Huckleberries Online

JFAC Sets Budget $100M Below Guv’s

Feb. 13, 2009 9:23 a.m. • 11 comments

It would also mean $62 million in budget cuts for public schools next year, no increase in the grocery tax credit, no conformance with IRS tax law changes (a $2 million cost, and a bill that’s already moving quickly through the Legislature), no enhancements in any agency budgets, and more - all decisions that haven’t yet been made, and that, if they go otherwise, will require other cuts or other budget changes. The approach also anticipates spending $95 million from the state’s various reserve funds, another call that hasn’t yet been made/Betsy Russell, Eye On Boise. More here.

11 comments on this post so far. Add yours!

moscow_minidoka on February 13 at 10:02 a.m.
Just kill me now. Explain again why I left the private sector in Seattle to return to my home state and work in education? Oh yeah… “to make a difference, instead of money.” Wow, another fabulous life choice, MM.

I should have stayed on the farm. I should have listened to my old man.

People say “well, it’s tough everywhere.” Maybe, but when you’re already in wage-depressed Idaho, and then they start cutting… man, this sucks. The friends I left behind in Seattle are all - with one exception (a Seattle Times layoff casualty) - still in the pink.

I’m going to have to take an HBO vacation, because it’s making me hate my state government (including people I supported and/or voted for), and it’s making me feel like my fate is in the hands of people who hate everything I stand for. That’s not a good feeling. And it just makes me more depressed in the most depressing month of the year.

How on earth is someone who is ideologically opposed to public education actually on the education committee? I ask you: Is the Liquor Control Board made up entirely of Mormons or MADD women?

Speaking of which, I’ve got an hour until the liquor store opens… I think I can make this six-pack last until then…

Welcome to Idaho - knee-jerk anti-intellectual, knee-jerk anti-public anything. Unless it’s a road for our jacked-up F150.

Happy VD everyone. Don’t forget: You can’t be a STuD without an STD.
jazzyvandal on February 13 at 11:03 a.m.
KHQ says universities will be the hardest hit. Haven’t they hit the universities hard enough already? *sigh*
moscow_minidoka on February 13 at 11:14 a.m.
Jazzy: Our state gov’t thinks the universities should be community colleges or votec colleges. They will not be satisfied until every university in the state is nothing more than a welding class.

To hell with all of them. They are using a “crisis mentality” to wreak havoc on people they hate, and you can smell their erotically-charged saliva from here. They have already shot the deer in the leg, slowing it down, and will now devour it with their teeth bared in an orgy of violence like the hellhounds they obviously are.

To hell with each and every one of them. They make me sick. The Republican Party of Idaho used to be worthy of respect. My grandfather was a Republican county commissioner for twenty years, and he would be rolling in his grave to know that today’s Idaho Republicans have so much contempt for public and higher education in this state.

BOOOOOM! [sound of MM’s head exploding in a fit of violent anger]
BlueinIdaho on February 13 at 11:41 a.m.
Maybe someone should ask Nonini whether he has any conflicts of interest with any bills he is currently bringing. Just a thought…
Sisyphus on February 13 at 12:32 p.m.
The Republicans are waging a war at all levels of government based on ideology forgoing common sense or the advice of professionals on wha’ts best for the future. Don’t give up MM. Help us out. Your bright, educated and a native Idahoan. You came back here to make Idaho better.
moscow_minidoka on February 13 at 1:43 p.m.
Sisyphus - Thank you… but I am feeling incredibly demoralized. My hard-ribbed Republican family was always pro-education as a way to better yourself and gain a broader understanding of the world. They were also that uniquely Idaho libertarian brand of Republican that pretty much said “live and let live.” That is why I am so baffled at the influence and power that people like Bryan Fischer and Nonini and Zeb Bell seem to have accumulated. I lived in Boise for a year and a half during the Ten Commandments fiasco, and Fischer and “Brandi” were generally thought to be attention-whores ala Al Sharpton by most people I knew… I can’t believe they still get traction, and (in the case of HBO) regular promotion.

Since when did acting like an anti-intellectual backwoods evangelist become an “Idahoan and Proud” stance? I grew up farming, fishing, and doing all the regular “Idaho” stuff, but my pappy never told me “Ah don’t cotton to that book-larnin’.” We were hard-working Idahoans who voted Republican, but also appreciated literature and culture and the freedom to shoot our own empty beer cans.

I just don’t understand when being an Idaho Republican evolved into being an anti-education theocrat. It must have happened while I was out of state, or else these people moved here after the dirty sinners ran them out of California.

Ah, I promised I’d stay away, because this blog is making me too demoralize and depressed. Keep up the good fight, Sisyphus…

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D.F. Oliveria is a columnist and blogger for The Spokesman-Review. Huckleberries Online was judged the best 2008 Idaho newspaper blog by the Idaho Press Club. And the best 2007 news blog in the Pacific Northwest by the Society for Professional Journalist. Print Huckleberries is a past winner of the Herb Caen Memorial Column contest by the National Association of Newspaper Columnists. The Readership Institute of Northwestern University cited this blog as a good example of online community journalism.