just weeks from expiration of its members' terms), jumped on board.

Little’s contention, in his call of August 23, was that, “We’re calling an extraordinary session to address the crushing impacts of historic inflation on Idaho families and schools.”

Hmm.

First, inflation has been underway in something like the present range all year; when the legislature adjourned its regular session in March inflation was about where it is now, and in fact it’s been modestly declining in the last three months. (Check your local gas pump prices.) It was considerably higher a few months ago.

Second, the legislature knew about the inflation situation last winter - and accounted for it in its budgeting - and Little has known since at least early summer at least in rough terms how big the surplus would be. Why wait to call the session on the last day of August?

Third, inflation can be fed by large, sudden dumps of money into the economy, or even the expectation of it happening soon, which is the basis of Republican criticism of the Biden Administration’s spending policies. The $1.4 billion of (mostly) tax cuts and school spending realistically won’t balloon inflation measurably, but it won’t slow it either. Nor will most Idahoans pocket enough directly to let them better combat inflation.

Here’s one way to square the circle.

On July 22, an activist group called Reclaim Idaho got formal approval for a ballot initiative to appear on the November ballot. The measure to be put before Idaho voters provided for a state income tax increase for upper-income taxpayers, with the revenue - estimated at somewhat over $300 million - to be used to increase funding for public schools. It was the subject of a massive organization effort.

The special session of the legislature nearly did the initiative’s job for it by designating $400 million in additional education funding, and setting it up as an ongoing funding stream. (We’ll see how long that survives future legislative action.) Education advocates were, of course, delighted, and Reclaim Idaho responded by moving to pull its initiative from the November ballot: The financing laid out in the surplus legislation did much of what the initiative had sought to do.

An organizer also noted, “The most important fact is the special session law would repeal our initiative just two days after it goes into effect, so voters going to the ballot box on Election Day would know that even if they vote ‘yes’ their vote won’t have an effect.”

There was that, and the avoidance of the income tax raise for higher-income people and businesses.

The exact mix of motivations that led to the special session and its action may be a little blurry for some time to come. You can make a reasonable argument that the end result was a good one.

But it’s hard not to think the freshly-minted ballot initiative didn’t have something to do with it.
 

On the defense

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One of the recurring plot points in the much-praised and just-ended TV series “Better Call Saul” concerned the stretched resources and minimal pay of public defenders, the attorneys who represent accused criminals who otherwise can’t afford to hire legal help.

The show was set in New Mexico (which does have public defender problems) but the issue is nationwide and has blown up in Oregon. Organizationally at least.

The state Office of Public Defense Services is led by a director and overseen by a commission whose members are appointed by the chief justice of the state Supreme Court. In the last month, Director Steve Singer (who has held the job less than a year) came under critical review by the commission, and Chief Justice Martha Walters said he should be fired. When he wasn’t – the commission deadlocked on the vote – Walters ousted all of the commissioners. Some of them were reappointed, other new members installed, and Singer was given his pink slip.

That may have been the right move (Walters did have specific complaints) or not, but the drama shouldn’t obscure what should be the larger point: That the whole system is in trouble. Singer was not wrong when he said earlier this year, “We didn’t get to this problem overnight. We got to this problem over the last two or three decades. The hard question is what do you do about the problem? How do you solve the problem?”

This gets into both the resources available and the system the state uses. This makes it a logical job for the next Oregon legislative session. For all the scope of the problem, this one could be legislatively solvable.

When the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Gideon v. Wainwright declared that the Constitution’s guarantee of a right to counsel included people who couldn’t afford to hire a lawyer, states that had done little in that area up to then (most of them) had some inventing to do. A long-standing idea about public defense (back to 1893) was that the defense system should mirror the prosecution system, but political sympathy has never aligned with putting that into effect. (Who wants to spend more money than absolutely necessary on a group of people who mostly are, in reality, guilty of crimes?) Nationally, the public policy ethic mainly has been: How little can we get away with?

A 2017 report on defender systems in the states noted, “Oregon is the only statewide system in the country that relies entirely on contracts for the delivery of public defense services. The statewide office lets individual contracts with private not-for-profit law firms (which look and operate much like the public defender agencies of many counties with full time attorneys and substantive support personnel on staff), smaller local law firms, individual private attorneys, and consortia of private attorneys working together. The actual contracts are the enforcement mechanism for the state’s standards, with specific performance criteria written directly into the contracts.”

That suggests a loose system with little opportunity for internal self-correction. The indicators of problems, in fact, have most often come from outside. One report in 2019 (paid for by the state Legislature) found that Oregon’s system is likely “unconstitutional.” (You can see the lawsuit coming.) An American Bar Association study released in January found that the state has only 31% of the defense attorneys it needs, and needs about 1,300 more.

Some of the problem, obviously, is money: More will be needed. But that’s not all. One group that studies how defense counsel systems work well and poorly around the nation last year suggested asking a series of questions: “Does an independent agency oversee public defense in your state? … Does your state shoulder the cost of public defense or leave the burden to local governments? [OR is one of 27 states that does.] … Does your state increase public defense funding when demands on public defenders increase? … Does the way attorneys are compensated create perverse incentives? … Are there meaningful, enforceable workload limits for public defenders? … Is counsel appointed before a client’s very first court appearance, or is appointment delayed until later in the process? (In Oregon, some indigents are jailed without access to an attorney.) Does your public defense system provide holistic defense for clients who need other legal (or even non-legal) assistance?” Oregon scores hit and miss.

The structural as well as financial questions point to this system as something the Oregon Legislature should review next session. And they suggest that what’s needed is not just a quick cash infusion or a little tinkering, but something more akin to an overhaul. Maybe the recent hire/fire drama will be the kickstart for that.

This column originally appeared in the Oregon Capital Chronicle.