Rights panel fights back

BOISE – Facing a proposal from Gov. Butch Otter to phase out all its state funding over the next four years, the Idaho Human Rights Commission announced Friday it’s in talks with the state Department of Labor to join forces.

“We recognize the state is up against some very difficult budget challenges,” Pam Parks, the commission’s director, told legislative budget writers Friday.

State labor officials said they’ve identified two possible funding sources in their department that could make up the commission’s lost state funding. “We’ve looked through all our spending priorities and tried to rearrange things,” said John McAllister, chief deputy director at Labor, which receives no state general tax funds. “We think we can handle it for the next four years.”

Dozens of human rights leaders from around the state, including two former governors and all the former directors of the commission, sent an open letter to lawmakers this week opposing the elimination of the state funding for the commission.

“We need not remind Idaho state government that it was not that many years ago that Idaho’s image and reputation was unfairly sullied by the presence in our midst of messengers of hate and ministers of discord,” the letter said.

Tony Stewart, a founding member of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations and one of those who signed the letter, said the announcement about Labor “appears to be good news.”

“It’s very important the commission continue to have the same kind of independence it’s had,” he said, adding the new arrangement at Labor must allow for that. Parks said when lawmakers 41 years ago passed the Idaho Human Rights Act, which the commission enforces, “Idaho made a clear and strong declaration that we will not tolerate discrimination.” She noted that the state’s reputation has suffered from the activities of racists.

“Recently we are seeing a resurgence of ugly acts in our beautiful state,” she said. “This is not a time that we can back off our resolve.”

Stewart said that since May 2009, the Inland Northwest has seen eight documented hate crimes, and such incidents are on the rise nationwide. “We need to have the commission be as active as ever,” he said.

The commission mediates discrimination claims in the state, often finding solutions before the cases end up in court; in other cases, the commission files court cases to enforce the law.

Parks said other states, including Texas and New Mexico, have their human rights commissions in their departments of labor. The Department of Labor enforces Idaho’s workplace laws, while the Human Rights Commission investigates civil rights violations, like discrimination on the job.

“There are a lot of different overlaps,” she said. “We think that our missions are very similar.”