District 21 Legislators Hold Citizen Forum

District 21 legislators held a neighborhood meeting in Kuna earlier this month where they told more than 50 people that they saw the current economic crisis as an “opportunity,” because it would help them to cut waste. 

Some members of the audience, such as one woman describing how disabled children were having their training cut from 30 to 22 hours, and who were facing their providers going out of business because the cut in hours wouldn’t pay for the overhead, did not seem to see it as an “opportunity.” 

“I hope you take back to the Legislature how unhappy people are here, or there’s going to be anarchy in this country,” said one man. “There are some unhappy campers in this state.”

Faced with that concern, some of the legislators’ responses struck an off note. In response to the woman concerned about cuts in training for disabled children, Senator Russ Fulcher, who hosted the event, said, “Should the state or family have control? What is the responsibility of the state? When I’m confronted with state vs. family, I’m going to go with the family most of the time. That’s where control should be,” as though by asking for help in making their disabled children productive citizens parents were somehow giving up their responsibility as parents.

It was reminiscent of former legislator Bill Sali, who as a member of the House Health & Welfare committee refused to increase funding for nursing homes, saying it would deprive people of the opportunity to take care of their aging, sick parents themselves at home.

One small business owner encouraged the legislators to look beyond saving money to helping businesses make money, noting that a number of Idaho companies actually had their best year last year, and that legislators should be asking those companies what they would need to help them increase their revenue. While big companies such as Micron are given tax breaks, small business is not getting anything, he said.

Fulcher encouraged constituents to trust him to do the right thing because, due to Idaho’s part-time citizen legislature, he isn’t a career politician. “None of us make our living [as legislators],” said Fulcher, who since joining the Legislature has quit his job as a technology executive to become a commercial real-estate developer. Legislators’ pay – which was increased by 5 percent in the last legislative session, from $16,116 to $16,921 – is “nothing more than a stipend,” he said.

“We don’t have an incentive to help special interests,” Fulcher said, adding later, “I don’t have any motivation for doing something wrong or stupid.”

Representative Cliff Bayer, who was also present, said the state would be looking for “novel” funding approaches, such as the Sales Tax Anticipated Revenue (STAR) program – which lets developers decide which roads to expand based on their needs and their willingness to front the money, but which the region then has to pay back by giving them a 60% break on their sales taxes.

A number of constituents brought up annexation reform, a sore point in the district. “Idaho ranks third from the bottom in ethics in holding public office,” said one man. “Every time we’ve submitted a bill to kill forced annexation, it gets shot down by the Contractors Association.”

In response to some citizens saying they had been treated disrespectfully by legislative committees for not knowing the right way to testify, the legislators said they would “help you through the ropes” if people called them up a week or so before a hearing.

The legislators deserve credit for holding the forum in the first place. A number of issues raised by the audience really fell into the purview of the counties, and newly elected County Commissioner Sharon Ullman, who was in the audience, promised to have similar forums for the county, even if she was the only commissioner who showed up.