Molly Messick was StateImpact Idaho's broadcast reporter until May 2013. Prior to joining StateImpact and Boise State Public Radio, she was a reporter and host for Wyoming Public Radio. She is a graduate of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
President Obama’s budget proposal, released earlier this month, outlines cuts to ag subsidies. That’s a potential hot button issue for rural and agricultural states, including Idaho. The Los Angeles Timessummarized those cuts this way:
The White House wants to cap direct payments to farmers — which flow mainly to producers of corn, soybeans, cotton and other core commodities, regardless of market prices — at $30,000 per farm. It also wants to limit who is eligible to receive those subsidies. Continue Reading →
Court Hanson, a college and career counselor at Boise High School, says he's worried about the lack of job opportunities for students.
Idaho had one of the highest teen unemployment rates in the nation last year. Nearly 30 percent of 16- to 19-year-old Idahoans were unemployed, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
This week, StateImpact is exploring that rate. After all, unemployed teens aren’t just college-bound high school students who are finding it harder to line up summer lifeguarding jobs. Teenagers, in many cases, need to work. Continue Reading →
A fifth of working households in Idaho spend more than half of their income on housing costs, according to a new study from the Center for Housing Policy. That’s slightly better than the national proportion of working households that have a “severe housing cost burden.” That number stands at 23.6 percent.
According to the study, the percent of working households in Idaho with a severe housing cost burden went up slightly from 2008 to 2010, mirroring national trends. Nationally, the drop in housing prices was outpaced by the drop in income over that period. Working households that rent are somewhat more likely than those that own to have severe housing costs, the report says.
Cathy Holland-Smith has been working for the Legislative Services Office since 1994.
The Idaho Legislature’s Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee began budget setting in earnest this week, after weeks of hearings. Writing the budget is the legislature’s only constitutional requirement, and it has to be balanced. For a primer on the nuts and bolts of the process, StateImpact reached out to Cathy Holland-Smith. She oversees budget and policy analysis for the state’s Legislative Services Office.
Q: The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee has finished its weeks of hearings now, and we’re in the budget setting process. What’s at stake? Continue Reading →
High-school dropouts are falling further behind, even as the national jobless rate has improved. That’s according to an article in today’s Wall Street Journal. “Some 1.8 million more college graduates have found work since January 2010, when the recovery began producing jobs,” the piece says, “but about 128,000 high-school dropouts lost work in the same period, according to the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics.”
Moreover, the article says, wages are substantially lower for workers without high school degrees, a gap that’s expected to widen. Continue Reading →
Kevin Settles, at his restaurant and distillery in downtown Boise
In reporting yesterday’s story about the competing budget priorities that legislators are weighing this session, I reached out to a lot of business groups. I wanted to identify a small business owner who could walk me through just what a reduced individual income tax rate would mean for his or her business over time; I wanted to hear a strong case for tax cuts, grounded in business practicalities. All inquiries led to Kevin Settles, who owns Bardenay Restaurant and Distillery.
Why seek out someone like Settles? For starters, there’s Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter’s recommendation that the 2013 budget include $45 million in tax cuts. That proposal got a preliminary vote of confidence from the Idaho Legislature last week, in the form of a $35 million tax cut bill that Rep. Mike Moyle (R-Star) said would help the state attract businesses. Continue Reading →
Krystal Esterline and Nikki Tangen posed together after Esterline spoke at a panel discussion last month.
In the wake of spending cuts, the Idaho Legislature is now in the process of determining how the state’s revenue surplus should be spent. It’s a process of sorting out priorities, and the decisions have palpable effects. For one Medicaid recipient, for example, recent budget cuts mean an uncertain future, even if funding is restored.
Last month, Krystal Esterline made a brave decision. The then 22-year-old decided to talk publicly about recent cuts in Medicaid services, and how they’ve affected her. “With having services, I’m successful in life when I have them,” she said. “When I don’t have all my services, I’m not successful. I have issues.”
In three Idaho counties, government benefits accounted for more than 30 percent of county income in 2009. That’s according to a data application from The New York Times that tracks government benefit payments to individuals over the last 40 years.
The Idaho counties that receive the most are Lewis, Clearwater and Shoshone, but the data show more than half of Idaho’s 44 counties receive at least 20 percent of their income through government benefit payments. Levels of benefit recipiency appear to roughly track with counties’ unemployment rates. On average, government benefits including Medicare, Medicaid, veterans benefits, and other categories of support accounted for 17.6 percent of U.S. personal income in 2009.
Think about the categories of government benefits you or family members receive. What percentage of your income does it total?
Click on the image above to use RealtyTrac's interactive map.
Idaho’s foreclosure rate ticked up slightly in January, by about 6 percent. That’s according to new numbers from RealtyTrac, which analyzes housing and foreclosure data.
That said, the current rate represents a dramatic 68 percent decrease from January of 2011. Moreover, Idaho’s foreclosure rate has now fallen to 16th in the nation, after remaining in the top ten for much of last year.
Nationally, the foreclosure rate ticked up by 3 percent from December to January, leading RealtyTrac CEO Brandon Moore to say there are signs “the frozen-up foreclosure process is beginning to thaw.” That’s in the wake of last week’s $26 billion mortgage settlement between government officials and five of the nation’s largest banks.
A: Part of the settlement agreement provides for a settlement administrator, or a claims administrator, paid for by the banks who will administer the settlement. We’ve selected an administrator with extensive experience in identifying and working with vast, massive settlements like this one will be. People will be identified. They’ll be contacted. The process won’t be immediate, but people will be contacted and notified about eligibility and their options under the settlement. Continue Reading →
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