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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

They Did What They Said They Would Do Lawmakers Go Home After Fulfilling Promises In Fourth-Quickest Session

Associated Press

The candidates made promises last fall. The voters bought them on Nov. 8. And the 53rd Idaho Legislature delivered.

Lawmakers headed home this weekend after actually making good on what the public has increasingly shrugged off as nothing more than empty political rhetoric.

It was a legacy few of Idaho’s past Legislature’s can claim, and it earned the nation’s most Republican Legislature high marks - even from its partisan adversaries.

“They’ve done exactly what they said they would,” Senate Democratic Leader Bruce Sweeney of Lewiston said. “In November, the people of Idaho said they wanted a change. It was important for the Republicans to get their whole program so they can be judged on how they govern.”

GOP leaders and the new Republican governor they supported are confident of that judgment, and Sweeney will not dispute the majority’s assessment.

“If the people don’t like what they wanted, then I don’t know what we do about it,” Republican House Speaker Michael Simpson of Blackfoot said.

Lower property taxes, a leaner and more responsive government and a crackdown on juvenile thugs were at the heart of Gov. Phil Batt’s 1994 campaign, echoed by Simpson and other fellow Republicans. And they were the core of the 1995 session’s accomplishments.

Even the length of the session was testimony to the GOP effort to convince the public that the new regime means efficiency in government. Lawmakers met for only 68 days. Since annual sessions began in 1969, only three have been shorter. The last was 66 days in 1985.

The reason was the cornerstone of the Republican agenda.

Senate approval of Batt’s $40 million statefinanced property tax reduction on Feb. 9 - one month after convening - dictated adoption of the governor’s tightfisted general tax budget almost intact. It took just five more weeks to wrap up those loose ends.

The work of a special legislative committee last summer and fall coupled with heightened campaign rhetoric on juvenile crime made consensus a foregone conclusion on creation of the Department of Juvenile Corrections and passage of a get-tough package of laws aimed at the most violent juvenile offenders.

Lawmakers also expanded Batt’s direct control over state bureaucracy to facilitate the kinds of changes he campaigned for, and the governor quickly tried to calm fears he would use the additional power for political purposes. He promised an executive order to that effect before month’s end.

“I don’t want it interpreted that we want to remove all these people politically,” Batt said. “I have absolutely no desire to put political leanings on those people.”

The session did fail to produce what Batt hoped would be zerogrowth in the state payroll, a signal of potential problems he might face in attempting to further check government expansion in future sessions.

There will be 128 more state workers this July than a year earlier. But if the number can be held there - something even a few conservative Republicans doubt - it would be the smallest annual increase in the state work force in well over a decade.

“Now the people have to decide if they really want what they asked for,” GOP Senate President Pro Tem Jerry Twiggs of Blackfoot said.

He is confident they do, and Batt is ready to press ahead.

“I want to continue with my vision of efficiency,” the governor said.

But others, including Sweeney, remain skeptical.

While Batt’s property tax reduction is the state’s largest ever, it amounts to little more than $60 a year for an average homeowner. And much if not all of that could be eaten up by assessment increases even with an annual 3-percent cap on tax rate increases.

Stripping $40 million from the cash available for government programs also prompted staff cutbacks in some areas, especially social programs, and negated the kinds of substantial hikes in support for public schools and higher education that were provided in the current budget.

That is forcing significant increases in student fees at the universities and the likelihood of widespread efforts by school districts to win voter approval of hikes in the same property taxes Batt and lawmakers worked so hard to reduce.

Considering general antipathy toward property taxes, most believe those proposed increases will fail at the polls and districts will be forced to cut programs.

Simpson concedes those policy flaws, “but overall I still think it’s a pretty good state budget.”

Sweeney, however, suspects the public’s demand for less government will be blunted by harsh reality. Legislative budget writers illustrated his point when they found themselves without the political backbone to cut back money for or completely eliminate some programs.

“People want you to cut government, but they don’t want you to cut what they’re involved in,” said Sweeney, who with only eight Democratic votes had no effect on the outcome of the session.

“All we could do was be the loyal opposition, point out what we thought was wrong,” Sweeney said. “If the people like it, so be it. Then that’s where the state should be going. I just don’t know whether they’ll like it.”