This Timing's Lousy
Marty Trillhaase
October 23, 2009
Lewiston Morning Tribune
JEERS ... to Gov. C. L. (Butch) Otter and the legislative budget-writers. Of all the things to cut in the middle of a recession, why would they go after a small pot of money that provides modest "Promise Scholarships" to Idaho college students?
Idaho tuition may seem like a bargain compared to other states, but the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education gives the state an F in terms of affordable higher education. For a moderate-income family, sending a child to one of Idaho's public institutions of higher learning will consume a third of the household income. Yet the state does little to help. For every dollar the federal government provides to Idaho students in the form of Pell grants, Idaho adds only a nickel.
Promise Scholarships were a down payment on remedying that inequity. Any Idaho student who graduates from high school with a B average and attends an Idaho college can secure this scholarship for the first two years. About 9,000 students qualified.
Sometimes the state provides students with $600 per year. Lately it's been $500. Now it's dropping to $400.
Talk about lousy timing.
College enrollments are surging because people require new job skills in a mean economy.
Tuition and fees are rising 5 percent to cover cuts in state support for higher ed.
And how much did Idaho save by cutting Promise Scholarships? Less than $700,000.
How much more short-sighted can you be?
CHEERS ... to Idaho correction Chief Brent Reinke and North Idaho Correctional Institution Warden Lynn Guyer. After five escapes earlier this year at the Cottonwood facility, there was some talk of beefing up security. One idea involved building a second security fence around the facility.
Doing so would have been an overreaction. Since it opened 35 years ago, NICI has had no more than 80 escapes. Five in one year is high but not unprecedented.
Cottonwood houses minimum-security inmates. Many serve 180-day rider sentences. If they meet the terms of their confinement, they can earn a chance for probation. Hope of eventual release is the best security.
Add another fence or transform Cottonwood into a medium-security prison and you'll wind up with higher-risk inmates serving longer sentences.
So Reinke and Guyer opted for installing razor-sharp accordion wire at the base and top of the prison's 10-foot-high chain-link fence. They've realigned staffing to provide closer supervision of inmates. The automated telephone system that contacted residents repeatedly during the escapes and even provided inaccurate information has been shut down, replaced by a live-person telephone tree.
JEERS ... to tax activist Tim Eyman. His Initiative 1033 bills itself as tax relief for the masses. Turns out it's the kind of tax break Bill Gates and Paul Allen should love, but don't.
I-1033 would cap state and local government spending increases to the equivalent of inflation plus population growth. Over five years, it will strip $5.9 billion from state programs and another $2.8 billion from cities and counties. That money would be returned to property taxpayers.
Here's the hitch: Those who benefit most from the tax shift need it the least.
Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat worked with the numbers. They show Gates getting up to $571,000 in property tax breaks on his Medina mansion. Allen would pay $150,000 less on his Mercer Island home.
Westneat says there's "a growing sense among tax experts that Eyman's measure, if approved in November and then left as is by courts and lawmakers, would, over time, drive the state's property tax and many county and city property taxes all the way down to zero."
Net result: Programs will depend more on sales and other taxes, which take a bigger bite out of lower and moderate-income household budgets.
"At heart, this is a massive giveaway to the rich that does little to nothing for the poor," Westneat says.
Give Gates and Allen credit for opposing I-1033. They are looking past their own self-interests and thinking of the larger community.
CHEERS ... to the 20 volunteers who will spend the better part of next winter helping people fill out their income tax returns.
Beginning Feb. 1, the AARP Tax Aide program will prepare income tax returns, free of charge. The one exception is taxpayers with complicated business tax returns.
AARP Tax Aide will operate in Lewiston, Clarkston, Moscow, Orofino and Pomeroy.
For the staff, this work represents a significant commitment. They sign up for a 40-hour week of training. Then, each volunteer averages about 12 hours a week working with clients through April 15.
Last year, about 1,000 people got help. That could add up to $100,000 worth of donated services.
CHEERS ... to University of Idaho President Duane Nellis and Lewis-Clark State College President Dene K. Thomas.
The ill-fated plan to give university presidents unilateral power to modify employment contracts is now an orphan. Last week, the proposal was yanked from the State Board of Education's agenda before it could be considered.
But give Nellis and Thomas points for opposing this concept early on. Staff cuts, pay cuts and furloughs may become a fact of college life as Idaho cuts ever deeper into higher education budgets. But authority for declaring a financial exigency belongs to the state board, a constitutional entity, not some appointed campus bureaucrat. - M.T.
Originally posted at http://www.lmtribune.com/story/opinion/47224/
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