Report on 2007 Legislative Session

by Keith Allred

We were in the hunt to prevail with The Common Interest position on primary elections until the very last days of the legislative session. While we did not prevail this session, many influential leaders think we ultimately will on this issue. We also received extensive press coverage of our work and substantially added to our reputation and influence. Below is my wrap up on the session.

Election Reform Summary

Of the many election reform proposals before the Legislature this year, the discussion of how open or closed Idaho's primary elections should be became one of the major issues of the session. The views of the 147 randomly assigned members of The Common Interest who weighed in on this issue literally drove the debate. Despite that, The Common Interest position did not prevail. However, neither did the proposals we opposed. There will almost certainly be more action on this topic in the future and, as I said, several influential leaders think our position will ultimately be adopted.

With the exception of Robocalls, we didn't have much success on the other election reform measures we examined either, though there are also some substantial possibilities for future progress on some of these. While we have, as yet, no legislative victories to show for our election reform work, I believe that we made gains in our reputation and influence this year that are at least as substantial as the impressive gains we made last year. As you’ll see from my discussion below of the news media coverage of our election reform work, we have arrived as a major and trusted player in the Idaho Legislature. I’m more confident and excited than ever that we have many substantial victories in our future. We have truly come a remarkable way in the 2 ½ years we’ve been around.

Open vs. Closed Primaries Poll Results and Legislative Action

Our members overwhelmingly opposed (93% to 7%) closing primary elections to everyone but registered members of given party which would shut independents out of primaries altogether. This proposal died quickly. We also overwhelming opposed (91% to 9%) giving parties the discretion to allow or prohibit independents to participate in their primary, which helped defeat that proposal. We supported (79% to 21%) modified closed primaries in which registered members of parties could vote only in their party's primary, but independents would be able to vote in the primary of their choice.

This support put us at the center of the deliberations over primaries. Drawing on input from legislative leaders, individual legislators, the Governor, the Secretary of State, Idaho county clerks, and the state chairs of the Republican and Democratic parties, we drafted five versions of different modified closed primary bills. The final version, which would have kept independents' choice of party primary private and would have delayed implementation to the 2010 primary, may well have had the support of a majority of Senators and Representatives. However, we found a way of protecting independents’ privacy too late in the session to get it passed.

The forum for this discussion will now shift to the Idaho Central Committee of the Republican Party which will consider whether to close their primary outright. Conventional wisdom is that they will, recognizing that, in the likely view of the U.S. Supreme Court, party rules on this count would trump state law.A number of Republican leaders may try to persuade the Republican Central Committee to hold off on this decision in order to give the Legislature another chance to pass next session the bill that we drafted. If that fails court action on this matter is likely. In any scenario, there are routes by which our position has a good chance to prevail. Stay tuned. I believe we will continue to play a pivotal role on this important issue and I may need to get your input on a few options down the road.

Coverage of Our Primaries Work in the News Media

The extent to which the views of our 147 members on this topic drove the debate was truly remarkable. There were two meetings in the Governor's office to discuss our proposal and explore ways to advance it. Besides the Governor, the participants included Lt. Gov. Jim Risch, Secretary of State Ben Ysursa, the Republican Senate and House leadership, and Republican state party chairman Kirk Sullivan. I personally had more than a dozen hours worth of meetings with these leaders and dozens more hours working with other leaders in working on this proposal. We also garnered more media coverage on this than any other issue, including property taxes, that we've pursued in our short history. Most daily newspapers in the state ran opinion pieces in addition to several articles on our work. We also received extensive, positive coverage on Idaho Public Television's Idaho Reports. It's particularly worth watching.

Below are links to some of the most interesting coverage:

• Idaho Statesman front page article lists us #2 on their list of movers and shakers in this year’s session.
• Idaho Public Television's Idaho Reports: You can view the program by clicking on the link below. Go to "Week 11: 'Vetoes and the roads to adjournment'" and select the bandwidth option best for you. To go straight to their discussion of our primary election work scroll over to the 15 minute, 45 second mark: idahoptv.org/idreports/irthisweek.cfm
• Spokesman-Review article on our primaries work (subscription only)

Other Election Reform Issues

• Vote by Mail: Although we supported (86% to 14%) this proposal by all 44 county clerks it died an ignoble death in the House. In spite of additional support from Secretary of State Ben Ysursa and from former Republican Gov. Phil Batt and former Democratic Gov. Cecil Andrus and in spite of an 11 to 7 vote in support of it in the House State Affairs, the chairman of the House State Affairs committee successfully moved on the floor of the House to send this bill back to committee to consider some issues he claimed had not been adequately addressed in the first committee hearing. Although he promised another hearing to address these issues and many weeks in the legislative session remained, he never held the promised hearing, thereby killing the bill. This proposal may come back at some point, though it looks unlikely to pass the Legislature any time soon, in part because there is also substantial opposition to it in the Senate.
• Instant Runoff Voting: We supported this, particularly adopting it in time for the 2010 election (80% to 20%). While there was substantial interest in this from many, the idea would be a major change. As the only ones advocating it, we did not get sufficient traction early enough to get it through this year. We will continue to pursue it in the hopes of passing it next year.
• Robo Calls: We supported (93% to 7%) this measure which requires that the person or entity for whom the call is being made is identified at the beginning of the call. It passed the House and the Senate overwhelmingly and was signed into law. Though our support was helpful, it almost certainly would have passed without our help.
• Public Campaign Financing: We supported (80% to 20%) this measure to provide qualifying candidates the option of using public financing for their campaign if they agree to accept limitations on campaign spending. The Senate committee defeated this bill before we had our results. There is some prospect that with some changes to the bill and with our help this might get more support next session.

Interested in more details on these important issues? Read our full election reform brief along with full poll results.

TCI’s Other Issues This Session: K-12 Education and Healthcare

Our #2 and #3 issues this year were K-12 education and accessibility/affordability of healthcare. The short explanation is that no proposals on these two issues came before the Legislature in any way that seemed advisable for us to weigh in on. Since we also choose to take a longer-term, proactive approach to these two issues, we said that we would watch developments on them during the session. If discrete proposals worthy of our consideration came forward in this session, we would brief them. If not, we would simply take the longer-term look at these issues.

On K-12 education, the Legislature approved appropriations of $1.4 billion in state general funds for K-12 education. This 5.9% increase over last year is the largest percentage increase in a number of years and certainly bigger than either of the last two sessions in which we investigated this issue. The total K-12 education budget, including federal and dedicated funds, represents an increase of even greater than 5.9%. Some of the most dramatic increases in the K-12 budget were to fund the “Classroom Enhancement Package” proposed by new Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna. This package included $350 per classroom for classroom supplies so that teachers wouldn’t have to pay those costs out of pocket and increased funds for textbooks and for Idaho Standards Achievement Test remediation. Although some expected that Supt. Luna would propose some dramatic new education policies, he did not. While there were other education policy proposals this year, they were fairly minor in scale.

No significant policy proposals affecting the affordability and accessibility of healthcare were made this year.

The Session Overall

As many have observed, it’s been a strange session in which much less than typical has been accomplished. While we’re coming away empty-handed for the time being, we have a lot of company. Although the Gov and almost every Legislator came to this session committed to reducing or eliminating the sales tax on groceries, and although an immense amount of attention was given to the issue, the session ended with no grocery tax relief at all. The Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry (IACI) made a serious effort to phase out the property tax on personal business property (e.g. office equipment). When we defeated IACI last year by successfully indexing the homeowner’s property tax exemption to the Idaho House Price Index, several of the most astute and knowledgeable political observers in the state told me it was IACI’s first defeat in more than 10 years. However, IACI recorded another loss this year by loosing on their personal property tax proposal.

There are probably three main reasons so little got done this year. First, there were an extraordinary number of new leaders in important roles, including the Governor and Supt of Public Instruction, the Speaker of the House and House Republican leadership team, and many committee chairman and agency heads. Many people were still finding their feet. Second, there is a widening split between the new, conservative House Republican leadership on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the more moderate Senate Republican leadership, moderate House Republicans, and House Democrats on the other hand. This is a split that may not go away anytime soon. Third, the remodeling and expansion of the statehouse that is now beginning has meant that the session had to end earlier than the last several sessions. The conflict between the Governor and the Legislature over the scope of the expansion also took up much of the attention of the Legislature early in the session.

The Future

I continue to marvel at how far we’ve come how quickly. We are well poised to play pivotal roles on the major policy questions in Idaho in the coming years. In the coming months, we’ll complete our brief on overcrowded prisons. The Legislature will also convene an interim committee to investigate the many tax exemptions in Idaho tax code. Recognizing that we chose this as another of the issues that we want to take a long-term, proactive view on, that committee has already placed us on the agenda for their first meeting and asked that we participate with them actively. Future legislative sessions will provide more favorable opportunities for us to exercise our considerable influence in the service of putting practical solutions ahead of special interest and partisan politics. I relish the privilege of joining with you in this worthwhile effort.