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Growth, recession, the transition of Idaho’s economy, and the effects of change on Idahoans.

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December 30, 2011

Essential StateImpact: Year in Review

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 […]

December 23, 2011

Essential StateImpact: Top Five Stories of the Week

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 […]

Reporter’s Notebook: How to Get Information in a Non-Disclosure State

While reporting our recent story about Idaho farmland prices and investor interest in cropland, I ran across a quirk of Idaho law that posed a bit of a challenge: sales prices aren’t public information.  Idaho is one of ten states that are known, in the real estate business, as “non-disclosure states.”  For a better understanding […]

December 9, 2011

Essential StateImpact: Top Five Stories of the Week

Here’s a look back at the five most commented, clicked and viewed stories of the week.  In case you missed something, we put them all in one handy place: Six Months In, Evaluating the Effects of a Medicaid Cut: Idaho’s Medicaid program is dealing with a $100 million cut.  The economic and personal reverberations are […]

December 8, 2011

Idaho’s Medicaid Program by the Numbers

To understand the challenges Idaho’s Medicaid program has faced in recent years, it’s important to understand the numbers. As we noted in earlier reporting, Medicaid enrollment has grown by more than 20 percent since 2008. Source: Idaho Department of Health and Welfare The result is greater spending.  As the graph below illustrates, state Medicaid expenditures […]

December 7, 2011

Corporate, Income and Sales Tax Collections Lower Than Expected in November

The Division of Financial Management today reported Idaho’s main bank account was $5.4 million below November’s forecast.  DFM attributes the monthly shortage to weak individual income taxes and sales taxes.  Idaho’s sales tax collections have missed projected targets every month this fiscal year. “This month’s performance not only missed its forecast, but it was 4.1% […]

December 6, 2011

Idaho’s Rising Medicaid Enrollment Drives Costs

Bruce Vladeck, who directed the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs for four years in the 1990s, summed up the Medicaid program this way.  “Medicaid isn’t rocket science,” he said.  “It’s harder and more expensive.”  Years later, a poster echoing those words hangs in Idaho Medicaid Administrator Paul Leary’s office. It’s true that in the world […]

December 2, 2011

Essential StateImpact: The Five Most-Read Stories of the Week

In case you weren’t glued to your computer screen all week, here’s what you missed at StateImpact Idaho.  These are the five most commented, clicked and shared stories of the week! Idaho’s Food Stamp Rolls Nearly Triple in Four Years: Food stamp use in the state used to be cyclical.  It waxed and waned according […]

December 1, 2011

Idaho’s Growing Food Stamp Enrollment: Greater Need or Broader Eligibility?

In response to our recent story about Idaho’s growing food stamp rolls, IdahoReporter.com sent this 2010 article about the suspension of the state’s asset test for food stamp eligibility.  Like many other states, Idaho lifted the asset test in 2009.  Previously, families could not qualify for assistance if they held more than $2,000 in assets, […]

November 30, 2011

New Business Filings Decline in Idaho, Nationwide

A prominent DC-based think-tank says real growth in U.S. jobs is attributed primarily to new startup companies, not existing small businesses.  The Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization, reports most jobs created in the last 30 years have come from young, new enterprises.  In the video below, Brookings Senior Fellow Robert Litan says the […]

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