Education And Growth Big Worries

A new public opinion poll finds that Idaho residents are worried that rapid growth is changing the place they love and that education remains their top concern.

The poll by Louis Harris and Associates was commissioned by The Idaho Statesman. It involved 751 respondents who were questioned Feb 21-23. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percent.

Among those questioned, 94 percent agreed recreation and leisure in Idaho are exceptional, and 93 percent found the state a great place to raise a family.

Eighty-five percent said they would choose to remain in Idaho.

On education, which Idaho’s political leaders have seen as the numberone hot-button issue with voters for over a decade, the poll found 88 percent satisfied with their children’s teachers but 69 percent willing to pay more in sales taxes to improve the state’s schools.

And only 29 percent said they like what they have seen so far from besieged Republican State Schools Superintendent Anne Fox. Fox got negative marks from 58 percent.

On one of the issues Fox raised in a favorable context during the campaign, 61 percent opposed tax credits or vouchers to parents sending children to private schools.

On other issues, the poll found:

- 88 percent oppose additional shipments of nuclear waste into the state.

- 78 percent have serious concerns about growth.

- 44 percent found freshman Republican Congressman Helen Chenoweth, doing poorly, and another 19 percent said they were not sure about Chenoweth.

- 47 percent approved of the performance so far by Republican Gov. Phil Batt while 45 percent said the new governor has done poorly to date.

- 55 percent were disappointed with Micron Technology Inc.’s decision to put a $1.3 billion expansion outside Idaho while 43 percent were not.

Pollster David Krane says Idaho is unique in its conflicted viewpoints. An eroding economy has sent most states scurrying to attract growth regardless of general satisfaction with home. But not Idaho.

Krane expected to find public outrage over the loss of the Micron expansion, but he found ambivalence, one of the first clues into a statewide psyche stressed by growth.

“I was expecting higher disappointment numbers,” the executive vice president with Louis Harris and Associates said.