Batt, Echohawk Share Similar Campaign Platforms Property Tax Plan Key To Elections

Once you cut through the rhetoric over campaign contributions and get past the obvious differences in their physical appearances and styles, there’s little separating Republican Phil Batt and Democrat Larry EchoHawk.

In fact, one privately admitted recently that he was having trouble drawing distinctions between himself and his opponent for the state’s top office.

Both are close to retiring four-term Democratic Gov. Cecil Andrus EchoHawk his protege and Batt a friend who has the governor’s trust.

Like Andrus, they both oppose the antigay initiative. Each makes improving public schools a top priority. They talk tough on crime, promise to keep Idaho water in Idaho and guarantee the state will not become America’s nuclear waste dump.

Both are even thinking about keeping Andrus’ Commerce director, James Hawkins, on the job.

And when it comes to what voters seem to care most about - cash - each is the fiscal conservative despite what Batt keeps saying about EchoHawk.

But talk is cheap, and paying off on the penny-pinching, tax-reducing campaign rhetoric may not be. The trick that lets one step in front of the other is producing a concrete plan for lower property taxes without raising others.

And right now, neither Batt nor EchoHawk appears to be a Houdini.

They promise meaningful property tax relief without any state tax increase and tightfisted spending policies that include everything from hiring freezes and zerobased budgeting to privatization and tying state spending increases to general economic growth.

It’s the stuff voters want to hear during campaigns and then normally aren’t that surprised when nothing happens. But there are times when they remember. Just ask George Bush.

In short, specifics are missing in Idaho’s top race. Batt says economic growth and budget cuts can finance tax relief. EchoHawk seems to have taken much the same approach, although he’s been even less specific.

And no wonder. The going gets tough when you get to specifics.

Neither is talking about a $150 million property tax cut like the Legislature approved last winter but Andrus vetoed.

But with property taxes totalling about $600 million a year statewide, meaningful relief would seem to dictate at least a 10 percent cut, if not more.

There’s little question that economic growth will boost state tax revenues by that much and probably more. But the new governor will face substantial pressure to use that cash elsewhere.

Tough crime talk all but commits the next chief executive to paying for the $30.7 million prison expansion the Correction Board says it needs to cope with a spiralling inmate population. Even Andrus had to spend nearly $10 million this year for a prison addition after swearing he wouldn’t sink another dime into the board’s fiscal black hole.

And then there’s the millions of dollars each year to run the new prison space.

Rising concern over juvenile crime and the candidates’ favorable response to it means spending millions of dollars more on that system.

The adjudication of the 160,000 Snake River Basin water rights is out of money and needs as much as $40 million more to complete.

Counties are suing for what will be more than $10 million in medical bills for the poor they claim the state promised to pay. And even if they lose - as some suspect - lawmakers will be under the gun to cough up the bucks. They’ve tried in the past, only to have Andrus stand in the way.

And based on the most recent forecasts, the new governor’s first budget will require another $16 million for the state’s share of federally mandated health care programs, and the same amount for enrollment increases in public schools and colleges.

And then there’s the money for school improvements.Both he and EchoHawk say they will justify every existing program and employee before putting up any more money for them. But every one of those programs has a constituency that lawmakers respond to.The Legislature has no history of cutting programs. In 1986, when then Gov. John Evans tried to pare some spending to erase red ink, members of his own party even voted against him.For two politicians as experienced as Batt and EchoHawk, they’ve put themselves in the position of promising something people care about that could be hard to deliver.The question is whether voters slough it off or decide to remember.