Lt. Gov. Little: Education tops for legislation

COEUR d’ALENE — Idaho Lt. Gov. Brad Little flew into Coeur d’Alene Friday to attend tonight's Republican Lincoln Day Dinner but he also found some time to meet with The Press to discuss this year’s legislative session.

Little said while this year’s Legislature dealt with a lot of issues that generated headlines, the bulk of its time and money was spent on following through with its five-year plan to improve the K-12 education system.

“We spent more than 60 percent of the money this year on education,” he said, adding the Senate passed every education bill almost unanimously. “We had all these other issues that made the headlines, but the fact that our most important criteria — the one the governor talked about the most — is (the progress that was made) in our long-term five-year plan to improve K through 12.”

Little said, in his opinion, that was “far and away the biggest story of this legislative session.”

The lieutenant governor said he believes the Legislature made a lot of necessary investments, but that delayed any tax relief this session.

“I would have loved to see tax relief, but we had to comply with the federal tax code and that cost us some money,” he said. “We had to pay that big fire bill, which would have been more than adequate to provide some tax relief.”

Little said it followed through with its commitment to fund education, and also had to fund several water studies related to aquifer recharge in southern Idaho.

“Those are just some of the newer projects that delayed tax relief,” Little said.

He said the state is also looking for ways to recruit and retain teachers. Little said a lot of teachers are lured away from Idaho with better compensation packages offered by nearby states.

“We have to be competitive with teacher’s pay — particularly with starting teacher’s pay,” he said, adding Idaho has one advantage with its strong pension program. “But we have to recruit the best teachers and incentivize them to stay through retirement.”

He said that will make Idaho more attractive for educators because many states don’t have retirement programs that are fully-funded. He believes those states will eventually be struggling to pay for those pension programs.

Idaho's pension program is 96 percent funded, Little said.

Little said he is also pushing toward the state’s goal to have 60 percent of Idaho’s high school graduates obtain a certificate or degree by 2020.

“As I told the committee, that’s what we in the ranching industry call a BHAG — a big hairy audacious goal,” Little said. “It is going to be hard to get to, but I also agree with my manufacturing friends that in order to get there we need to have this one-year certificate be what we are using for CNC machining, welding and diesel mechanics.”

He said the 60 percent goal is not the “end-all, be-all” to fix education, but it is a good measurable goal.

“You have to have something to measure,” he said.

Little said the state is beginning to partner with industries on STEM-related education programs to produce a tech-savvy workforce.

“So industry has skin in the game and the state has skin in the game to get the workforce out of there and get these wages up in Idaho,” he said.