Is Denney rewriting Roberts' biography?
Marty Trillhaase
October 15, 2009
Lewiston Morning Tribune
In promoting his colleague Ken Roberts for Congress, Idaho House Speaker Lawerence Denney credits him with accomplishing the impossible.
Roberts, R-Donnelly, faces Vaughn Ward in next year's GOP primary for the chance to challenge freshman Congressman Walt Minnick, D-Idaho.
"As a state legislator, Ken has always been a workhorse," says Denney, R-Midvale, who is serving as Roberts' campaign chairman. "Whether cutting property taxes or funding our schools, Ken is always working tirelessly to make Idaho better for our families and children."
Note Denney didn't credit Roberts with cutting property taxes or paying for schools - but doing both. What's next?
Outrunning a speeding locomotive?
Leaping a tall building in a single bound?
Three years ago, Roberts and Republican lawmakers had a choice: They could cut property taxes - mostly for the well-off - or they could adequately pay for schools.
Under the leadership of then-Gov. Jim Risch, they cut property taxes.
Their plan stripped schools of about $260 million in property tax support. Lawmakers raised the sales tax 20 percent from 5 to 6 cents on the dollar. But that only replaced $210 million of the money.
Most moderate-income families paid more in new sales taxes than they received in property tax breaks. Meanwhile, their local schools suffered in several ways. Property taxes were a more stable source of dollars for public education. Without them, schools relied on income and sales taxes, which slipped with diminished employment and consumer spending. Consequently, Idaho this year cut its spending on public education for the first time in history.
Had Roberts and the 2006 Legislature left well enough alone, the property tax system would have generated about $166 million more for schools this year, according to a state tax commission estimate.
By supporting the tax shift, Roberts and his Republican colleagues also undermined efforts to improve school budgets in one other way. The Idaho Education Association was promoting a ballot initiative to boost the sales tax to 6 cents. With the extra money that tax produced, the initiative proposed reducing the number of students assigned to each teacher, providing high school students with college prep or vocational-technical programs, restoring programs cut in earlier budget shortfalls, updating technology and raising teacher salaries.
Because Idaho had recently reduced its sales tax rate from 6 cents to 5 cents, there was some reason to hope voters might go along.
Once lawmakers co-opted the issue by raising the sales tax to pay for property tax relief, however, the IEA initiative was doomed. Nobody wanted a seventh cent on the sales tax and the initiative backers were hard-pressed to say how they'd raise the money somewhere else.
Roberts is free to argue his decision was correct. But he did make a choice. To suggest otherwise, as Denney now attempts, is to rewrite the record.
Originally posted at http://www.lmtribune.com/story/opinion/46739/
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