Car-buying plan gets some mileage
Staff writer Parker Howell reported on this budget dust-up Thursday in the House: Rep. Bob Nonini, R-Coeur d’Alene, criticized bills appropriating hundreds of thousands of dollars to replace vehicles for state Health and Welfare divisions, but he could not persuade the House to reject the measures. Nonini said he sees North Idaho agencies with vehicles “sitting for months on end with no one driving them” and gathering “snow, snow, snow and more snow.”
“It just drives me absolutely crazy to hear they’re purchasing new vehicles,” he said. “Why don’t they use these other vehicles?”
Supporters of the bills, which pay for administrative services and child welfare programs for the Department of Health and Welfare, said the state has adopted a vehicle management plan that replaces vehicles after they log 80,000 to 100,000 miles. It’s more profitable to sell cars at that point than to drive them into the ground, said Rep. Fred Wood, R-Burley.
Nonini said his last car had 212,000 miles and “it ran just fine, and I sold it and got good money for it.”
Nonini not moved
Howell also reported on Idaho teachers opposing a proposed salary plan allowing them to trade tenure for more pay, and how those teachers want to play a role in considering alternatives. School administrators said they support the alternative model, which offers at least $3,000 more to teachers to give up their continuing contracts, because it will boost pay and help them attract better employees. But teachers said they have been conspicuously absent from formulating complex and unjust legislation.
“None of the professionals who will be directly affected by this legislation were consulted during this drafting,” said Sherri Wood, president of the Idaho Education Association. “Involvement of those who are directly affected by the new compensation system is critical to its success.”
Nonini, the House Education Committee chairman, said elected officials, not teachers, are stakeholders in the issue because they set the nearly $1.4 billion public schools budget. “I get frustrated when I hear the IEA, and somewhat of the administrators, refer to themselves as the stakeholders,” he said. “They are the employees of the people of Idaho. When we spend that kind of money in a system, we can make those decisions.”
If language were a bird …
Howell was everywhere this past week. Here’s another dispatch, on the scene as the official-English bill hit House State Affairs on Tuesday: The committee voted 13-5 for Senate Bill 1172, which makes English the language of government activities and forms, with some exceptions. While education and Latino activists criticized the bill as divisive and unnecessary, supporters said it will not hinder immigrants.
Rep. Mark Snodgrass, R-Meridian, said anthropologists would say having one language unifies a people. He compared the issue to the state making the mountain bluebird its official winged beast. “The fact that we have an official bird doesn’t mean I hate all the other birds,” Snodgrass said. No word yet on whether other Idaho birds have trouble chirping with the mountain bluebird.
Rep. Carlos Bilbao, R-Emmett, turned red and pounded on the table as he described how his forbears taught themselves English after immigrating to the U.S.
“We did it on our own,” he said. “And if people come to this county and don’t have the audacity, or whatever it takes to go out and learn the language before you get here, or learn it on the boat when you get here, then why even come?” he said.
Well, not really
Sen. Jeff Siddoway, R-Terreton, rose on the floor of the Senate to announce that he has a list of senators who haven’t paid their Senate lunchroom fees. He said their names will be posted in the lunchroom the next day and they’ll “no longer be welcome there.” A few minutes later, Senate Majority Leader Bart Davis said, “The statement made by the senator from (District) 35 will not be enforced,” and all senators are still welcome in their lunchroom, even if they’re slow with their payment. Asked about it afterward, Siddoway said, “I was just kidding – they’re just about all paid up.”