Batt Plans To Fill In Blanks Of His Budget Will Use His Annual Address To State Legislators To Add Details On Gas-Tax Hike, Welfare Reform

Gov. Phil Batt will give details of his legislative plans today during his annual budget message to state lawmakers.

The talk is expected to add substance and numbers to the themes Batt outlined Monday in his State of the State speech. Those include:

Batt is calling for a 4-cent per gallon gas tax hike and a boost in car registration fees to pay for road repairs, saying the gas tax hasn’t kept pace with inflation.

He’s offering to support a tax break for farmers in exchange for a long-sought requirement that they provide worker’s compensation coverage for farm workers.

On Monday, he warned that proposals calling for the state to contribute toward school construction would “require raising taxes or diverting funds from an already frugal budget.” He also opposed lowering the two-thirds vote requirement for school construction bonds.

Batt wants lawmakers to adopt a 44-point welfare reform plan developed by a task force he appointed that called for sweeping changes. The plan includes a 24-month limit on cash benefits and requiring all welfare recipients to work or learn basic job skills.

He praised state Board of Education moves to abandon “role and mission statements” that long have guided each state college. Other traditional ideas in education, from tenure to accreditation to historic school district boundaries, also should be re-examined, he said.

Batt called for preserving Idaho’s traditional resource-based industries. “We must rededicate ourselves to providing sufficient timber supplies for our sawmills,” he said. And he pointed to the Silver Valley as a successful example of mine cleanup. “One note of caution: If we put too much of a load on the mining industries, and this is a very real possibility, we will bankrupt them. That is in no one’s best interest.”

He defended the agreement he reached with the federal government on nuclear waste shipments to the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory in eastern Idaho.

Batt also denounced extremism, saying, “A few bizarre acts by a handful of strange people in Idaho have brought undeserved national attention to us. Idaho is not a haven for bigotry, hatred and violence. The exact opposite is true.”

The state budget is expected to be tight this year, with little room for major new efforts to fix longstanding problems unless taxes are raised.

, DataTimes