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Posts published in September 2013

RIP, Pete Cenarrusa

September 30, 2013
carlson CHRIS
CARLSON
 
Carlson
Chronicles

On September 29 Pete Cenarrusa, died in Boise at the age of 95. The longest serving secretary of state not just in Idaho history but in all of American history, the former Speaker of the Idaho House and state legislator, a farmer-sheep rancher from Carey and a staunch conservative Republican, never lost an election.

Blaine County voters first elected him to the House in 1951, and re-
elected him seven more times until Governor Don Samuelson appointed him as Secretary of State on May 1, 1967, to fill a vacancy created by the death of Edson Deal. In November, 1970, he was elected in his own right and re-elected until he chose not to run again in 2002. That’s 35 years.

Despite his conservative political views, he was well known for his fairness, honesty and decency. He worked well with the two Democratic governors that served during his tenure, Cecil Andrus and John Evans.

It was this sense that a man’s word was his bond that leads to the many stories surrounding what was known as “the Little Wood River” list.

Few, if any of the obituaries rightly praising Cenarrusa for his public service will even reference this item, but it provides an excellent insight into Pete’s sense of propriety and emphasis on one’s word.

Some folks thought the list referred to the six or seven legislators who allegedly said they would vote for Pete, but did not, when he sought and won the Speakership over Boise legislator, Bill Eberle, in 1963.

Some think the list refers to successfully withstanding a challenge in 1965 from another Boise legislator, Larry Mills. It is neither. In his memoirs (Bizkaia to Boise, Center for Basque Studies, University of Nevada at Reno, 2009) co-written with former AP Statehouse reporter Quane Kenyon, Cenarrusa explained that it was a list of legislators who had not helped him pass in 1953 a modest $10,000 appropriation to fix levies and build some small dams to control flooding on the Little Wood River in his county. Because he had earlier crossed some party pooh-bahs, he was punished by having his bill killed and the appropriation redirected to a project in eastern Idaho.

Pete vowed then and there to become Speaker someday and to get even with those he felt betrayed him. It took ten years, lots of patience as well as tenacity, but in 1963, to the great good fortune of Idahoans especially concerned about the state’s parsimonious support for public education, he was elected Speaker. (more…)

The less visible and more honorable road

September 29, 2013
idaho RANDY
STAPILUS
 
Idaho

UPDATE: This column was written before news broke earlier today that former Secretary of State Pete Cenarrusa died at Boise. Condolences to his family and many friends, and to Idaho too: Public servants of this caliber aren't so easy to find these days, but at his passing his long-time chief deputy and successor, Ben Ysursa, was - as this column strives to point out - upholding the tradition.

In 1976, a deputy to the Idaho Secretary of State resigned after becoming the target of charges that he had improperly been selling copies of the Idaho state code. To the best of my memory, that's the last time – 37 years ago – the Idaho Secretary of State's office has been the center of a serious controversy.

Considering that this is the office overseeing, among other things, elections across the state, that's a remarkable record of cleanliness.
My most regular interaction with the office is on its website, which offers access to loads of records. I can tell you that in most cases those records are more extensive, useful and easier to access than on the web sites of the counterpart offices in high-tech Washington and Oregon.

Absence of malfeasance and quality on-line records may be tangential in evaluating the office and its longtime chief, Ben Ysursa. But they indicate work properly and consistently well done, in an office where the consequences of shoddiness can be a little frightening. Idaho has a long history of clean elections, and capable state oversight has surely been a contributor to that. The office also manages a lot of other records, such as business filings and many other documents, and a good deal of commerce could be thrown into chaos if the unglamorous work of the office were steered into a ditch. It also oversees lobbyist filings and records.

The secretary of state's office, then, is one of those places you seldom see in the headlines when things are going well, only when they go badly. Take it as a compliment, then, that the office has been largely invisible for decades, the quiet broken most notably on those occasions when Ysursa and his crew went after someone, without any evident favor for any side, for failing to stick to the law.
This comes up became the 2014 race for the office has taken a turn, and Idahoans would be well-served in paying attention. (more…)

Transition: excerpt 1

September 28, 2013
transition

This is an excerpt from the Ridenbaugh Press book Transition, by W. Scott Jorgensen. More will be appearing over the weeks to come. The book is available now from Ridenbaugh Press.

The parking lot was full when I pulled up to Elmer’s Restaurant, the usual meeting place for the Josephine County Republican Women. The November 2010 midterm election was days away, and many of the cars at Elmer’s had bumper stickers endorsing various candidates.

I was there to speak, and it would be my farewell to Grants Pass. I had just quit my job at the local weekly newspaper and my last radio program had just aired. All of my worldly possessions were already packed.

I had several things to say. But first, I had two good friends to talk with, and about.

Josephine County Deputy District Attorney Wally Hicks was the first of the two to show up. He had been a friend for a few years, and had run unopposed for a seat in the state House of Representatives in the May primary election.

Wally’s resume was so impressive that nobody wanted to run against him for the Republican nomination. The Democrats couldn’t field a candidate, and his only opponent in the general election was from the Constitution Party.

I rose to shake his hand, at which point Wally took the seat immediately to my left. Typically in politics, you don’t have friends, only allies. But Wally was a remarkable exception to this rule, and I was actually quite fond of him.

Wally’s mother had been a reporter for several years while he was growing up, so he attended various political events at a very young age. This undoubtedly left a big impression on my good friend.

We had met a few years back at the Dorchester Conference, a statewide gathering of Republicans held each year in Seaside. That town is located on the Northern Oregon coast, a couple of hours west of Portland. Back then, Wally was attending law school at the University of Oregon. He came to Dorchester with a friend who had interned with a Congressional campaign that I worked on in 2004.

I was immediately impressed. Within a few hours of meeting Wally, I and many of my Dorchester friends were clamoring for him to run for office.

For a moment, it seemed that we had convinced him to take on the longtime incumbent Congressman that we had failed to unseat. But in the morning, Wally did not share our recollection of his commitment to the race.
Wally joined the U.S. Marine Corps straight out of high school. He even celebrated his 18th birthday at boot camp.

In 2004, Wally served in the Iraq War. He returned to the states and worked as a volunteer law clerk at the U.S. Dept. of Justice Office of Immigration Litigation before going to law school.

Once he graduated from law school and arrived in Grants Pass, Wally immediately began prosecuting high-profile cases involving child arsonists and juveniles who had broken into the local animal shelter and killed some puppies. He had impressed enough of the right people to garner tremendous support after announcing his candidacy for state representative. (more…)

About K12 Inc.

September 28, 2013
manning TRAVIS
MANNING
 
Opinion

Idaho’s largest virtual charter school, with approximately 3,500 students, has outsourced student essays to India for review in the grading process.

The revelation that K12 Inc., the world’s largest online charter school provider, sent thousands of student essays overseas was revealed back in 2008 by Arizona blogger David Safier. But it wasn’t until September 2013 that K12 verified at least one Idaho charter school was also involved. After being pressed, K12 admitted that Idaho Virtual Academy (IDVA), Idaho’s largest virtual school and operated by K12 Inc., had outsourced student essays.

“This was a pilot program offered by K12 to give teachers additional support,” said K12 spokesperson Jeff Kwitowski in an email. “Reviewers provided initial feedback, but teachers assigned grades.

Teachers could use the service at their discretion. It was used by some schools, including IDVA, until the pilot was discontinued.”

Records I have obtained indicate that between August and December 2007 IDVA outsourced over 3,000 essays to India. A Sept. 10, 2008, Education Week article reveals K12 eventually settled into a business relationship with TutorVista, a tutoring service in Bangalore, India. In so doing, IDVA may have violated the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) which protects student work and private information.

K12’s “pilot” project highlights an important issue within for-profit charter schools: adequate oversight. Private companies like K12 are not subject to open meetings laws or public records requests.

Ironically, K12’s website claims, “We must foster a culture of professionalism, service, transparency, accountability….” Difficult to hold a company’s board of directors, CEO’s and shareholders to this standard when their business practices, products and services are considered “proprietary.” There is no reason to believe the “pilot” project would have ever been discontinued had an investigator not unearthed the practice and dragged it into the sunlight of parental scrutiny. The IRS is also investigating. (more…)

Lies and damned lies

September 27, 2013
rainey BARRETT
RAINEY
 
Second
Thoughts

Balance in life is a wonderful thing. The yin and off-setting yang of things can bring joy – balance – warmth – satisfaction. Such a moment of perfect equanimity has touched my life. A moment when two disparate thoughts arrived at the same time – quietly nestling down next to each other.

One was that moment when the U.S. Senate’s biggest educated fool – Tex Cruz – shut his Harvard-educated mouth and voted for the thing he’d been talking against for 21 hours. The other was “BREAKING NEWS” that county commissioners in California’s Siskiyou County had voted to join neighboring Shasta County in a desire to secede from the Ol’ U.S. of A..

POW!

There it was. They want to get rid of us. We want to get rid of him. The immutable balance of life. I tell you, such a moment of harmony just doesn’t come along every other day. You’ve just gotta just stop. Savor it.

Ol’ “Texas Crude” wants desperately to be somebody. Anybody. At the moment, he wants to be president. Of anything. Siskiyou commissioners want to form a new state and – along with fellow commissioners next door – are in search of a new state which will need – wait for it – a new governor!

Now “governor” isn’t “president.” I’ll give you that. Cruz would have to back up a bit. Just a step. For only a little while. But, in the meantime, he WOULD have an entire “state” to run. And if Shasta County joins to create the new “State of Jefferson” they’re talking about, well, it would be a much larger “state” and only a matter of time till Teddy could find himself way up the ladder – living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Take a tip from that Palin woman. Follow her success. Run for governor – then quit. A couple of years at most. He wouldn’t be the first Harvard president of the country. But he’d certainly be the most disliked Harvard grad to get the job.

All that may seem weirdly improbable to you. But around here – in the nearby old-growth forest shared by Oregon and California – you could get even money at any logger bar. Really! They’ve been talking about Jefferson and their great plans for telling the rest of us to “Go To Hell” for a long, long time.

The problem with all this is that neither plan is going to work out. Shasta and Siskiyou will continue to be California real estate. And Cruz will remain in the Senate to taunt political reality and intelligence for just over five more years. Neither dream will come true. Ever.

But while we’re talking about dreams, I have one. I dream that Sean Hannity, Wolf Blitzer and the other broadcast “political experts” will stop calling Cruz a “ brilliant, Ivy League-educated” Senator. He may have gone to an Ivy League school. It may even have been Harvard. But Tex Cruz is not brilliant by any political measurement. In fact, when looking at his chosen path to greatness – adopted during his college years, – most political professionals will tell you this guy is on a self-destructive rant. (more…)

The real rankings

September 26, 2013
carlson CHRIS
CARLSON
 
Carlson
Chronicles

Memo to Don Soltman, President, Idaho Board of Education:

With all due respect allow me to bring to your attention the most recent ranking of universities and colleges in the United States put out annually by U.S. News and World Report. Please note that Idaho’s land grant university, the University of Idaho, despite the reduced rations the board and legislature have had it on, still is ranked 161list of national universities.

The faculty, the administration, boosters, alumni and students are all to be congratulated on this accomplishment for it comes despite your and Governor Otter’s systematic starving of its budget and your increasingly burdening students with more fees and charges. This ranking puts it in a tie with defending national basketball champion the University of Louisville and fellow western universities like the University of Wyoming.

Boise State is listed as #65 on the list of best REGIONAL universities in the west. Idaho State made the list of “also rans” (somewhere between 200 and 300) among NATIONAL universities. Spokane’s Gonzaga University is listed as #4 on that list of best western regional universities.

U.S. News has a very defensible list of criteria for its rankings, with key criteria being factors such as funding levels and endowments, percentage of those admitted in relation to the number of applications, research grants, grade point average of those admitted and attending, scores of students on national entrance tests such as the SAT and the ACT, and strength of faculty as well as classroom size.

Of course there are many critics of the news magazine’s criteria and this month’s latest Atlantic Monthly carries a good article on why one should ignore this annual exercise in bloviating by colleges claiming superiority especially in view of no serious effort being made to measure “outcomes” from the various schools. Nonetheless. . . .

Surely it is time for the Board to acknowledge its error in forbidding the only University referenced in the Idaho Constitution to call itself the state’s “flagship” university for in point of fact and by all measurements it is indeed the state’s flagship institution of higher learning.

These latest rankings ought to give the board cause for pause and for righting the wrong they have perpetrated.

Other rankings for public NATIONAL universities in the west were: (more…)

Taking a while on the comeback

September 24, 2013
mendiola MARK
MENDIOLA
 
Reports

Pocatello companies were hard hit by the nationwide recession, and the Gate City is taking longer than Idaho in reaching pre-recession employment levels, an Idaho State University economics professor told a large crowd attending Bannock Development Corporation’s 22nd annual economic symposium.

Dr. C. Scott Benson and Idaho Lt. Gov. Brad Little gave the economic and state keynote addresses, respectively, on Monday, Sept. 9, at the impressive ISU Stephens Performing Arts Center.

An ISU professor for more than 20 years, Benson has been preparing legislative economic forecasts about the state’s general fund revenue for nearly 30 years. He also has been preparing Idaho personal income forecasts for the Idaho Tax Commission for more than 10 years.

“I would like to come here and tell you that happy days are here again, but you know better than that,” Benson said, calling the economic recovery anemic. He concluded, however, that Idaho, Bannock County and Pocatello should continue to add jobs and see accelerating growth after several harsh years.

In July, Idaho’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose two-tenths to 6.6 percent for the third consecutive monthly increase in the rate, which has risen half a percentage point since April. Total employment dropped for the second month in a row, falling 800 to just above 723,000 – the lowest total employment since October 2012.

The Pocatello Metropolitan Statistical Area’s unemployment rate stood at 6.8 percent in July, down from 7.0 in June and 7.3 percent in July 2012. The city’s personal income grew 2-3 percent in 2012 and is projected to grow 4.5-5.5 percent this year and in 2015, slightly faster than the state’s personal income growth rate.

Benson said Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter’s goal of generating $60 billion in state personal income could be achieved “hopefully sooner rather than later” in Fiscal 2015.

“Idaho and the Pocatello MSA were harder hit than most states,” Benson said, noting Idaho’s unemployment rate tripled while rates in other states doubled. While the recession was severe, the recovery has been slow. “Manufacturing employment is not a pretty picture.”

Benson estimated 9,000 to 10,000 people are employed in Pocatello’s government sector or up to 25 percent of people working in the city, including those employed at ISU and the state women’s prison.

Education and health services picked up jobs during the recession, he said. Construction, natural resources and mining once represented up to 7 percent of total jobs, but that has declined to 4 percent, Benson said. Leisure and hospitality provide jobs, “but they don’t pay all that well.”

The area retail industry has encountered tough times, he said, estimating Bannock County generates up to $28 million a year in annual sales tax revenue for the state. (more…)

Spy vs. Spy

September 24, 2013
trahant MARK
TRAHANT
 
Austerity

Watch out for fights coming from the Capitol. The Senate versus the House. Republicans opposed to Democrats. And, of course, the most intense battle, Republicans against Republicans.

I grew up with the Spy versus Spy comics from Mad Magazine. Week after week a white clad spy would deliver some sort of lethal device (think exploding toilets) to a black suited spy. The scenarios were always outlandish and neither character ever really won. It’s that way in DC right now, except most of spies in combat are wearing Republican Red.

The Spy versus SpySpy versus Spy battle is alive and well on Twitter where there’s a #dontblink campaign to try and convince those squishes to support the filibuster. It’s not going to happen, but it does increase the possibility of a government shutdown simply because Congress is running out of time to meet the October 1st deadline. (The Senate has rules about how much time is allowed for a debate after cloture.) That means any vote for a temporary budget to fund the government cannot occur until the end of the week, Friday or Saturday. Then it will go back to the House. Perhaps with changes. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid will send a “clean” resolution to the House, hoping that body will pass it without changes just to keep the doors open. But probably not. Then the process will start again -- with the government officially closed. (On Tuesday, Senator Reid announced the measure will only fund the government until Nov. 15, leaving open the possibility of a regular order budget.)

This is as goofy as Spy versus Spy. And just like the comic strip, there’s no real winner in sight. The games just go on and on.

There is a bigger problem for Indian Country, however. Actually two issues. First, any “resolution” of this crisis is completely temporary. The same debate will surface again over the debt limit in a couple of weeks and then again when this Continuing Resolution expires. The House bill only pays for government operations until December 15. So, even if the Senate’s shorter version passes, the whole mess will repeat. (more…)

They’re not all Dems

September 23, 2013
rainey BARRETT
RAINEY
 
Second
Thoughts

In recent days, several readers have responded to these irregular musings with decidedly different views – most of which are quite welcome. We keep putting words and thoughts on the old computer machine in hopes of getting readers to think about various issues. Think their own thoughts – not necessarily the views and opinions on the screen. So when others give feedback, I’m exposed to different – mostly welcome – views.

Notice the “mostly welcome” exception. The “un-welcomed” aren’t such because they aren’t well-expressed or vastly different. No, the most aggravating are those that jump to assumptions not written or indicated – assumptions that if I’m not “this” then I’ve got to automatically be “that.” Attempts to label. Which are wrong much of the time.

Two fallacies show up a lot. One is that what’s on the screen with my name attached is necessarily fact – which it sometimes is. But often, it’s opinion. My opinion. The second misconception is if I’m castigating Democrats then I must be a Republican. Or, if I’m chewing on the GOP, I’m automatically a Dem. As a registered Oregon Independent, neither is true.

One reader wrote awhile back that he wanted to be taken off the “subscription list” because “if I want a Democratic Central Committee newsletter, I’ll subscribe.” Needless to say, he was responding to a piece that was highly critical of Republicans. Not all Republicans. Just the 50 or so trying desperately to gut our federal government.

He noticed – as have many others – that GOP members of Congress – at least some of them – are often cast in these musing as cancerous growths on the body politic. Since that depiction is not an unusual occurrence – and not entirely wrong – the “obvious conclusion,” is that said scribe is a “bad ol’ Democrat.” Ironically, the critic was a professional journalist, too.

Well, this scribe found it interesting that – on the very same day as this latest mislabeling and faulty logic was emailed to me – Mitt Romney was talking to a group of Eastern Republican donors and party officials. His message was very clear. And very similar – though maybe more muted – to thoughts expressed here a day or two earlier.

Romney, following his election defeat some months before, was warning those 50 or so Republicans wanting to shutter our government that – if they succeed – the GOP will lose badly in 2014 national elections. He wisely said the Party should return to its traditional roots of support for business, lower taxes and the rest. Further, Romney predicted, if his Party didn’t support immigration reform, “Democrats will win big.” Again. (more…)