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Public Forum Summaries

Team 17 Public Forum - January 10, 2008

With the 2008 legislative session underway, your team 17 legislators hosted their first Community Forum last week in the Borah High School Library.  With over 75 District 17 residents in attendance, the Forum made for a lively evening of information sharing between residents and their legislators.

 

The meeting started with each legislator sharing specific issues that will come before the legislature. Senator Werk discussed proposals regarding Pre-Kindergarten education, and increasing standards for childcare providers through a statewide certification process. While the City ofBoise does have its own certification for early childcare providers, statewide standards are lacking basic safety requirements such as: requiring providers have a working phone; and requiring criminal background checks for care-givers.

 

Representative Killen discussed his opposition to majority party legislation that would repeal the business personal property tax at a cost of over $100 million by shifting the burden to the state General Fund. Expressing concern over the wisdom of such a repeal in our current economic climate, Representative Killen may propose an amendment that would limit the tax repeal to the first $50,000 worth of assets. The amendment would still provide relief to 84% of businesses at a cost of $9.4 million and would reimburse the value of the repeal to local governments.

Representative Chew initiated a conversation on healthcare by using the response of attendees to illustrate her point that many aspects of our healthcare system are broken. She then discussed one part of the system she is trying to fix – the sometimes exorbitant cost of prescription drugs. She hopes to change the law to help those without insurance, or those that are under-insured, to have better access, at a lower cost, to prescription medications.

           

With these issues on the table the lawmakers opened the floor to residents concerns, questions and ideas.  Among the many issues discussed: 

  •                        Legislation regarding mental-illness and anti-smoking
  •                        Support and opposition to nuclear power
  •                        The need to address the excessive numbers of foreclosures statewide
  •                        The efficacy of the Millennium Fund to increase education regarding smoking cessation
  •                        The potential for bi-partisan collaboration in the Statehouse
  •                        Environmental concerns around recycling, public transit, and decreasing pollution
  •                        The avenues available to citizens to affect meaningful political change 

Of particular interest to District 17 residents was Superintendent of Public Education Luna’s i-STARS teacher pay plan. Many residents who are part of the public school system expressed concern about proposed increases in teacher pay being linked to elements teachers cannot control and the removal of worker protection. A recurring comment addressed the inability of such standards to account for the many difficulties Idaho teachers face, from low-income schools having greater challenges in achieving high test scores, to the potential for arbitrary evaluations of teacher performance in instances of controversial subject matter. Background about the Idaho education system was provided by Senator Werk and all the District 17 legislators expressed their opposition to the plan.

After discussing issues for two hours residents and the legislators continued personal conversations after the meeting adjourned.

If you were unable to attend this forum please come to one of the upcoming forums. The next forum is Tuesday, February 19th, 7:00 PM in the South Junior High School library. This is an excellent opportunity to have your voice heard and ensure that our legislature is truly a citizen legislature.

 

I hope to see you at the next Team 17 Public Forum.