Presentation of Idaho Reports on Idaho Public Television is made possible through the generous support of the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the great state of Idaho.

By the Friends of Idaho Public Television and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

We now know Governor Brad Little's legislative priorities after his State of the State address on Monday.

Now it's time for lawmakers and stakeholders to weigh in.

I'm Melissa Davlin.

Idaho Reports starts now.

Hello and welcome, to Idaho Reports.

This week, producer Ruth Brown examines a report regarding abuse endured by Idahoans with disabilities.

The magnitude of the problem and what the state could do to help the situation.

Then Chris Cargill of Mountain States Policy Center and Alex LeBeau of the Idaho Association for Commerce and Industry join me to discuss Governor Brad Little's legislative priorities.

But first, some sad news.

Jean McNeil, longtime producer and reporter for Idaho Reports passed away last week.

Jean worked at Idaho Public Television for ten years in the late seventies and eighties before going on to work for Attorney General Larry Ecohawk and the U.S. Attorney's Office.

I got a chance to sit down with Jean last year for the Idaho Report's 50th anniversary show.

Here's what she had to say about how the legislature has changed over the years.

I'm Jean McNeil.

I came here after graduate school for a job at Channel four, which became Idaho Public Television later.

And at the time, we didn't have Idaho Reports.

We didn't have the nightly program.

We did cover the legislature.

And so I did that.

And then I did documentaries for a while until we started first a weekly and then a nightly program.

And I was there for ten years.

The biggest difference that I see is what I would call collegiality.

And that's a it's a broad word.

It means more than cooperation.

It means more than bipartisanship, although those are pretty much gone by the boards as well.

But when I covered the legislature, Democrats and Republicans were friends.

They played poker together.

Their families went out to dinner together.

They even lived together.

I remember one group of four, two Republicans and two Democrats who rented this house for the session.

In the in the late seventies eighties.

The Panhandle was pretty reliably Democratic, largely because it was a timber and mining area, and those were union jobs.

There were some wine and cheese Democrats up in the Coeur d'Alene area.

But largely it was a lunch bucket union area.

In fact, when I covered Democrats at their election night, you would see their candidates behind like a Cecil Andrus.

And what they'd tell you is wait for the North.

Don't draw any conclusions.

Wait for the North.

Well, that has flipped 180 degrees.

And the second Eastern Idaho, while it's still conservative, has shifted a little bit, I think, so that you might see down the road, if you had the right candidates, a race that was actually competitive in the second District, whereas the First District is pretty well unwinnable right now for Democrats.

I loved my job and I loved not love.

That's too strong a word, but I cared about almost all of the legislators.

There was something to like about almost all of them.

Occasionally you'd get somebody who was.

But as soon as somebody like that showed up, he was pulled back into line because they didn't have the numbers.

So I liked almost all of them.

In one way or another.

We want to extend our sincere condolences to Jean's family and friends from everyone here at Idaho Public Television.

Last May, Boise State University released a report about the rate of victimization among disabled people in Idaho, as well as some potential solutions.

Producer Ruth Brown spent some time talking to the Idaho Council on Developmental Disabilities about this recent report.

One in four Idahoans, or roughly 369,000 people, live with a disability, according to a recent report from BSU in partnership with the Idaho Council on Developmental Disabilities.

The rate of violent victimization of those people is nearly four times higher than those without a disability.

The council's executive director already knew some of the problems, and in 2007 she learned of its magnitude.

So it was my job at the council to go around the state and look for leadership amongst the developmental disability community, and I had the great opportunity to interview 108 individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities from all over the state.

And it was at that time, unfortunately, I was completely ill equipped to hear the things that I heard.

But of that 108 people that I interviewed, 82 voluntarily provided me with a number of incidents of abuse that they had experienced, many of which were multiple abuses throughout their lifetime.

Many people who didn't feel like they had anyone to tell and when they did tell someone, they didn't feel believed when they sought out counseling, oftentimes counselors said that didn't really happen.

Again, not being believed.

And the saddest part, I think, that I was left with from all of those interviews was a sense that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities felt like this is just the way it is.

The report, published in May focused on the experiences from professional stakeholders working with disabled people and in victim services.

Stakeholders agreed.

People with disabilities are more vulnerable to victimization.

One of those victims includes 21 year old Brandon Juarez.

The son of Maria Juarez, Idaho Reports spoke to Maria with the help of the council's certified Spanish interpreter.

Brandon is non-verbal and has Down syndrome, but his mother shared two incidents of abuse that her son has suffered.

Yeah, when my son was 16 and the agency picked them up for therapy and about 30 minutes later they returned him home.

When the woman brought him back home, he left.

She let me know that he had some little bruises on him, but that he was just fine.

And my other children were playing in the yard.

They get they were playing with water.

And he wanted to play in the water as well.

And so I took his shirt off.

So when I proceed to remove his shirt, I see that he has bruises all over his body, particularly around the ribs area and in the back and his back as if he was had been dragged.

His back was all blue.

So I was like, oh my gosh, What they told me it was something not serious.

And but I looking at him, he was covered in bruises.

She told the social worker and asked to speak to the occupational therapist and the person in charge.

I asked her what had happened and she said, Oh, what I did, what we did with Brandon is to keep him safe for his.

For his well-being.

And I. I was very angry.

And I asked, why do you say it was for his well-being if he has bruises and he seems like he's been dragged and he's being just abused.

And she told me that there was things that they had to do to keep them safe for his well being.

And I responded to them that that's not what I do to keep them safe and for his well-being, that whenever he goes in a crisis, there are things that I do, but I never leave any bruises or drag him.

Maria waited for supervisors to be notified but never heard back.

A police report was never filed and she stressed that she just wanted to prevent it from happening again.

I feel like I didn't receive the response that I was expecting and I believe that there was no justice done for the abuse my son went through.

So to be honest, trust towards the system is gone.

I just because I felt that there was no justice done.

I felt like my son and my family were invisible to everybody else, that nobody could see us and nobody could hear us.

And it was very difficult.

The process of reporting any abuse was especially hard for Maria because her son is non-verbal and her first language is Spanish.

Brandon again suffered abuse by a roommate and his supported living facility, and Maria was informed by an employee.

She ultimately moved her son to a different facility where she believes he's now safe.

She wants to see an agency established to report abuse and neglect with a number to call.

Much like we have with 911.

The main barrier for myself as a Latino woman is the language barrier, and it is a case also for others in the Latino community.

But for people with disabilities in general, the main barrier is not being heard, not being believed when they report.

In many cases, when there is a little bit of aggression involved, people think that that gives them the right to abuse them and beat them.

And that's not right.

The recent study on victimization among people with disabilities offers several recommendations to create change.

I think some of the highlights in that report was there's no tracking of somebody who is accused of of taking advantage of somebody with disabilities.

There's no register and maybe they just go somewhere else.

And I think that's a valuable thing to say.

Okay, but how do we track it?

Who does it get reported to?

The council would also like to see one number implemented where people with disabilities can call to report abuse.

Our system is very fragmented in the state of Idaho.

People with disabilities don't know who to call.

We were really looking at some other states who have implemented one phone number that's like a hotline.

And we think that that might improve the ability for people to report abuse because that would just be one number to call, one number to remember.

And then it would be up to us to figure out how do we have agencies work together to make this work for people with disabilities instead of people with disabilities trying to figure out how to make it work for themselves?

Staffing is an ongoing problem for people with disabilities, and following a request from former Minority leader Senator Michel Stennett, the Office of Performance Evaluations will release a report in January on the issue.

The Council also feels very strongly that we need a whole lot more training to better equip our direct support workforce with the skills that they need to be able to be trauma informed in providing services and supports to individuals.

They need a whole cadre of training and ongoing training so that they can provide the best possible support to make the best possible day for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Special thanks to Miguel Juarez, who helped Idaho Reports with Spanish interpretation for the story.

You can find more of Ruth's reporting on the Disabilities Report online at IdahoPTV.org/IdahoReports On Monday, Governor Brad Little delivered his 2023 State of the State address kicking off this year's legislative session.

Joining me to discuss Governor Little's proposals are Chris Cargill of the Mountain State's Policy Center, and Alex LeBeau from the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry.

Briefly, I wanted to get your first reactions to his State of the State address.

I'll start with you, Alex.

I think it's a continuation of what he did during the special session and how he and the legislature have worked very diligently to improve the lot of of Idahoans and was very bold and we were very excited about how it went.

Chris, your thoughts?

Yeah, I agree with Alex.

You know, it's funny because the state of the state or State of the Union addresses are those type of addresses that the governors or executives give that usually is promptly ignored by the legislature or by the legislative body.

We'll see if that happens this time.

But I think there were a lot of pluses in in the governor's state of the state address.

Some things, obviously, if we were in charge, of course, we might tweak here or there.

But overall, I think the the the reception it was it was getting was quite well.

And we'll get into specifics.

Governor Little spent the most time in his speech discussing education investments.

Here's a bit of what he had to say during both the state of the state and the press conference following the speech.

Most importantly, it keeps parents where they should be in the driver's seat of their children's education.

The Constitution recognizes the endurance of a Republican form of government, depends upon an educated, intelligent people.

The founders spelled out the duty to quote, establish and maintain a general uniform and thorough system of public free common schools.

As elected leaders, we promise to uphold this contract with the people when we take the oath of office.

Our commitment to public schools is both our Constitutional obligation and it's our moral obligation.

My first plan delivers on both the constitutional mandate and the mandate from the voters of Idaho by investing in our public schools.

So we heard, Governor Little in his speech, really double down on support for public schools.

And in a press conference after he reiterated to reporters that, you know, not only do does his administration support public schools, but also he believes that there are existing school choice options built into our system right now.

Chris, I wanted to get your thoughts on that part of his proposal.

You know, that first part that he was referring to was the Empowering Parents program, which has been wildly successful.

I mean, it's something that I think we agree that the the legislature should try to expand, we might say expand even more than than some folks want.

But that program is a is a choice type program, very similar to stuff that's been tried in other states.

And this would his proposal this year would make that program permanent to the tune of three or sorry, $30 million.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And I think from our perspective, you know, we're taking a look at it from the perspective of how we increase student outcomes and putting parents in the driver's seats, like the governor said, is is one way you do that.

Again, we would like to see it expanded, perhaps even more than the governor wants to see it expanded.

But overall, I think the education piece is important.

I think one thing that we might have suggested is to try to put some metrics or some items in the speech that would say, okay, we're going to put this much money into K through 12 public schools.

And as a result of that, five years from now, our goal is going to be such and such.

I think overall, we we think that that was a positive way to address it.

But hopefully the legislature will take a closer look at that empowering parents program and try to see if they can expand it.

The investment in public schools.

Alex, what's IACI's take on that?

Well, our organization was one of the few business organizations that actually were supportive of the Empowering Parents Program with Senator Den Hartog and Representative Horman back when we were trying to get parents, give parents the tools and the opportunity to catch their kids up during the pandemic, It was a reaction to the pandemic at the time, so that if if a child needed basic infrastructure, a computer, so that they could log in tutoring so they could catch up any number of different types of things that parents might see with their own children in it.

And it was targeted towards the lower income folks that don't necessarily have the resources to catch the kids up.

So hearing that was a was great.

I think it's a great move forward and we agree very much on that.

Moving forward with the with what his investments are on K through 12, particularly investments in in the classrooms themselves.

Where we will go from being in the bottom ten to the top ten for teacher pay, for teacher pay specifically, and that that's transformational for the state of Idaho.

And I think that that's one of the things that I think has been lost in this what what the governor has done, what he has outlined, and I think what is largely fairly well received by the legislature or during during the special session and what he outlined in his state of the state between higher ed and K through 12.

These are generational changes that we are making.

We're going to see prosperity expand dramatically as a result of the investments that we're making today in our children's in our grandchildren's future.

That really put Idaho, frankly, leapfrog Idaho well ahead of most of our peers that we have been frankly for for for our organization.

And I think for many citizens, this is an exciting time to be around the state and be around the state house.

Briefly, I want to touch on the higher education proposal, specifically the Idaho launch program, with $80 million to provide one time $8,500 scholarships to qualifying Idaho students.

We don't know the parameters of that proposed proposed program right now.

What what are your thoughts?

Well, obviously, this is all about trying to keep people and young people in the states and get them the training and education they need to hopefully make Idaho their home for the long term.

I mean, that's that's the number one goal, is to make sure we have a workforce that can provide what we need for all of the businesses in the state.

And so that program was an interesting proposal from our perspective.

It's something that I think gives many college students perhaps a little pause if they're hearing that, hey, you might be able to get an $8,500 grant to help you pay for college here locally.

And we'll see if the legislature approves that.

Now, obviously, some of these things are going to be things that the legislature may not consider.

Well, another thing that is very much on the mind of Idahoans is rising property tax bills.

We got the lawmaker or legislative leadership's perspective on the property tax mentions that were in Governor Little's speech.

I believe the governor did a good job of giving us the control.

He said, Here's the money.

Go find a path forward.

I think that you there's been I know for a fact there's been a lot of conversations about what to do.

The one thing the governor did do, which I really well, there's two things I appreciate.

One, he said we don't collect it.

We don't spend it.

I can't say that enough times.

That's a local decisions.

Local elected officials decide whether your taxes go up or down.

It's budget driven.

But he also said we need to solve the problem because there's an outcry.

And I agree with that.

And he gave us some money.

Whatever we do there, we've got to be careful that we don't open the door like happened in 2006 with House Bill one, where we cut taxes on property down to 20 and 20 plus percent.

And within a few years, the local governments, through their budgets, raised the property taxes back up.

We've got to be careful that whatever we do, we can string that growth so we don't provide a one time relief that gets sucked up again later by those locally elected officials who spend it and collect it.

If we are actually able to support these items in the governor's budget in terms of enhancing funding of education and some of these other items and infrastructure, we actually think it will have the side effect of pretty substantially reducing property taxes.

A huge driver of property taxes right now is trying to fill the gap from the state inadequately funding teacher salaries and operational funding at schools.

If we were able to get this $330 million in to the K-12 system, I think that would yield huge dividends to property taxes as well as to the students of this state.

So we know that the state government doesn't have that much control directly on property taxes, but they can work along the edges to help reduce those bills.

Alex, what did you think about what the governor had to say?

Well, the governor threw $120 million red meat to the legislature and let them fight over it.

So, you know, this is going to be really interesting, I think, to see how this how this goes.

One of the things that I appreciate about what Speaker Moyle said and he and I have been involved in these discussions for a couple of you know, as long as I can remember, local government needs to come to the table and put skin in the game, which is something they have not done in the past.

There have been some half hearted efforts and but, but just coming in saying, well, we need to expand the homeowner's exemption, all you're doing is shifting, shifting the deckchairs on a on a sinking Titanic at that point.

The the the thing that I would disagree with is the fact that the state does, in fact, align the structure.

So the structure has to be considered from perhaps moving it from a budget driven system to a revenue driven system.

Because, you know, even if you look in 2008, when the state was in an economic downturn, low government budgets still went up.

The state reduced its budgets by 30%.

There was nothing there that that there's nothing in in the system right now that that forces economic discipline and and, you know, the property taxpayers are right to be complaining about this.

But just to shift the liability off on somebody else is not okay.

But the local governments have to come to the table with something legitimate and put something on the table.

And, you know, I think I think Speaker Moyle is right on right on target.

And, Chris, I wanted to get your thoughts as well.

What what did you like and what didn't you hear that you wish you had heard?

We're talking about in the state of the state.

Yeah.

With taxes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, the whole issue on taxes, obviously.

I think one thing that that is kind of hidden sometimes is assessments are a big part of this.

I mean, in some other states, what they're doing is is taking a step to to freeze assessments on folks who are on fixed income or folks who are 65 years of age and older.

So that's one thing that this legislature may want to consider as well.

In terms of what what I wish we would have heard a little bit more of in the governor's speech.

I mentioned the mechanisms whereby we would know for sure if the education increase in funding is working.

I think the other thing that we would probably like to see a little bit more of is the conversation regarding taxes in general.

How are we going to try to get more money back in the hands of citizens?

Obviously, we had the the special session back in September that lowered the income tax rate as well.

But some other states are now moving ahead of Idaho in terms of their income tax rates.

Some will for sure keep an eye on as we move forward.

Improving transportation and infrastructure has long been on Little's to do list.

Here's what he had to say on Monday.

Investing in local roads and bridges is property tax relief.

Last year, we put nearly half a billion into local roads, bridges and airports.

We took a major bite out of the backlog of deficient bridges that local governments have been struggling for years to repair, and we did it without raising taxes or fees.

That buys us not just property tax relief, but safer roads, less drive time and less congestion.

Now I'm proposing even more for local bridges and new ongoing funding for transportation safety capacity to build on our success.

We heard specifics of his budget proposal later we specifically on transportation $200 million to improve local bridges, almost $100 million to address the Transportation Safety gap.

Alex, This is a big concern for a lot of businesses around the state.

Oh, 100% you know we've got to be able to get our goods and services to market and we've got to get to our employees to to work safely.

And and these types of investments pay dividends for decades, you know, not just in the construction opportunities for for employment, but in the long term infrastructure of the state, in our ability to grow, in our ability to be be prosperous.

So he's right on track on this.

And, you know, I find hardly anything to argue with about about where he wants to put the money in transportation.

Now, Chris, I'm curious, your organization focuses on free market solutions.

What are your thoughts on leveraging some of this federal funding for infrastructure improvements that benefit businesses?

You know, we're not just talking about roads and bridges, but also $225 million in federal funding for broadband infrastructure.

Yeah, absolutely.

And I mean, I think broadband roads and bridges, transportation funding is probably those are two or three of the topics that you get broad bipartisan consensus on.

I mean, these are the topics that people say, well, heck, yes, I don't want my road to have a pothole or I don't want my bridge to fall down, for Pete's sake.

Of course people are going to support that.

So I think the sticky point is when you get into proposals that cause long term spending constraints for the state and and transportation doesn't really do that because you build a bridge, you pay for the bridge.

And unless it's bonded out, of course, you don't have that long term budgetary hits, other programs, you do have long term budgetary hit.

And that's why I think the legislature will take a close look at some of the other proposals.

And we have about a minute left in the conversation.

This was obviously a broad overview of so many different proposals that Governor Little had.

Alex, what were some other things that you'll be keeping an eye on this legislative session?

We still, during the during last year, lost or during the pandemic, we lost over 5000 seats in child care opportunities.

Those are people that we now have, families that have to leave the workforce just because of that particular problem.

Last year, the legislature put in $15 million to rebuild that capacity.

They got $40 million worth of requests that would have sucked up the 5000 or 5000 seats we lost.

To put another 15 million in is what we'll be asking for.

It's still not going to catch us up to where we were prior to the pandemic and we were even behind then.

So I think that's going to be a big, big one for us.

Chris, in 10 seconds, what are you going to be keeping an eye on?

There's going to be a bunch of education choice bills and I'm curious to see what they look like, what states they modeled after.

And we'll have a huge discussion about that over the coming weeks.

We will be keeping an eye on that as well.

Chris Cargill, Alex Lebow, thanks so much for joining us and thank you for watching.

We'll see you next week.

Presentation of Idaho Reports on Idaho Public Television is made possible through the generous support of the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the great state of Idaho.

By the Friends of Idaho Public Television and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.