Urban renewal a hot topic

POST FALLS — Kootenai County legislators held a town hall meeting Saturday morning to inform their constituents on the latest issues facing facing lawmakers in Boise this year.

Community members gathered at St. John the Baptist Orthodox Church in Post Falls while Kootenai County legislators discussed some of the issues they have been working on during the first three weeks of the session.

Sen. Mary Souza, R-Coeur d’Alene and Rep. Kathy Sims, R-Coeur d’Alene, both sit on the legislature’s Interim Committee on Urban Renewal. Sims said the committee worked all year to create a 27-page bill that will soon be introduced into the legislature.

“It is very wordy,” Sims said. “But some of the things it does do is give more authority back to the cities.”

Souza said the idea of the committee is to look at old urban renewal laws and bring them up to date. She said the laws were created in the 1960s and have not been “seriously” updated since. Urban renewal uses taxpayer money, and Souza said since it is the public’s money, it needs to be used very carefully. “We are not trying to kill urban renewal, yet all over the state the developers and large business people are very worried about the outcome of this committee,” Souza said. “My whole point in working with this committee is to bring accountability to the laws. What we are trying to do is make sure that these urban renewal agencies that used large amounts of public taxpayer dollars have to report clearly what they plan to do to begin with, then they have to stick to that plan. And then they have to stop when they are done with that plan.”

Souza said the final details are being put together and will likely be introduced next month. One of the four bills Rep. Eric Redman, R-Athol, said he has been focusing on for the 2016 year is a marriage bill he said he originally drafted on a “civil union concept.” He has now re-drafted the bill to be a “mere recording of a marriage affidavit, which takes the state out of the marriage licensing business and protects the religious beliefs of our county clerks and other local and state government employees,” Redman said.

He said couples can still go to their faith organization for a marriage ceremony if they choose to do so, “therefore allowing marriage to be sacred according to their beliefs,” and giving them the same benefits, federal or state, that are given to those who have a marriage license.

Rep. Ron Mendive, R-Post Falls, expressed concerns about education and the ISAT test. He said it is a “top-down test forced on us by the federal government.”

“There were problems with the testing,” Mendive said. “The software didn’t work, the tests took a lot of time. They reduced the time of the testing, they are proud of that, to .9 percent of the school year, which if you take 180 days of the school year, that’s a day and a half to test these kids.”

He said the results of the testing don’t get back to the teacher for two to three weeks.

Mendive used an example from when he was in school and teachers would determine who was ahead or falling behind by giving pop-quizzes or tests.

“I just think we need to spend our money wisely on education, it’s important but we need to make sure we do it well,” he said.

Sen. Steve Vick, R-Dalton Gardens, addressed the issue of tax reduction bills that are still being written. One bill he is co-sponsoring would eliminate grocery tax. Another bill he is sponsoring would reduce the top rate and the bottom rate.

“So that everybody gets a tax cut and it moves us one step closer to a flat tax,” Vick said.

He asked the community members in attendance for a show of hands as to who would prefer to move toward a flat tax and who would prefer to see grocery tax eliminated. There was a slight majority for the elimination of grocery tax.

Rep. Don Cheatham, R-Post Falls, said he likes Vick’s idea of taking the lower bracket out.

“I’m for reducing taxes, of course,” said Rep. Don Cheatham, R-Post Falls. “And I like Senator Vick’s idea of taking the lower bracket out."

Rep. Luke Malek, R-Coeur d’Alene, said about a dozen health care bills have been presented but said there is “not a lot to report there.” An audience member later asked a question concerning two of the bills regarding medicaid expansion, which was answered by Redman.

Redman said there is a plan proposed by the state Health and Welfare called PCAP. He said the key to it is to get individuals in the poverty level, about 40,000 in Idaho, a place to go for preventative care.

“The drawback, of course, is with the CAP fund, if they have something that really seriously happens, they’ll have to go to the hospital or somewhere else to get it taken care of because it does not include that area,” Redman said.

Sen. Bob Nonini kept his speech short before handing it over to the audience for questions.

“My collegues have given a good introduction on what we’re working on down there the first few weeks,” Nonini said. “I’m going to leave it at that because we’ve taken 45, 50 minutes and I want to hear from the audience and what questions they have.”