A child waits with a box of food at a food distribution center.
As the holiday season gets underway, the PBS show Frontline premiered a new documentary this week that tells the story of child poverty in America through the eyes of kids.
It’s called Poor Kids, and the hour-long program weaves together the similar stories of three families living in poverty, and trying to work their way out of it.
For a family of four, an annual income of $23,050 or less is considered in poverty. Today’s median household income is $50,054. In Idaho, the median income is $46,423. Last year, 7 percent of Idahoans had incomes that amounted to less than 50 percent of the poverty line, according to a Census Bureau report. Continue Reading →
On Nov. 6 Idaho voters repealed a trio of education laws that were put into place in 2011.
Idaho school Superintendent Tom Luna said this week the voter repeal of his education laws would mean a financial hit to districts. Today his department released an estimate of that impact. It says the Nov. 6 ‘no’ votes on Propositions 1, 2 and 3, takes more than $36 million off the table.
That money had been slated for schools. Nampa School’s spokesperson Allison Westfall says her district has been trying to figure out what the repeal means for them.
“There are some things we need to learn more about,” says Westfall. “There was a clause in there about funding for certified staff. There was professional development dollars, technology. So what becomes of all that? And we are eager to hear the answers.”  Continue Reading →
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius yesterday granted states more time to decide whether to create their own health insurance exchanges.
Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter said today that he will confer with Idaho legislators and try to get more information from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) before coming to a decision about whether the state should build its own health insurance exchange. The state’s other options are to leave it to the federal government, or pursue a federal-state partnership.
Governor C.L. “Butch” said in a news release this morning he’ll wait to consult with Idaho Legislative leaders before deciding if the state will create its own health insurance exchange.
Late yesterday afternoon, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it would give states until Dec. 14 to decide if they’ll create a state-based exchange, a federal exchange, or a partnership model.
Here’s the governor’s press release:
Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter said today that he will consult with legislative leaders and be ready by the new December 14 deadline for submitting a decision on whether Idaho will build its own health insurance exchange or opt into the federal system being developed under Obamacare. Continue Reading →
The Washington D.C. business think tank, the Conference Board, estimated there were 2.5 unemployed workers for every posted job opening in Idaho in October.
More than 7,000 Idahoans have left the labor force since May, says the state Labor Department, and that’s why Idaho’s jobless rate continues to decline.
The Idaho Department of Labor’s monthly unemployment report shows the jobless rate dropped one-tenth of a percentage point from September to October. The 7.0 percent seasonally adjusted unemployment rate is the state’s lowest in three and a half years.
The Labor Department writes October’s lower rate “was the result of another 1,100 workers leaving the state labor force.”  That means the state has seen five straight months of workforce decline. “The only other year the labor force was smaller in October than May was 1980 between the 1980 and 1981 recessions,” the department’s release says. Continue Reading →
Idaho is one of a dozen states that is still studying its options with respect to health insurance exchanges.
Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter got a reprieve, if he wants it. Friday, Nov. 16 was supposed to be the final day for states to tell the federal government whether they will set up their own health insurance exchanges.
It was a deadline established by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, to ensure the exchanges are online by 2014. But Republican governors asked for more time, and yesterday they got it.
The Idaho Legislature does not convene again until early next year, so this decision still falls to the governor. And if Gov. Otter follows the conclusions reached by his working group last month and determines that Idaho should build its own exchange, there’s little doubt the Legislature will also have to get on-board. Continue Reading →
Now, that list is itself producing consternation. As The Spokesman-Review’s Scott Maben writes of the bonuses that will be distributed in the Coeur d’Alene School District:
Teachers will receive bonuses of up to $4,142 in the coming weeks, though some who teach at underperforming schools will receive nothing, even if they’re among the best educators in a school district. — The Spokesman-Review
Critics of the three defeated education laws known as Students Come First have been quick to make this observation: that the bonuses appear to reward well-off schools. Continue Reading →
Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna held a roundtable meeting with Idaho media yesterday. It was the first time Luna had spoken publicly since voters rejected the Students Come First laws.
The Idaho Attorney General’s office says school districts have until December 15, 2012 to distribute roughly $38 million in teacher bonuses that were part of an education law voters overturned last week.
Voters rejected Proposition 2 on Nov. 6. That’s the provision that asked voters whether to uphold or repeal Idaho’s pay for performance plan the Legislature approved in 2011.
As we reported last week, school districts will have that bonus money by Nov. 15, but until today, it was unclear if districts had a deadline to distribute that bonus pay to teachers who earned it over the last school year.
Here’s the written opinion from Idaho’s Deputy Attorney General Andrew Snook:
The group considering the Medicaid expansion met at the Capitol today
All fourteen members of Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter’s Medicaid Expansion Work Group arrived at the same opinion this afternoon: Medicaid eligibility should be expanded in Idaho. It was the conclusion of a months-long discussion and research set in motion when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Affordable Care Act earlier this year.
Expanding Medicaid eligibility to low-income adults living at or below 138 percent of the federal poverty line is a key component of the federal health care law. But the Supreme Court’s June ruling in effect granted states the right to choose whether to adopt the expansion.
This morning, Gov. Otter’s working group heard a presentation from consulting group Milliman, which was hired by the state to assess the costs and savings of the state’s options. The report estimates expanding Idaho’s Medicaid program would save the state money between now and the year 2024. That’s because the federal government will at first cover 100 percent of the cost of expansion, phased down to 90 percent by 2020. Continue Reading →
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