[Vision2020] legislative report from Ringo

[Shirley Ringo]

Legislative Report

April 16, 2009

 

Greetings from the legislature!  This bizarre session is grinding to a close.  Yesterday, the House rejected an omnibus bill that was intended to help resolve pending issues.  The vote was essentially along party lines.  House Republicans voted no, with the exception of Representative Trail who joined Democrats in support of the legislation.  Senate Bill 1222 had passed the Senate with only one negative vote.  

 

Most of the bill concerned use of approximately $44.8 million in federal stimulus funds.  It would have accomplished the following:

 

Instead of the budgeted 3% across-the-board cut in pay for state employees with an additional 2% cut in personnel costs to be accomplished by each agency, $7.4 million would be spent to limit those reductions in pay to 3% personnel costs to be accomplished at the discretion of each agency.

 

$17.5 million directed to all eligible local entities for road maintenance and construction.

 

$3 million directed to the Department of Administration Information Technical Program for the Idaho Education Network.  (The department is to acquire a broadband support system with infrastructure primarily located in Idaho.)

 

To the Department of Environmental Quality - $5 million for water quality issues and $10 million to municipalities for sewage treatment works.

 

$2 million is directed towards implementation of the Comprehensive Aquifer Management Plan.

 

There were also details authorizing the Governor to use reserve sources in the event revenues are below the most recent projections.

 

(When the bill was prepared during a meeting of the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee, a motion was made to use a large portion of the $44.8 million to support education.  That motion failed with the vote along party lines.)

 

Since the bill failed in the House, negotiations are taking place regarding details of a replacement.  It is quite certain that the new bill will contain a 5% cut in personnel costs.  I worked across party lines to gain consensus to limit those cuts to 3%.   The inconsistent behavior of our Governor doomed the effort to failure.  At one time, he released a statement clearly supporting limited cuts to 3%, but later reversed his recommendation.

 

Certain issues regarding transportation funding and education remain unresolved.  I will let you know when the direction those take becomes more clear.

 

Please let me know of your thoughts and concerns.  ringoshrirl at moscow.com or sringo at house.idaho.gov.

 

Shirley RIngo
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20090416/980b4f5e/attachment-0001.html