The Idaho Legislature convenes January 9th. In advance of the session, we interviewed several legislative leaders and asked them about Idaho’s economy and what the state could be doing to boost growth and job creation.
Idaho Legislature / State of Idaho
Minority Leader Rep. John Rusche (D-Lewiston) was elected to the Idaho House of Representatives in 2004. A retired physician and former health insurance executive, he served as Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer for Regence BlueShield of Idaho and Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Utah.
Q: What are your priorities for the upcoming session?
A: Personally, there’s a lot of issues involving health care, everything from the catastrophic healthcare fund, which I’m on the board of, to Medicaid and funding for various health care services that we’ve cut over the last few years. Then, of course, the big one is the health insurance exchange and cooperation with the Affordable Care Act. I think that’s going to occupy a fair amount of my time. Continue Reading →
Thank you for making our first four months a success! See you next year...
StateImpact Idaho launched in September 2011. While we’ve only been live for the last four months, we thought we’d look back at the five most-read stories during StateImpact Idaho’s first year.
In Rural Idaho, the Recession Changes One Town’s Fate: Before the recession, rural Fairfield, Idaho was planning for growth. Now, it’s dealing with a double-digit unemployment rate and trying to hold onto the business that already exist. Molly Messick visited Fairfield in November to tell a story not uncommon to many rural towns in America.
In the Wake of Foreclosure, a Debt That Won’t Die: Many people who go through foreclosure assume losing their home is the last step in the process. And for many, its the definition of hitting rock bottom. But some former homeowners find themselves in an even tighter spot when lenders pursue them for the debt that remains. This is a story about what can happen after foreclosure, and why banks are increasingly going after what’s left. Continue Reading →
The Idaho Legislature convenes January 9th. In advance of the session, we interviewed several legislative leaders and asked them about Idaho’s economy and what the state could be doing to boost growth and job creation.
Idaho Legislature / State of Idaho
Rep. Lawerence Denney (R-Midvale) is the speaker of the Idaho House of Representatives. He has also served as Assistant Majority Leader and Majority Leader, and he was first elected to the legislature in 1990. Denney says he believes in “as little government control in our business and personal lives as possible.”
Q: Looking ahead to the upcoming session, what are your priorities, and what would you say will be the major topics of discussion?
A: Of course, my priorities are to run the session efficiently and get through it as quickly as possible. I think the session will be as it has been in the last two or three years. The top issues are going to, in most cases, come down to money. Even though the economy has improved some, we’re still down from the high point in revenue collections in 2008. So there are still some very challenging issues that involve the budget.
I think one of the major issues that we will be discussing in this upcoming session is the insurance exchange idea, and I think that will take a considerable amount of time, whether or not we actually accept the federal money to set up the state-based insurance exchange. Continue Reading →
The talk of raising, lowering and changing various taxes in the state has already started with a couple of weeks before the 2012 legislative session kicks off. Each lawmaker I spoke with said Idaho’s corporate and income tax rates could stand to be lowered. Many differed on when and how to do it.
Idaho Legislature / State of Idaho
Rep. Mike Moyle is a Republican from Star, Idaho
Idaho’s corporate tax rate is 7.8 percent and the individual rate is a graduated system ranging from 1.6 to 7.6 percent. Many Republicans, including Rep. Mike Moyle (R-Star) say Idaho’s tax rates are hurting private sector growth. “We’re higher than every state around us,” Moyle says. “Which is not a good place to be when we’re trying to get businesses and jobs to come here.” Moyle is working on a bill for the 2012 session to lower Idaho’s tax rates. He wouldn’t get into specifics.
The Idaho Legislature convenes January 9th. In advance of the session, we interviewed several legislative leaders and asked them about Idaho’s economy and what the state could be doing to boost growth and job creation.
Idaho Legislature / State of Idaho
Sen. Elliot Werk (D-Boise) was first elected in 2002. He’s one of seven Democrats in the Idaho Senate and made our list of most influential state lawmakers. On his website, Werk calls Idaho’s economy a “dismal mess”. He says the key to turning things around is education.
Q: What are your funding priorities?
A: The legislature needs to focus on funding the basic element that increases help for the middle class, which is education. Both K-12 and higher education. The shameless slashing of those budgets will do lasting and long term damage to Idaho’s economy unless that trend is reversed.
Q: Many of your Republican counterparts have also said education is their top priority, including the governor. Do you think the majority party has done an adequate job of funding education?
A: Well, I appreciate statements from the governor and my Republican counterparts indicating they prioritize education, the reality is their votes and their actions don’t show that in any way, shape or form. We really have a crisis in Idaho in terms of our overall structure for revenues. And the Republican Party has steadfastly refused to address the issues we have with revenues and inequities in the system so they have piled on cuts onto the middle class while they continue to enrich their benefactors continually with more breaks and more exemptions and more giveaways. Continue Reading →
Idaho is among the states where employment has dropped most significantly compared to its pre-2009 peak level, as this interactive graphic from The New York Times shows. The accompanying article points out that the drop in employment has been most dramatic in some of the states that experienced the greatest fluctuations related to the housing boom.
One fact that stands out is how far employment has fallen in some of the same states where the residential real estate prices rose the most during the boom and fell the most during the bust. – The New York Times
The Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers also put Idaho toward the bottom of the list in terms of the change in employment the state has seen since its job figures hit their low point. Idaho falls in the middle of the pack in terms of employment change since November 2010, with .8 percent growth.
The Idaho Legislature convenes January 9th. In advance of the session, we interviewed several legislative leaders and asked them about Idaho’s economy and what the state could be doing to boost growth and job creation.
Idaho Legislature / State of Idaho
Sen. Dean Cameron (R-Rupert) is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and co-chairman of the Joint Finance Appropriations Committee. JFAC is the committee that shapes the legislature’s version of the state budget. He’s been a lawmaker since 1991.
Q: How will JFAC approach the budgeting process? Do you anticipate further budget cuts?
A: We certainly are seeing some improvement in our revenue stream. And I would remind you, the state’s revenue stream is really a lagging indicator of the state’s economic conditions. That’s always a little frustrating because sometimes the economy feels like its better but the revenue isn’t coming into the state as fast. So the revenue has been lagging behind our economic conditions, but there is some slight improvement. We believe with current forecast, we’re still yet to make a formal recommendation for the upcoming fiscal year. We believe it won’t be as difficult. It still isn’t great. We’re still below 2008 revenues. We still have agencies that are significantly funded below the levels they were in 2008 and 2009. And we don’t have any reserves left because we’ve used all the reserves to mitigate the reductions over the last three years. So, we’re in a little bit more of a precarious situation, but we don’t anticipate revenue further declining.
Prominent legislators agree the Idaho Legislature is hard to predict. “You know, the interesting thing about the legislature is you never really know what the big issues are going to be until you get there,” said House Majority Leader Mike Moyle (R-Star), when asked what he thinks will be the defining debates in the 2012 session. “You get down there and there’s something that pops up that’s a big issue and you never thought it would be.” That said, there is consensus that whether or not Idaho should create a state-run health insurance exchange will be one of the biggest questions before legislators in the months ahead.
Idaho Legislature / State of Idaho
House Majority Leader Mike Moyle, from Star, says Idaho should not create its own health insurance exchange unless it is given enough leeway to tailor the exchange to state needs.
Health insurance exchanges are a primary component of the Affordable Care Act. By their most basic description, exchanges are new organizations — marketplaces — created to make available health insurance options more clear and more competitive. In the health insurance market, individuals and small businesses don’t have perfect information or a great deal of bargaining power with insurers. A health insurance exchange would lay out the private and public health insurance options, explaining plans in terms of benefit levels and costs.
Under the Affordable Care Act, states can create their own exchanges or wait for the federal government to do it for them. Idaho Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter supports the creation of a state-run exchange, and Idaho has moved forward to receive a series of federal grants. Many Idaho legislators, however, are not convinced the state should establish its own exchange. Continue Reading →
In case you missed any of our stories this week, we put the most-viewed stories all in one place. Enjoy!
It was a busy week at StateImpact Idaho, and we saw a big boost in our site traffic. Thank you! Here’s a look at the five stories getting the most attention:
Governor Otter: The State Can’t Reject a Federal Unemployment Benefit Extension: Extended benefits for jobless Idahoans are tangled in a Congressional debate. It’s unclear if a resolution will be met before extended benefits expire Dec. 31. But if they are, Idaho politicians don’t seem to agree on how to handle it.
“For businesses, economic and financial uncertainty caused in large part by misguided federal programs and policies are undermining confidence in the marketplace. Employers have no idea what it will cost them to comply with new health care mandates. I understand their hesitation. But that’s stifling employment growth.” – Gov. Otter, 2011 State of the State
Nearly one year later, Otter stands by that statement. He explains why when we interviewed him earlier this month:
Idaho is one of 26 states suing the federal government over the health care law. At the same time, Idaho has accepted federal money to begin creating a health insurance exchange, an online marketplace for buying and selling insurance mandated by the federal law. We’ll have more on that in the coming weeks.
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