A spokesman for the state controllers office says creating a transparency website is a priority, but so far there's no funding.
Yesterday, StateImpact published a story about Idaho’s last-place finish in a government transparency study. In it we noted that Idaho was one of only three states that didn’t respond when the study’s initial findings were sent to government officials, requesting comment. It was the Department of Administration’s Bill Burns who received that survey. He wasn’t available yesterday, but answered a couple of questions this afternoon. Continue Reading →
Frontier Airlines recently announced it won’t resume service between Boise and Denver this spring. Early this year, Southwest discontinued its flights from Boise to Seattle, Salt Lake and Reno. An American Airlines affiliate has cancelled its service from Boise to Los Angeles. The net effect is that there will be 20 percent fewer seats leaving Boise this summer than last. What does that mean, as the city and state hustle to attract new businesses? That’s the question I’ve been asking of a lot of people this week. Among them is Adie Tomer, a senior analyst with the Brookings Institution, who focuses on transportation and infrastructure issues.
Q: You have reviewed the recent numbers related to air service in and out of Boise. What do you see? Continue Reading →
Idaho earned last place and an “F” ranking in an analysis of government transparency released today. The U.S. Public Interest Research Group study focuses on how easily the public can get information about government spending.
“The main thing is that Idaho is one of the four states that does not have checkbook-level expenditure information,” Tax and Budget Associate Ryan Pierannunzi explained. “We consider that the very basic thing that all states should have.” Continue Reading →
Gov. Otter signed HB 546 (IGEM) into law this afternoon
Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter has signed into law his plan to kick-start collaboration between university researchers and private industry.
Otter’s IGEM, the Idaho Global Entrepreneurial Mission, spends $5 million to spur local innovation through research. The plan sets aside $1 million in Idaho Department of Commerce grants for start-up businesses, $2 million for the Center for Advanced Energy Studies. Another $2 million will be split between Idaho’s three research universities. Continue Reading →
One of our readers recently asked why the Sun Valley Resort isn’t one of Blaine County’s top employers. Data from the Idaho Labor Department shows the Blaine County School District is the biggest employer in that county.
Back in January we posted this map, which shows the top five employers in each county. We wanted to see how many top employers were government entities and how many were private companies. Continue Reading →
Ben and Lori Jensen now live in Meridian, after losing their home in Star, Idaho.
Four hundred. That’s how many foreclosure-related documents an Ally bank employee might have processed every day at the height of the foreclosure crisis. At Bank of America, the rate was a stunning 75 to 80 per hour.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics has been compiling interesting data on the number of job openings and job turnover each month. It’s dubbed JOLTS, a handy acronym for Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey.
As of January 31, 2012 there were almost 3.5 million job openings in the U.S. During the same month more than 4 million people were hired for jobs and almost 4 million people either quit, retired, were fired or laid off.
The data isn’t broken down by state, but it is by region. The Idaho Department of Labor currently has 2,317 jobs posted on its searchable website. That doesn’t include jobs that are posted through other sites like Monster, Craigslist or Indeed. Continue Reading →
Would-be workers lined up at a job expo early this year.
As the jobless rate continues to fall, a lot of people have found themselves wondering how the U.S. economy is producing jobs when it’s actually not growing all that much. Planet Money sums up the puzzle with this pithy question: “What’s The Opposite Of A Jobless Recovery?”
“Back in 1962, Yale University economist Arthur Okun described a long-running relationship between economic growth and jobs. When the economy grew faster than its long-run trend, the unemployment rate tended to fall by about half as much as the additional growth in percentage terms. Continue Reading →
This truth still holds: women earn less than men. Despite decades of improvement, women who work full-time and year-round earn about 77 percent as much as similarly employed men. Where do women fare the worst? Financial news and commentary site 24/7 Wall Street has compiled a ranking of the cities where women are paid the least. The Boise metro area earns a spot on that unfortunate list, coming in eighth.
The analysis, based on U.S. Census data, shows that the median income for women in the Boise area is $32,514. That’s compared to a median of $44,908 for men.
The Huffington Post has built a slideshow from the findings. Take a look here.
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