Egan

Egan, Guest Post, Idaho Politics, Polling

The Great Divide

Posted on by christian

Idaho’s Three Political Parties

According to a new statewide survey of Idaho voters, the state now effectively has three political factions – very economically and socially conservative folks, economically conservative but less socially doctrinaire voters and a shrinking group of Democrats.

The three factions – think of them as almost three different political parties – has served to fracture the Idaho political landscape in a way that may make it even more difficult in the foreseeable future for so called moderates, and especially Democrats, to win major political office.

Right now 38% of Idahoans self-identify as Republican, another 32.5% call themselves Independents, who are affiliated with no party, and just over 24% say they are Democrats.

The new research was undertaken by my firm, Gallatin Public Affairs, in cooperation with respected national pollster Greg Strimple and the Idaho Business Review. The Business Review will have a nice package on what the research says about public attitudes regarding the Idaho economy in its next edition and I’ll be devoting some space here over the next few days to a deeper dive into the numbers on a variety of issues.

We are fortunate to have been able to deploy the talents and insights of Greg Strimple on this project. As we say, Greg is kind of a big deal; an outstanding researcher and strategist and a relatively new resident of Idaho. Before relocating his family to Boise a year ago, Greg lived and worked on the east coast and provided first-rate public opinion research for major national clients and major Republican political campaigns. Greg did polling and strategy work for John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign and more recently helped elect a Republican governor in New Jersey and a U.S. Senator in Illinois. Greg’s polling firm – GS Strategy Group – is one of Idaho’s newest small businesses.

Greg and his family, like so many others, chose to live in Idaho because of our enviable lifestyle and fortunately the tools of the modern workplace allow him to live where he wants and still serve his national and regional clients.

Strimple’s research on the Idaho political divide finds, not surprisingly, that a strong plurality of Idahoans – 47.5% – consider themselves very or somewhat conservative. Another 29% describe themselves as moderates, while about 16% call themselves liberal.

Republicans meanwhile, who during the recent legislative session took action to limit their nominating primaries to real, card-carrying members of the party, are likely to continue to battle in a narrow range between the very conservative Republicans, deeply invested in social issues, and those Republicans who may be less consistently doctrinaire and line-up more consistently with what the Pew Center’s new survey calls “Main Street Republicans.” These voters tend to be low tax advocates and suspecious of government, but also concerned about education and the future of the economy.

(The new Pew research makes at least one point that I think tracks directly with our recent Idaho research. The far ends of the political spectrum – the far right and far left – are more extreme than ever, but the Independents are hardly a bunch of moderate, middle-of-the-roaders. Independents in Idaho and nationally amount to a swirling mass of diversity. The Independents are all over the political map – libertarian, social moderates and many disaffected – maybe even disillusioned – by both established parties.)

Idaho’s Republican fault lines, and we saw some of this in the recent legislative session, will likely focus on the clear divide between very socially conservative Republicans who are content, even happy, to limit the party to those who see the world as they do and what I’ll call “the bigger tent” GOP. To date, the first group is winning most of the important battles and clearly this is the fundamental base of the Idaho GOP.

Democrats meanwhile are, there is no nice way to say it, marginalized. They have little traction now outside of a handful of state legislative districts and their prospects in the immediate future, barring a Republican meltdown and a spectacularly attractive candidate, seem genuinely bleak.

Strimple’s Idaho analysis also shows a deep and potentially paralyzing divide that breaks down along demographic more than partisan lines. Generally speaking older, more rural, less well educated, less wealthy Idahoans have a very different view of the state’s economic future than do younger, more educated, better off voters.

The first group tends to look forward and see the Idaho that we have historically known with traditional jobs in construction, manufacturing and natural resources. This group thinks agriculture will be the dominate industry over the next decade. The second group looks ahead and sees an Idaho economy built on more technology, more innovation and more trade.

Our research project also included a survey of Idaho Business Review subscribers, a cross section of small and large business leaders. These business leaders tend to be somewhat divided, as well, concerning the future of the Idaho economy, but they are also more likely to think that industries dependent on technology, like energy and health care, will play an ever more important role in our future.

The political significance of this research, seems to me, turns on the question of who in the next generation of Idaho political leadership finds a way to connect with voters as a responsible fiscal conservative who also has a vision for the future of the Idaho economy.

Idaho voters are pretty pessimistic right now about any real improvement in the economy in the near term. A candidate who can give voters a sense of optimism about the state’s economic future, while not offending their generally small government, low tax notions, will probably have a bright future.

 

Egan, Idaho Politics

Guns and Porn, Oh My

Posted on by christian

Solutions in Search of a Problem

The Idaho Senate will this week – choose your metaphor – cock the hammer, reload or take aim at the increasingly controversial issue of guns on the state’s college campuses. The House has already passed the legislation, the Senate may think twice.

Boise State University, the largest Idaho school, where football tailgate parties are arguably even more popular than guns. has played the economic card by raising concerns that events on the campus may be impacted by a proposed state law allowing students, faculty too, to pack a piece to a concert, football game or poetry reading, not to mention biology class.

Idaho is racing Texas to see which state can get the campus gun toting legislation in place first. Texas Gov. Rick Perry has said he’ll sign legislation working its way through, as Molly Ivins used to say, the Texas Leg. Perry is the same governor who suggested a while back that the federal stimulus legislation gives Texas a right to consider secession. Fully armed obviously.

The Los Angeles Times visited the huge University of Texas campus in Austin recently, a place with an awful history of gun violence, and found a mixed reception for the campus gun legislation. In 1966 a student gunman at UT climbed to the top of the campus clock tower and systematically killed 14 people. Ancient history, I guess, in an age when proponents of such legislation argue that having more guns on campus will actually improve safety.

One Texas professor told the Times he welcomed the proposed gun law and said he’d definitely consider taking his piece to class with him if it passes. Not a professor to argue with about a grade, I suppose. At another Texas school, Sam Houston State, a new research project found considerably less support among students. On a scale of zero being not comfortable at all and 100 being as comfortable as you can get, the Sam Houston students clocked in – or is it Glocked in – at 39. A similar survey at a Washington school produced a 33 comfort score. May just be that the students who are, pardon the expression, the target of this campus safety initiative aren’t feeling all that comfortable about how safe they’ll be in English 101. It used to be all you had to worry about was staying awake in class or understanding Milton.

In times of severe economic turmoil like those faced in Idaho and most other states at the moment, I’ve noticed a curious legislative phenomenon. With limited ability for legislators to think big about new buildings or highways, they tend to find solutions to problems that may not really exist. The gun legislation, stoked by the National Rifle Association in Idaho, Texas and a dozen other states, seems to fall in that category. College administrators, the State Board of Education and law enforcement leaders – those closest to the vibe on a campus – are universally opposed to the gun legislation that has only come forward because, well, the NRA says its needed to protect our Second Amendment rights.

As one Texas student said, college is already stressful enough, why add the prospect for even more worry by affirmatively introducing guns to the campus scene? State Representative Cherie Buckner-Webb of Boise said it pretty well: “One can only imagine a college classroom or a campus administrative situation where heated arguments about strongly held political beliefs or disputes about grades or even parking issues result in the use of a concealed weapon.”

Meanwhile, Idaho legislators are also debating a bill to require more actions from public libraries to filter content on computers that library patrons – as in the tax paying public – utilize in vast numbers every day. Another solution in search of a problem.

Full disclosure, I am currently the president of the Boise Public Library Board, and we have long had in place a perfectly sensible policy about computer use. If a parent is concerned that a youngster might go where they shouldn’t on the Internet, we take steps to ensure that won’t happen. But, we also stay away from being the Internet nanny for adults who presumably are smart enough to make their own decisions about how to use a computer.

Both these pieces of legislation are in the one-size-fits-all category of legislating. Not content to leave it to local library boards in individual Idaho communities to figure out the best approach in their neighborhoods and unwilling to trust a college president in Twin Falls or Moscow to know enough about their campus environment to keep them as safe as possible, legislative solutions must be found to non-existent problems.

Guns and computers. Strange that in a largely educational environment – a college campus and a public library – some legislators want virtually unlimited access to one and to substantially limit access to the other.

Education, Egan, Idaho Politics, Kramer

Failing at Politics and Policy

Posted on by christian

Expelled from Politics

On Tuesday, the Idaho House approved the most political piece of State Superintendent Tom Luna’s “education reform” effort and sent it on to receive a sure signature from Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter.

Idahoans who care about schools – and politics – may look back on the vote to strip collective bargaining rights from the state’s teachers and make tenure more tenuous for new teachers as a true watershed moment.

Like the great Jack Dempsey, knocked out of the ring in a 1923 title fight, the Idaho Education Association’s once-powerful role in the state’s politics has been knocked for a loop, perhaps never to recover. Dempsey somehow pulled himself back in the ring against Luis Firpo and eventually won his famous fight. The IEA has rarely demonstrated that kind of agility.

It seems unfair to kick someone when they’re down, but the reality in these events is obvious, just as the politics is raw. The IEA has failed at both politics and policy and when the legislative moment of reckoning arrived in 2011, the state’s teachers were vilified, marginalized and defeated badly. This has been a long time coming.

Over the last 15 years, as Idaho’s politics has shifted dramatically, the IEA has clung to an old and outdated strategy. Rather than try to elect allies to the legislature or cultivate those already there, the teachers have seemed to focus, without success, on top of the ticket races like governor and state superintendent. The folly of the approach was well documented in a good piece of reporting recently by the Idaho Statesman’s Dan Popkey.

Popkey got the quote of the current legislative session out of former Democratic State Sen. Brandon Durst who complained about IEA’s focus on thwarting Luna’s re-election bid rather than winning a handful of potentially decisive legislative elections, his included.

“They’re my friends, so let me characterize it a little bit more diplomatically,” Durst told Popkey. “They blew it. Their decision to put all of their resources, not just financial but also human resources, behind [Luna’s] campaign and his campaign alone, really hurt races down the ticket.”

But this failure of political strategy goes deeper than misfiring in one election cycle. The IEA has something like 13,000 members in every corner of Idaho. That represents a grassroots organization that most interest groups would kill for, yet the teachers seem not to have been able to really mobilize these local foot soldiers and use them to build broader coalitions. This represent a failure of strategy that ignores a fundamental tenet of politics at every level: organize, organize, organize.

At the same time, Idaho’s teachers have become a punchline and a punching bag for what’s wrong with education. Teachers have become the Idaho equivalent of the old story that everyone hates the U.S. Congress, but most of us still like our own Congressman.

Most Idahoans like the teacher who helps educate their kids, they have just come to hate the teachers union. At the risk of blaming the victim, IEA must shoulder a good deal of the blame for letting this damaging perception take root. The teachers, sorry to say, didn’t fight back effectively against the ceaseless drumbeat that they are a major part of the problem with education.

Which bring us to policy. Whether its fair or not, perception is reality in politics and the perception hangs that teachers have not engaged constructively in the raging debate over why our education system fails to meet almost everyone’s expectations. Playing defense all the time is not a political strategy and it has become for the teachers a recipe to become politically marginalized.

Successful movements – and interest groups – eventually need to stand for something, educate folks about the wisdom of the position and build broad support. I’m guess that even most of their supporters in the Idaho Legislature really don’t understand the IEA’s policy agenda, assuming there is one.

IEA’s leadership justifiably complains about not being at the table when Luna’s reform agenda was hatched, but the teachers also had a chance to build their own policy table and haven’t. Unfortunately, this is not just an Idaho-based failure, but a broader national failing of professional teacher organizations. Look no farther than Wisconsin or Ohio for proof.

At the IEA website, there is a link called “Why Politics?” A click at the link takes you to a short page that explains that the organization is involved in politics because decisions in Idaho and Washington, D.C. effect teachers.

Then there is this sentence: “Time and again, over the last century (emphasis added) IEA members have won major victories to both defend and set new standards for public education in Idaho.”

It’s hard to remember in this century when Idaho teachers won a major or even minor victory. It may be a long time – if ever – before that happens again. If it ever happens again, it will be because Idaho’s worn down and increasingly hard pressed teachers, and the organization that represents them, adopts a real political strategy that can help them climb back into the ring.

Egan, Idaho Politics

A New Game

Posted on by christian

voteParty Registration Comes to Idaho

Idaho’s most conservative Republicans got what they long wanted yesterday with the decision by U.S. District Judge Lynn Winmill throwing out the state’s open primary law. We’ll see if this important decision becomes the political equivalent of the dog catching the car.

It would seem that the immediate impact, as some Republicans exalted over “Democrats no longer picking our candidates,” would be to shift the already very conservative Idaho GOP even further to the right. The after thought Idaho Democrats are left to lament shutting people out of the system. Maybe.

But, if Democrats were to pick themselves up off the canvas and seize Winmill’s ruling as the opportunity it could prove to be, it just might turn out to be the spark that lets the long-suffering party get back in the game.

In politics you can often define opportunity as the moment circumstances collide with timing. The circumstances are the issues mix in Idaho right now – faltering funding for education and a still limping economy – the timing is reflected by the stark reality that Idaho Democrats need a new organizing principle and new blood; energy and ideas to jump start a political recovery. Scrambling the primary process, requiring party registration could be a very big deal.

The current Idaho legislature will end sometime this spring likely having left many, if not most, Idahoans wondering just what happened to education. Expect more Statehouse demonstrations and perhaps even a teacher walkout in coming days focused on defining the education issue to the detriment of the majority party. If Democrats were smart they’d be in the streets collecting names and e-mail addresses of these motivated, mostly younger Idahoans.

(One wag noted the irony in proposing that Idaho students become more comfortable with on-line course offerings, while the kids are organizing on Facebook.)

The recent Boise State University poll says 37 percent of Idahoans now identify themselves as “independents,” only 21 admit to being Democrats, while 33 say they align with the GOP. In the BSU surveys, the numbers of self-described Republicans has been in steady decline. By the same token, in a new closed primary those “independents” are, at least theoretically, up for grabs and for the first time in 2012 primary voters will have to be identified by a party label.

The Republicans in Idaho have long had the money, organization and hearts and minds of, at least, a plurality of Idaho voters. But this is also true: the most faithful adherents in each party are the “true believers” of the increasingly farther right and left. These folks volunteer at the precinct level, they attend the party conventions, they vote in primaries and, at least in the GOP, some of them pushed for a closed primary. The true believers also tend to push the parties to the extremes, which is why you see GOP proposals to nullify health care legislation and repeal the 17th amendment to the Constitution.

Most Idaho Republican officeholders no longer fear a challenge from a Democrat. They only worry about an assault from the right. This unrelenting ever more conservative push tends to diminish the already shrinking center were more Idahoans, if you believe the BSU poll, say they are more at home.

Democrats should look deeply into the impact of Judge Winmill’s decision. It just might contain the fragile threads of a return to viability. Viability will, however, require a new strategy, true centrist policies, messages and candidates and a very big dose of luck. Democrats, of course, need to supply most of that. Ironically, a federal judge may have given the Idaho GOP the thing it says it wants, but also the lucky break Idaho Democrats need.

Egan, Idaho Politics, Labor Day, McClure

More McClure

Posted on by christian

wildernessMan Bites Dog

Lots of reaction and remembering, very appropriately, to the weekend passing of one of Idaho’s political icons Sen. Jim McClure. Most of the reaction, again appropriately, has described McClure’s time in the U.S. House and Senate as distinguished, thoughtful and productive. Others have noted that he was a work horse, not a show horse; a decent guy in a business that has become more and more characterized by nastiness and blind partisanship.

One of the best and most thoughtful reactions to McClure’s death and his career comes in a great piece by long-time Idaho Conservation League Executive Director Rick Johnson. Johnson has taken the point in the Idaho environmental community in stressing a new approach to engagement and even collaboration with some of the traditional “enemies” of the conservation community. He writes of not initially thinking much of McClure, but over time coming to realize that the conservative Republican was a fellow you could talk with and maybe even make a deal with.

“I now see,” Johnson writes, “how much wilderness we didn’t get back then working with him and later in the under-appreciated collaboration he had with then-Gov. Cecil Andrus. Those bills were far from perfect. But bills today are also far from perfect, and today’s are more limited in scale. Nothing’s perfect you say? I didn’t know that then. Incidentally, my older mentors didn’t know that, either.”

It is almost a “man bites dog” moment and strong kudos to Johnson for recognizing and admitting that a guy who is a card carrying environmentalist – I say that with affection – could learn a thing or two from a senator who was often caricatured as an apologist for extractive industries. That is the beauty of politics – things are rarely as black and white, cut and dried as some try to make them. Progress is in the gray area of compromise and consensus.

One aspect of McClure’s career deserves special recognition as Idahoans reflect on his importance to the state’s politics. The guy was a legislator. He didn’t see his job as making bombastic speeches, although like any good and effective politician he could do that, he went to Washington, D.C. to get things done. Over a career that included strong advocacy for timber, mining and the Department of Energy, he also offered up conservation oriented legislation that, as my friend Rick Johnson argues, many of us would be glad to have on the books today.

That alone is why Jim McClure and others of his ilk will be long remembered. They used public office to try and do things. His approach is always going to be a good model – at any time in any state.

Baucus, Egan, Idaho Politics, Labor Day, McClure, U.S. Senate

One of the Greats

Posted on by christian

mcclureJames Albertus McClure, 1924-2011

History will record that Sen. Jim McClure, who died Saturday at the age of 86, was one of the most significant politicians in Idaho’s history. A staunch Republican conservative, McClure nonetheless was liked and respected by those across the political spectrum, but beyond that he accumulated a record of accomplishment that has lasting impact.

A strong advocate for the natural resources industries so important to Idaho, McClure also saw the need to resolve long-standing debates over wilderness designation in his native state.

He worked out the boundary lines of the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area by spreading maps on the floor of the governor’s office and getting on his hands and knees with Democrat Cecil D. Andrus.

He helped champion creation of the Sawtooth NRA and in the last days of Frank Church’s life he got the iconic River of No Return Wilderness renamed for the Democrat.

He fought tooth and nail to grow the Idaho National Laboratory and distinguished himself as a member of the Iran-Contra Committee investigating that scandal.

As a reporter and in other capacities, I have had the chance to interview Jim McClure probably more than 20 times over the years. I never sat down with any person who was better prepared or who provided a better interview. He was candid, opinionated and always impeccable well informed. I also never saw the guy use a note card or a script. He was a marvelous extemporaneous speaker. He was also a complete gentleman.

Once in Sun Valley years ago, while McClure was chairing the Senate Energy Committee, he sat for a taped interview for well more than half an hour. At the end of the session, while we were making small talk, the technical crew whispered in my ear that none of the half hour of Q and A had been recorded on tape. Gulp.

I’d just wasted the time of a busy, important U.S. Senator and had absolutely nothing to show for it. Not missing a beat, McClure smiled and said, “Let’s do it again.” And we did. He didn’t have to do that. Most would have said, sorry, but I’ve got to run. Obviously, I have never forgotten the kindness.

One thing I’ll never forget about McClure was his principled pragmatism. Never anything less than a loyal and conservative Republican, he also knew that progress often requires compromise and finding a middle ground. Such was the case when McClure again hooked up with Andrus in 1987 and spent weeks working out a comprehensive approach to the decades-long battles over Idaho wilderness. They flew around the state, spread out the maps and offended everyone – particularly their respective “base” voters. There was something in the grand compromise that everyone could hate and the McClure-Andrus approach ultimately failed.

I’ve thought many times since that the two old pols knew they were far out in front of their constituents, but were nevertheless willing to risk political capital to try to resolve a controversy. It’s easy in politics to say “no.” It is much more difficult – and risky – to try to lead. McClure was a leader.

I was pleased to have a hand in creating a University of Idaho video tribute to Jim McClure in 2007. You can check it out at the University’s McClure Center website.

In the Idaho political pantheon, McClure stands with Borah and Church as a among the greatest and most important federal officials Idaho has ever produced. He was a genuinely nice guy, too.

Andrus, Boise, Civil War, Egan, Hatfield, Idaho Politics

Effective and Not

Posted on by christian

man with flagNullification or Common Sense

They celebrated Jefferson Davis’s inauguration yesterday in Montgomery, Alabama. Actually, it was a day late. One hundred fifty years ago Friday, Davis became the President of the Confederacy.

As the Los Angeles Times noted, it was a much bigger celebration in 1961 on the centennial of the event that presaged the Civil War. Several southern governors showed up then, none did this weekend. The crowds were smaller and more people were in the ceremony than in the audience.

As LA Times blogger Andy Malcolm points out, Davis – this is history, not state’s rights mythology – is a curious hero for modern day southerners. He actually opposed succession, but not the “right” of a state to do so, and his wife openly opposed the war. The prickly former Mississippi Senator had a stormy tenure. He tried to micromanage the operations of southern armies in the field, advanced his favorite generals over more accomplished men and developed an uncanny ability to feud with southern governors. Still, he was the only president the south had. You go to celebration with the president you have.

Apropos of the political moment in several states – Montana now seeks to nullify health care and the Endangerd Species Act – even Davis opposed nullification, arguing that just leaving the Union was a more practical and effective approach. That didn’t work all that well, either.

As the Idaho State Senate prepares to ignore the sound and fury of “nullification” of federal health care legislation that came over recently from the state’s righters in the Idaho House, it may be worth a moment to consider how a state that depends so heavily on federal largess – INL, Mountain Home AFB, the Forest Service, irrigation projects – can wage an effective battle against the big, bad federal government.

Former Idaho Gov. Cecil D. Andrus has a piece in the Twin Falls Times-News that makes the case for the quiet, but effective approach of applying common sense to our not infrequent battles with Washington, D.C. In short, fix problems by using the courts and the legislative arena, not by passing time wasting bills that garner big headlines, but don’t fix problems.

That approach is more difficult, to be sure, but it can work and have lasting results. All that lasts from the nullifiers of 150 years ago is the memory of a lost cause, the consequences of which we still struggle to put in context and understand. The real question may be, have we learned anything from that disasterous piece of American history?

Egan, Idaho Politics

Nullification Crisis

Posted on by christian

jeffersonSound and Fury, Signifying Nothing

In 1832 when the always frisky state of South Carolina objected to tariff legislation passed by the Congress and signed by President Andrew Jackson, the state’s leaders decided they could just ignore the federal act by invoking an “ordinance of nullification.”

Jackson, not for nothing called “Old Hickory,” thought his fellow southerners were nipping a bit heavy into the sour mash, while flaunting the Constitution that he and they were sworn to uphold. The president sent seven U.S. warships to South Carolina waters and Jackson told the state’s residents, with a certain decisiveness, that they were flirting with treason.

Asked by a visiting South Carolinian if the president had any message for the good people of the Palmetto State, Jackson replied, give them my compliments and tell them if they follow through with these acts of treason, “I’ll hang the first man I can lay my hand on.” Soon enough South Carolina thought better of this nullification business.

Cooler heads will surely prevail, as well, in frisky Idaho – likely in the state senate – after the Idaho House of Representatives has had its fun with a futile, costly and snicker-producing effort to nullify the federal health care legislation.

Ignoring the official opinion of the state’s Republican chief legal and law enforcement officer, Attorney General Lawrence Wasden, who is already suing the federal government over health care, as well as the considered judgment of one of the nation’s top Constitutional scholars, Dr. David Adler, the House State Affairs committee voted 14-5 on Thursday to recommend to the full House that Idaho do what South Carolina wanted to do in 1832.

At least two things are missing here: Historical perspective on the 200-plus year history of our federalist system and the kind of principled political leadership that once in a great while requires elected officials to tell the folks who elected them, sorry, you’re just wrong and we can’t do that.

The historical perspective goes back to Jackson and even farther. The principle that any state, acting on its own motion, can chose to defy the duly constructed law of the land has been rejected time and time again in American history. The legislature can hold hearings and object, it can pass a non-binding memorial voicing its displeasure, it can sue, as Idaho has, but it just can’t decide to ignore federal law. Not possible unless you subscribe to an anarchist interpretation of more than two centuries of American history.

Arkansas in the 1950’s tried to defy a federal court order – the law of the land – to desegregate its public schools and Dwight Eisenhower federalized the National Guard to make certain the Constitution was upheld; to avoid anarchy, as Ike said. End of story. States cannot ignore federal law.

At some point, genuine political leadership requires serious people to step back from these kinds of emotionally charged efforts and shine some light rather than stoke more heat. Understanding that some folks are mighty upset with the federal health care legislation and that many of them showed up to support the legislature’s nullification approach does not abrogate an elected official’s responsibility to not always play to the crowd.

One of those testifying yesterday in Idaho said, according to the Associated Press account of the hearing, “We as citizens are tired of being lorded over by representatives. We’re not conspiracy theorists. We aren’t kooks. No one is going to force me to buy anything.” It must be hard, in the face of such passion, to not get along by going along. But, once in a while it must be done.

In 1946, a very conservative Republican, Sen. Robert A. Taft of Ohio, son of the former president, delivered an historic speech at Kenyon College in his home state. Taft sought out the opportunity to publicly oppose the extremely popular Nazi war crimes trials in Nuremberg that were just then concluding. John F. Kennedy wrote about Taft’s political guts in his famous book Profiles in Courage. Here’s part of what the Kennedy Library website says about Taft, a man known in his time as Mr. Republican.

“To Taft, the [Nazi] defendants were being tried under ex post facto laws (laws that apply retroactively, especially those which criminalize an action that was legal when it was committed). These laws are expressly forbidden in the U.S. Constitution (Article I, section 9 and section 10). Taft viewed the Constitution as the foundation of the American system of justice and felt that discarding its principles in order to punish a defeated enemy out of vengeance was a grave wrong.”

Hardly anyone in America supported Taft’s views. He knew his was speaking directly into a hurricane force wind of opposition, yet he courageously stood for principle over political expediency.

“[Taft] was pilloried in the press, by his constituents, by legal experts, and by his fellow Senators on both sides of the aisle. The fallout from the speech may have also played a small part in his unsuccessful presidential bid in 1948. However, Taft so strongly believed in the wisdom of the Constitution that speaking out was more important than his personal ambitions or popularity. Many years later, William O. Douglas of the Supreme Court [a great liberal] agreed with Taft’s view that the Nuremberg Trials were an unconstitutional use of ex post facto laws.”

Only one Idaho Republican on the House State Affairs Committee, Rep. Eric Anderson of Priest Lake spoke up yesterday and ultimately voted with four Democrats to oppose the nullification proposal.

“It’s an outright defiance of the law,” Anderson said. “If we vacate that rule of law, we simply become nothing but a collection of states that decide among themselves that they’re going to nullify everything that’s inconvenient to them.”

There is a higher principle at stake here than making a useless statement about a hated health care law. Courage and political leadership, once in a while, requires an elected official to say: “I hear your concern, I may even agree with your concern, but we can’t go this far.”

The Idaho State Senate will likely have a chance to take that stand and not follow the Idaho House in making a statement of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Egan, Idaho Politics, Judicial Elections, State Budgets

Budget Blues

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utahLessons from The Beehive State

The Utah state budget is far from flush. The Salt Lake Tribune laments, as legislators do, a $313 million “structural deficit” in Utah. Having a “structural deficit” essentially means the state is spending more than it takes in. Most states have this problem, Idaho included.

As noted here yesterday, the Brookings Institution’s Mountain West Project has identified a variety of reasons for the fundamentally unbalanced nature of western state’s budgets. The reasons range from tax policies that gave away the farm in the form of tax breaks during flush times to antiquated tax structures – like Nevada’s – that overly rely on tourism and home building.

As for Idaho, some have long argued that the state’s tax structure, essentially unchanged since the sales tax was put in place in 1966, no longer reflects an economy built around high tech, services and recreation. If you buy that argument it begins to explain why Idaho, even given the deep cuts in state budgets over the last three years, is likely to continue – post-recession – to have revenue problems. That is a structural deficit.

Still, even with its underlying budget problems, Utah looks pretty good right now having avoided much of the fallout from the burst housing bubble and having in place a sound approach to budgeting and managing state government. And, by comparison to most of her neighbors, Utah is ahead of the game in addressing its structural problems.

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

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

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

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

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

Words to budget – and make policy – by.

 

Egan, Idaho Politics, Judicial Elections, State Budgets

The State Fiscal Crisis

Posted on by christian

budgetIt’s Worse Than You Think

California’s new – old – governor, Jerry Brown, delivered his State of State address to the legislature last night. Lots of gloom and doom, not surprisingly, and calls for more drastic spending cuts and the extension of taxes.

California’s budget deficit is $25 billion – with a B. That amounts to 30 percent of the state’s budget and, if that problem and the certain prospect of additional cuts in education and social services weren’t bad enough, the painful reality for California and many other states is that a sizable portion of these huge deficits are literally baked into the fiscal cake of state governments for years to come.

The Brookings Institution’s Mountain West project, in cooperation with the Morrison Institute of Public Policy at Arizona State University, recently analyzed these so called “structural deficits” in four western states, California included.

Researchers concluded that the structural portions of the current state deficits are “the more or less permanent imbalances of revenues and expenditures that can arise from flaws in a state’s fiscal structure, fundamental changes in the regional economy or the state’s demographics, or, especially, imprudent or shortsighted policy choices.”

The study also looked at Arizona which “gave away the store in better times by handing out a series of ill-advised tax cuts (total value, adjusting for inflation and growth: $2.9 billion since 1993);” Nevada where a “narrow, consumption and real estate-oriented revenue system may well now be ill-attuned to a post-Recession “new normal” in which migration, homebuilding, and gaming are permanently depressed;” and Colorado were a “taxpayers bill of rights” has crippled revenue options and the funding for public education.

As for California, the study concluded that the state had “basically enacted too many permanent spending increases (notably on education) during the dot.com boom and more recent good times even as it left in place a series of rigid voter mandates and tax limitations.”

To put the situation even more bluntly, many states have for two decades been spending, tax forgiving and limiting their fiscal options; in essence behaving as mini versions of the federal government. So, while the economy will eventually recover and grow again, some of these state policy choices involving taxes and spending are truly “baked” into the system.

Idaho lawmakers had a rude awakening to this structural reality with the sudden discovery last week that a renewable energy tax credit coupled with routine conformance with the federal tax code is costing the state huge amounts of money. Many folks would rush, as the legislature did a while back, to embrace a tax credit to encourage renewables and the policy obviously worked. What is often missing when these policy choices are adopted is the long view. It is one thing to embrace an immediately attractive tax policy today, it is something else to consider that the diverted cash, now missing from the state budget, will come at the expense of an education or human services budget in the future.

The Brookings report offered four sensible policy suggestions. States should, and I quote from the report:

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

It must be noted, in contrast to those policy prescriptions, that Idaho lawmakers are still vowing to hold the line on any revenue diversification even as the state’s economy has changed dramatically in the last 30 years and more drastic cuts loom.

The state’s reserve funds are gone and the idea of more local control for local governments is about as popular as a skunk at a garden party. In fact, the Idaho Statesman’s Dan Popkey reported that some lawmakers have hungry eyes focused on that portion of the state sales tax that flows to local government. That’s not more local control, but less.

And, while Idaho has a long history of transparency in its budget process, missing until last week the multi-million dollar impact on state revenues of an established tax credit indicates there is a lot of room for improvement.

The Brookings report is a sobering assessment of the state budget troubles that loom ahead even as the economy starts to recover.

Tomorrow, why Utah is in considerably better shape than much of the rest of the west.