Fri 8 Feb 2008
This week was one of variety on the House floor. We saw bills ranging from education to liquor licenses. I had my son Booker, age 5, with me on Monday and Tuesday and I don’t think Pierre will ever be the same. He was a trooper on Monday; sitting through a 3 hour commerce committee meeting and then getting only a 15 minute break before heading off to caucus and session. His praises were heard on the House floor as members declared their admiration for his ability to sit and be quiet. We could all learn something from his example that day. However, I believe all the kind words went to his head as he was sure wound up the next day. He had made a couple of friends by that time and I rarely saw him. I passed him occasionally in the halls on his way to another exciting adventure in the State Capital. He asked if he could stay for 10 days to which I replied, “Booker, even I don’t want to stay 10 days!” He made many great memories and I am grateful he had the opportunity.
Kennedy, age 10, came out and spent Wednesday and Thursday with me. What an experience to have her sit beside me while we debated bills on the House floor. She was inquisitive and often lobbied mom to vote how she thought I should. She was quite persuasive at times and I see a bright future for her in debate. She must take after her father. As House Bill 1289 came to the House floor, she asked what it was about. I informed her that it was the bill that would deny schools to receive payment for declining enrollment unless they had a decline of 10 students or 5% of enrollment. I summed it up by saying, “It takes money away from some of the schools.” Aghast, she looked at me and said, “Why? The school lunch is bad enough already!”
(Disclaimer: Kennedy’s very concerned about the feelings of her school cooks and she wishes you to know that she very much enjoys their cooking, just not some of the choices.)
The above bill was killed on the House floor. Moving on to legislation that was addressed this week, we also saw a bill that would have required all our property tax notifications to display all the breakdowns of what the taxes represent. Therefore, each levy would be displayed such as how much is due for the county, township, school, opt out etc. I saw this as a taxpayer friendly bill, as it would give you information that explains exactly what your dollars are helping to pay for. However, our counties all operate with different types of software and actually implementing the law would have been costly and difficult to manage for counties. An amendment was added that delayed implementation, but as strapped as our counties are right now, I just couldn’t justify the action at this time.
In Tax committee on Thursday we saw one bill. House Bill 1307 would have created new classes of property for taxation purposes. The classes included cropland, noncropland, recreational, and speculation. During committee the sponsor of the bill, Rep. Hal Wick, proposed an amendment that changed the bill from becoming law to a summer study. The bill was passed out of committee and will hit the House floor next week. This is a topic that comes up often in Pierre, but I was glad to see the bill change. The motivation behind the legislation is to tax people more for land that they were using for hunting purposes or holding for investment. I believe landowners or farmers who were truly making a living farming the land could have gotten caught up in higher tax rates because of this bill if they had an occasional paying hunter or had land located in an area affected by urban sprawl. It could have possibly taxed them off their land, when their intention was to continue farming it. After visiting with the sponsor, he indicated that he was thinking of adding an owner/occupied clause that could have addressed my concern. I don’t expect the bill to pass the House floor as the usual way for summer studies to be determined is for the request to be submitted to the Executive Committee. The Committee will then consider all the requests and priorities of the legislators before making a selection. On Wednesday, a similar bill by Rep. Shantel Krebs, would have studied the state’s transportation needs, died for this very reason. As a member of the Executive Committee, I can assure you that we survey all legislators at the end of the session and see what their top priorities are for summer studies. We then compile the information, make the selection and appoint members. I expect transportation needs and classes of property to be among the top requests.
I pitched my minimum teacher’s salary bill, House Bill1268, to the House Education Committee on Thursday. The bill would establish a statewide minimum teacher’s salary at $30,000, with salary schedules to continue to be determined by the local school districts. It allows the districts 5 years to accomplish this task and use TCAP dollars to do so. There is strong support to add more money into the TCAP program, which provides $4 of state aid to every $1 of local dollars the district spends. It provides for the state and local school districts to partner in impacting teacher’s salaries. There was a much more comprehensive plan also proposed by Rep. Buckingham, House Bill 1262, that would set the entire salary schedule for the districts, repeal tenure, and set out qualifiers for the teachers to advance in pay. It is something I don’t expect the districts to look favorably upon, as it is a big change from what they are currently doing, takes away all local control, and provides no funding. Both bills were deferred until the next meeting date.
Well, I’ve run on too long and better let you go. Have a great week!