Candidates shoot for Senate
A retired newspaper journalist is challenging a senior member of the North Idaho legislative delegation for her District 1 Senate seat, which includes Bonner and Boundary counties, in the Nov. 7 election.
Democrat Jim Ramsey says he’s tired of special-interest groups controlling state politics and wants to return the power to the working people.
“I think that our current Legislature does not represent the middle-class working people of this state how it should,” Ramsey said. “I would not be beholden to those special types of interest.”
But his opponent, five-term Republican Sen. Shawn Keough, of Sandpoint, said her experience in the Legislature shows she can get things done. She’ll be the seventh-most senior member of the Legislature if re-elected, and she said that seniority is a valuable tool in the fight to get North Idaho’s issues recognized.
“I have the experience – the proven effectiveness – at getting things, if not done, moved forward in a very substantial manner,” she said. “I’m best positioned to help our area find solutions to the problem.”
Keough is one of two vice chairs of the legislative budget-writing committee, the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee. She turned down a chance to chair the Senate Transportation Committee so she could keep her seat on the budget committee, which doesn’t allow other committee chairs to serve because of time demands.
Ramsey said the key to ridding the Legislature of special interest group politics is to elect more Democrats who can force a dialogue on issues that might otherwise get pushed through with no discussion.
“I think when any one party is in dominant control like the Republicans have been, it makes it too easy for special-interest groups to influence them,” said Ramsey, who spent time covering the Idaho Legislature when he worked at the Idaho Statesman and the Colorado Legislature when he worked for United Press International.
Ramsey refuses to accept campaign contributions from big businesses and corporations. Republican legislators will deny that their campaign contributions influence them but that can’t be true, he said.
Lobbyists outnumber legislators in Idaho as they do in most legislatures. Some lobbyists even write their own bills, then find a lawmaker to sponsor them – something Ramsey said is wrong.
“To me it seems rather ludicrous that lobbyists would actually be writing the legislation,” he said.
Keough said her first priority if re-elected will be to work to secure more property tax relief for residents. “We’ve made some giant strides, I believe, but we still need to address the market value structure,” she said.
Keough co-sponsored a bill last year that would have limited property tax increases to 5 percent a year.
That bill didn’t go anywhere last session, but with the retirement of the chairs of the Senate and House tax committees, next year could be different, she said.
Ramsey said property tax relief is also one of his major concerns.
He supported the move to remove school funding from the property tax but doesn’t like the increased sales tax that came with it.
Renters get nothing out of the deal except less money in their pocket when they make purchases, he said.
Ramsey said he’d like to see something similar to California’s Proposition 13, which froze property taxes at 1 percent of the assessed value.
One of his other big issues is to raise the minimum wage, now $5.15 an hour, the same as the federal minimum wage.
“It’s not a wage people can live on,” Ramsey said
Washington’s minimum wage is $7.63 an hour and is adjusted annually for inflation, making it even more imperative that Idaho do something soon to keep up with the competition, Ramsey said.
Keough said transportation and school funding issues are among the issues at the forefront of her agenda. She wants to update the formula the state uses to dole out money to school districts, which she said needs to account for things like technological advancements. The state has been involved in a 16-year lawsuit regarding how to properly fund schools, and Keough said she’s tired of the bickering.
“It’s past time to come up with some solutions,” she said.
She said it’s important to keep someone with clout in the Legislature to ensure that the long-overdue transportation projects needed in North Idaho continue to be addressed.
“Because of my advocacy and the advocacy of the northern legislators, we’ve been very successful at getting money for our roads project,” she said. “We have to continue to defend and make certain that our road projects are completed, because they’re past due. And that takes seniority and proven leadership.”
Other issues Keough would like to address include increasing punishments for sex offenders and making animal cruelty a felony.
And Ramsey said he’d work to improve education funding and make quality health care more affordable. He wants to help veterans by protecting their health care and benefits. He also supports Proposition 1, which asks voters on the Nov. 7 ballot to increase the sales tax by a cent on the dollar and dedicates the money to public schools.