Compton takes the good bills with the bad

Here’s a hint as to why Senate Health and Welfare Chairman Dick Compton, R-Coeur d’Alene, was so hot to get a compromise bill passed to substitute for HB 143, the bill that would’ve removed the authority from the state DEQ to review many water and wastewater system plans – even though Compton made it clear he hated HB 143, calling it a “crappy, crappy bill.”

The sponsor of HB 143, House Majority Leader Lawerence Denney, R-Midvale, was holding Compton’s simulcasting bill hostage in the House.

Compton’s bill, SB 1074, is designed to allow the off-track betting on simulcasts of horse and dog races that now occurs at the Coeur d’Alene Greyhound Park to move to another location within Kootenai County if the park’s owners sell their facility or convert it to another use. It passed the Senate on a 24-11 vote on Feb. 24.

But instead of popping up for a House committee hearing, SB 1074 went to House Ways and Means – the leadership-controlled committee that is used to bury bills or hold them hostage when that’s politically expedient.

After Compton’s committee voted, at his urging, to introduce a new compromise bill to replace HB 143, the Ways and Means Committee met and agreed to refer the simulcasting bill to the House State Affairs Committee, where it is scheduled for a hearing on Monday.

Rep. Jim Clark, R-Hayden Lake, is the House Ways and Means chairman, and he said he favors SB 1074, and in fact plans to sponsor it. But he went along with the leadership’s order to hold the bill all this time because that’s his role as Ways and Means chairman. “I do what I’m told to do,” Clark said.

Once every 11 years

Because state employees are paid every two weeks, a quirk of the calendar means that once every 11 years, there’s an additional paycheck within the state’s fiscal year. That’s because there’s slightly more than 52 weeks in a year, and over the years, those extra days cycle around until there’s an extra pay period.

Next year is the year, and lawmakers have to come up with the money – which isn’t a raise for state workers, who still just get their paychecks every two weeks.

The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee has decided to get the necessary $29 million largely from an “economic recovery reserve fund” that the state set up to hold money from the second year of a cigarette tax increase. They’ll take about $16.5 million from that fund, which will use up all but about $3 million of the fund. The rest will go into the state’s general fund, and may help fund a water settlement. Federal and dedicated funds within agency budgets that go for payroll expenses will make up the rest of the 27th payroll expense.

JFAC members groused a little about the process, and wondered if they couldn’t come up with some better approach before it happens again in another 11 years. Sen. John McGee, R-Caldwell, the Legislature’s youngest member, turned to Rep. Frances Field, R-Grand View, one of the oldest. “Frances and I will volunteer to work on it,” McGee said to laughter.

Rep. George Eskridge, R-Dover, retorted, “I know Frances will be here.”

McGee is in his first term; Field is in her 11th.

No new causes

Rep. JoAn Wood, R-Rigby, got worked up enough as she ran down the list of causes that want new specialty license plates in Idaho that she told the House there are even proposals to benefit “spraying and neutering of pets.” That’s right, she said spraying.

Wood, the House Transportation chairwoman, sponsored HB 101a to ban any new special license plates in Idaho beyond those approved this year. Three new ones are pending right now, in addition to the 54 on the books.

“Enough is enough,” Wood declared.

Opponents disagreed, saying specialty plates raise money for good causes and people like them. “I don’t know why we’re so dead set on taking something away from people that they happen to enjoy,” said Rep. Kathy Skippen, R-Emmett.

Rep. Shirley Ringo, D-Moscow, said 86,000 Idahoans had some kind of specialty plate in 2004. She herself has three – two bluebird plates and one Lewis & Clark. She told the House, “If everybody wanted to get one, we could sell 15 times that many, so think of the potential there. I think this is a program that people enjoy.”

But the House voted 36-32 to pass Wood’s bill, which now moves to the Senate.