District 21 Republican Sues Republican Chair

Last year's District 21 Senate challenger and Republican district chairman, Steven Ricks, has filed a libel suit against Idaho State Republican Chairman Norm Semanko, in response to a letter Semanko sent out regarding a letter Ricks sent out as part of his campaign.

As described here last December, Ricks sent out a letter before May's primary that some people believe affected the results of the primary and caused the loss of one of the incumbent House representatives in our district. Ricks, as well as being the chair of the district, was also one of the primary challengers supported in the letter, which was sent out over the names of Republican precinct committeemen in the district. The letter -- which was identical regardless of the person who signed it -- noted that it was “gladly paid for” by the Ricks campaign. Ricks unsuccessfully ran against incumbent state Senator Russ Fulcher in the primary, losing by 149 votes.

"[T]he Idaho Republican Party has a long-standing policy of abstaining from endorsing candidates in the primary,” Semanko said in his September 17 letter. “Your actions caused some voters to believe the state party had taken the extraordinary step of rescinding this policy, which was not the case.”

According to an article on the lawsuit in the Idaho Statesman, Ricks seeks a jury trial and damages of more than $10,000, saying that Semanko exposed him to public contempt or ridicule by impugning his honesty, integrity or reputation. He also names the Idaho GOP State Central Committee as a defendant.

The lawsuit appears to center around a statement in Semanko's September letter to Ricks that the May letter from the Ricks campaign used the state GOP logo without authorization, saying it was trademarked. Ricks' lawsuit includes a certification by Idaho Secretary of State Ben Ysursa that the GOP logo is not trademarked in Idaho.

This also means, incidentally, that anyone else can apparently use the state GOP logo in any way they like.

District 21 Town Hall Meeting with Legislators

It hasn't been well publicized, but there's another District 21 Town Hall Meeting with legislators tonight at Reed School at Linder and Deer Flat, 5:30-7 pm.

Why Jarvis' Dropout Plan Won't Work -- and What Will

The Idaho Statesman is reporting that Rich Jarvis is proposing to spend $11 million by forcing students to stay in high school until they're 18 (unless they graduate, presumably). The new law would help promote higher graduation rates, lower crime rates, and boost the economy because high school graduates earn more money, pay more taxes, and are less likely to spend time in jail, he said in an earlier version of the Statesman story.

The move is not a surprise; in fact, Jarvis had said during the campaign that he wanted to make high school graduation mandatory. Apparently he realized that while he can force the horse to come to water, he can't make it drink, and instead is sticking to just making the students stay enrolled until they're 18 rather than trying to force them to pass.

Of course,  having more kids graduate from high school is a laudable goal. But this is a feel-good proposal that substitutes a law for actually solving a problem -- if indeed it's a problem at all -- that goes against current thinking, and which may actually make Idaho schools worse.

Let's start with the fact that it takes away parental choice. Some legislators have voted against kindergarten and pre-kindergarten education, saying giving parents that option takes away their parental choice.  If legislators really support parental choice, they would continue to allow parents and students to make the choice to leave school at 16, if they decided it was best for the student.

Indeed, should the law pass, parents could be charged with a misdemeanor if their teenagers are declared to be "habitually truant" and don't attend school. 

A copy of Jarvis' proposed legislation is not yet available, so it isn't clear what the $11 million it will cost includes other than the per-student amount the department pays schools. Does it include enforcement? How, exactly, will this be enforced? How many staff people will it take to make sure the kids come to school, and to charge the parents with crimes if they don't?

(Jarvis, in fact, doesn't understand why the new legislation would cost anything. “We’re putting another student in the classroom. We already have a teacher. We already have desks. We have the textbooks, heat, lights. Where is the expense?” he's quoted as saying in the Statesman.)

 It also isn't clear how a group of disgruntled students will end up graduating, unless the schools begin passing students regardless of their performance, which will end up cheapening the value of a high school diploma for all Idaho students.  Or will the students get a wink and a nod that they are being "homeschooled," giving the impression that homeschooling is a way to get out of the requirements and making it harder for those families who actually do homeschool to be treated legitimately?

Moreover, having a group of potentially disruptive 16- and 17-year-olds in a high school could be distracting, and perhaps even dangerous, for other students, making it more difficult for the students to get an education who want to be there. What would having a group of poorly performing, unmotivated students do to Idaho's compliance rate with federal standards such as No Child Left Behind?

In this budget year, when schools are already facing having their budgets cut by more than 5 percent, do we want to spend $11 million to force students to attend school who don't want to be there? What more will be cut from the education budget to provide this $11 million?

Did Jarvis even talk to the Department of Education about his proposal? According to the December 2008 newsletter from the Idaho Business Coalition for Education Excellence, State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna told the group in September that one of his top three priorities was "a K-10 system in which students pass a comprehensive exam and, if proficient, go on to community college or a professional technical school. A student could stay in high school for grades 11 and 12 to take remedial courses or advanced placement/college prep courses." How does this fit with Jarvis' proposal to force students to stay in school until they're 18?

The problem is that Jarvis thinks that slapping a rule, forcing students to stay in school until 18, guarantees that they will learn, and will get a high school diploma. It doesn't work that way. 

If Jarvis' real goal is to increase the number of high school graduates in Idaho, as he claims, there's better ways to do it. Instead of making a new law and adding to the amount of government, how about finding out what actually makes students drop out, and solve those problems?

First, Idaho's rate of high school graduates is pretty good. As of 2006, the most recent year for which numbers are available, Idaho ranks 13th in terms of students graduating high school. 78.7 percent of students graduate from high school. And the preliminary figures for 2007-2008, as given by the Statesman, are even lower than those for 2006-2007.

Jarvis said that 18 states have already required students to stay in school until 18, but if you look at the statistics, states that have implemented those laws don't necessarily have better rates of graduating from high school. New Jersey, for example, has the highest rate of graduation, with 86.3 percent, but it lets students drop out at 16. 

In fact, of the 12 states with higher graduation rates than Idaho, only Wisconsin and Utah require students to stay in school until 18, while Nebraska, Arkansas, and Pennsylvania require students to stay in school until 17. But New Jersey, Iowa, Minnesota, South Dakota, Vermont, Montana, and North Dakota all have better graduation rates than Idaho, and all allow students to drop out at 16. 

If the goal is really to increase the number of high school graduates, then the solution is to keep students motivated to stay in school. If they can't -- perhaps for financial reasons, perhaps because they don't do well in a class situation -- then how about increasing the number of alternative high schools, perhaps at night or online?

Studies such as Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone have also shown that states with a great deal of "social capital" -- that is, trust, networks, and reciprocity within a child's family, peer group, school, and community -- have schools with higher rates of graduation. If Idaho wants to improve its rate of graduation, it could encourage citizens to take part in actions that improve social capital, such as increasing the turnout in presidential elections, attending more community and neighborhood clubs, increasing the number of nonprofit organizations, or going to church more often. 

There's a community forum in Nampa on January 30th called Keeping the Promise that talks about just that. "If we are to be successful on behalf of at-risk children, we must find a way to provide them with lifelong connections with caring and supportive adults, who can help them transition to the workforce, achieve their higher education goals, and deal with the issues of life when they happen," according to the description of the keynote. While there is one workshop on whether the age should be raised, all the others are about actually looking at the problem.

But this all requires work, and thought -- much more thought than simply slapping people with a new rule and more government -- which isn't even as likely to work.

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.

District 21 Meeting

In preparation for the 2009 Legislative Session, which starts on Monday with the "State of the State" message by Governor C.L. "Butch" Otter, District 21 state Senator Russ Fulcher will be hosting a town meeting from 5:30 to 7 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 8, at Reed Elementary School, 1670 N. Linder Road in Kuna. Special guests will include Legislative District 21 House Representatives Cliff Bayer and Rich Jarvis. Bring your ideas and comments.

Why it's hosted by Fulcher, with the representatives (including the newly elected Jarvis) only as "special guests," is unclear. Perhaps it's because Fulcher was the only one who was unchallenged in the November election?

Typically, these legislative meetings have been held at a school on the eastern end of Amity; Fulcher is holding this meeting in Kuna in response to constituent request.

District 21 Republican Chair Rebuked for Primary Letter

Idaho State Republican Chairman Norm Semanko has rebuked Steven Ricks, the Republican chair of District 21, for sending out a letter before May’s primary that some people believe affected the results of the primary and caused the loss of one of the incumbent House representatives in our district.

“Because this letter is so widely distributed, I fear it may fall into Democrat hands, who would use it against our Republican candidates in the General Election,” said Semanko’s letter—which was dated September 16 but was mailed to all voting residents of District 21 on December 16. “Hopefully, my fears will prove unfounded.”

Ricks, as well as being the chair of the district, was also one of the primary challengers supported in the letter, which was sent out over the names of Republican precinct committeemen in the district. The letter -- which was identical regardless of the person who signed it --  noted that it was “gladly paid for” by the Ricks campaign. Ricks unsuccessfully ran against incumbent state Senator Russ Fulcher.

Boise conservative Bryan Fischer blogged about the letter on May 29, blaming it for the loss of incumbent John Vander Woude in the primary to challenger Richard Jarvis. “In the last week of the primary campaign, a form letter, written on official party letterhead, was mailed widely in District 21, arriving in mailboxes on Wednesday or Thursday, and giving the distinct impression that the Republican Party had officially endorsed the challengers in those hotly contested races.”

“No less than three times the incumbents are smeared in this letter as members of the “good old boy” network and the reader is bludgeoned no less than nine times — nine! — with the phrase “special interests” to imply that it was the party’s official position that Fulcher, Bayer and Vander Woude are in the bag for powerful lobbyists,” Fischer went on to say.

“[T]he Idaho Republican Party has a long-standing policy of abstaining from endorsing candidates in the primary,” Semanko said in his September 17 letter. “Your actions caused some voters to believe the state party had taken the extraordinary step of rescinding this policy, which was not the case.”

Fischer also cited the letter as evidence that the Republican State Chairman at the time, Kirk Sullivan, should be deposed in favor of Semanko at the Republican state convention in June (which did indeed happen). “Sullivan’s failure to take decisive clarifying action likely cost John Vander Woude his seat in the legislature,” he said.

(First reported on the New West blog.)

District 21 Legislators Get Committee Assignments

District 21 legislators received committee assignments today, laying the way for the upcoming legislative session.

House representative Cliff Bayer continues his membership on the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee (JFAC), which handles budgeting; in addition, he is on the Business and Local Government committees. 

Major issues for JFAC are, of course, continuing to provide state services within the economic limitations we currently have.  The Business Committee handles banking and insurance issues; local government covers city/county issues and taxing districts.

Newcomer Rich Jarvis was assigned only to two committees, Business and Transportation & Defense.  As an insurance agent himself, it will be interesting to see which perspective he chooses to bring to the business committee: that of the insurance industry, or that of the citizen. 

Major issues for the Transportation Committee are fuel taxes, state and local highways, and motor vehicle issues -- such as how much your gas tax will be, road building and maintenance, and how much your auto registration will be.

It's interesting that Jarvis wasn't put on the education committee, since his first platform point was "improve the quality of education," and his endorsement interview with the Statesman suggested making high school graduation mandatory -- though he wasn't specific about just how high schools were supposed to enforce this. (Incidentally, he did not receive the Statesman endorsement.)

State Senator Russ Fulcher is also on only two committees. Like Bayer, he continues his membership on the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee; in addition, he is vice-chair of the Education Committee.

Fulcher also attempted to challenge Assistant Majority Leader Joe Stegner (Lewiston) for his leadership position, but was unsuccessful. As was pointed out in the Boise Weekly, we know this only through reports, because this was held during the Republican caucus, which is closed, unlike the Democratic caucus, which is open to the public. 

Committees where District 21 has no representation on either the House or Senate side include Agricultural Affairs, Resources & Conservation, Revenue & Taxation, and State Affairs. The seven committee assignments shared by the three legislators cover only five committees.