Governor undaunted by legislative, snow storms

COEUR d’ALENE — Brad Little’s track record as the Education Governor was put to the test Friday after rumors circulated he might cancel a scheduled trip to Winton Elementary in Coeur d’Alene.

“The weatherman was right,” the Idaho governor said. “It’s snowing like hell.”

But, showing true Idaho grit, the Emmett rancher mustered on through the weather, chatting with educators and students alike. After the event, as he waited for crews to de-ice Coeur d’Alene Airport — Pappy Boyington Field, the governor and his staff hunkered down in the Coeur d’Alene Press offices for an interview.

Little, traveling through the area to promote his education-driven budget proposal, said he admires the work Winton’s teachers and staff put in to drive success in the classroom, despite the district’s challenges.

“I was surprised at how many [students] they said were homeless,” he said of the 7 percent in Winton that are at least housing-insecure. “That was a shocker.”

The first-term governor, now in his second year on the job, is again specifically putting the pedal down on literacy as his primary focus, targeting grade school readers as the catalyst to stronger results.

“Those educators that you talk to,” he said, “they’re doing it with reading help, buying books, getting the software licenses they need every year. We’re trying to make last year’s investment [in software licenses] ongoing; last year, [the Legislature] funded it, but they didn’t make it ongoing. We’re trying to make [that funding] ongoing.

“That’s one reason I came to Winton today: To see the results of the literacy initiative and see if I can go back and look the legislators in the eye and say, ‘Hey, it’s making a difference.’”

That literacy initiative is one part of Little’s $77.7 million proposal from the general fund to pay for education, one of the lone increases of a $4 billion budget that otherwise asks for cuts across the board.

It’s also a budget that came under recent fire for Idaho Core Standards as the House Education Committee prepares to debate the merits of blanket score requirements. The concept has been critiqued in the past by the Idaho Legislature and has been given new life because of a change in procedures with House rules, giving conservative lawmakers an opportunity to evaluate — and potentially remove — the standards formerly known as Common Core.

Little said he’s confident the standards will remain in place.

I get that people are concerned the federal government is mandating we implement it,” he said. “But now that it’s in, that it’s mandated, it’s working … The states that have totally thrown out their state’s core standards are now spending a lot of money to get it back in.”

The governor added that he’s still waiting to hear an alternative to calibrating student curriculum and raising education standards statewide.

“My answer is: What’s your answer?” he asked. “No standards at all? So when a kid from Kellogg comes down to Coeur d’Alene in the fourth grade, they’re in a different place in language arts and math than another kid?”

When asked if Little more closely resembles an Education Governor or an Economic Development Governor, Little gave a wry smile, citing the link between a more prepared student body and a more dynamic workforce.

“Same thing,” he said.

But Little emphasized it’s a link that comes with challenges.

“In the last year and a half or two years, back then it was, ‘Make the connection between Jobs Plus and XYZ Company to bring an employer to Kootenai County,” he said. “Now, most of those businesses say, ‘We got a real workforce problem. A, we got people who show up and don’t go to work. B, we’ve got people without career technical skills. C, we don’t have enough college graduates.’

“Economic development after the Depression was, ‘Any jobs, anywhere, I’ll take them all, and I’m all in.’ Now, we can be more selective, but what businesses really need is a trained workforce.”

Little’s budget doesn’t just include helping a younger generation he hopes will lead Idaho in the future. He once again is pushing for grocery tax relief, a proposal that would eliminate sales tax on groceries. He cited a $35 million fund to offset the tax cut, but that proposal is based on nuanced variations that would have to ultimately define what actually constitutes groceries.

“For food stamps,” he cited as an example, “if you go into two different grocery stores [with] food stamps, it’s not as uniform as you think it is,” he said. “… They will tell you not all stores treat food stamps the same.”

Education and economics weren’t the only crumbs we had to ration as the snow continued to hammer downtown Coeur d’Alene. Over the course of the hourlong interview, Little gave his input on a variety of topics.

- The governor answered questions about Blanchard Rep. Heather Scott, who was listed on multiple pages of a Washington state report that labeled Spokane Valley Rep. Matt Shea as a political and domestic terrorist.

“Probably the gravest responsibility I have is to keep the people of Idaho safe,” Little said. “If there’s a safety issue, I need to pay attention to it. The range of reaction to that [story] — ‘It’s a political hit job in the state of Washington.’ I know Heather has been out and about. I know she’s very involved in very conservative movements. She got in trouble with the Legislature last year over something she said.”

Little was referring to a comment Scott made to a reporter, saying legislators were “bought and paid for.”

“I don’t think she’s going to do that again,” Little said. “So I will give her the benefit of the doubt.”

- The governor also cited the popularity of short-term health care plans as a success, noting they provide more benefits than Affordable Care Act plans.

“Medicaid is going to pick up those people that were left out when the Affordable Care Act passed,” he said. “We had the most affordable health care here in Idaho before the ACA passed. The ACA raised the cost of health care for most everybody, unless you were grandfathered in … There were people who were priced out and had to go out and buy a plan. And I was worried about people who weren’t on Medicaid. Now, they’re signed up.”

- As to the location of a community re-entry center in North Idaho, Little said he has not heard any update on what exact plat of land will house inmates coming back into the area, but he said North Idaho — whether in Kootenai County, up north by Sandpoint or down by Orofino — will come, unless the Legislature steps in.

“Unfortunately, we’ve got the highest percent of parolees who keep going through the system … My most earnest desire is to bring down the cost of corrections, so I’ve got to have all of the [solutions]: I’ve got to have re-entry centers, I’ve got to have work centers for people who don’t have skills, I’ve got to address these frequent flyers in the corrections system that just go in and out and probably have a substance abuse problem. We’re trying to address all of them.

“Whatever we want to do,” Little stressed, “go find a legislator and say, ‘What’s your pet project? Roads? Schools? Health care? Tax relief?’ Every one of those are in jeopardy if we keep going the way we are with corrections.”