A Good Way to Grow Ideas
Coeur d'Alene Press 11-29-09
They're just ideas in the incubation stage, but local legislative leaders are brainstorming creative ways to address disparate challenges.
From the Fifth District, Reps. Frank Henderson and Bob Nonini, joined by Sen. Jim Hammond, met with Republican precinct chairmen recently and informally formulated these recommendations, among others:
• To bolster revenue, the state should consider an amnesty on penalty and interest for immediate payment of past due taxes.
• To bolster employment, the state should consider waiving payroll taxes like workman comp, unemployment insurance, etc., on every new hire until each employee passes the "probationary" period and becomes productive.
• Mandate that community college trustees must live in and represent specific districts to assure taxpayers representation within the entire area where taxes are levied, much like school board trustee districts. Presently, NIC trustees live only in Coeur d'Alene and Hayden Lake, yet they levy property taxes for everyone in Kootenai County.
• Similarly, mandate trustee districts for library district management to assure equity of representation on a board having authority to levy taxes.
• Help assure transparency of local government by requiring the listing and followup reports of planning and zoning meetings, County Commission agendas, etc., on the Internet.
We'd like to hear more discussion from the community on these ideas. For our part, the first two are potential home runs that should be atop the 2010 Idaho Legislature's agenda.
We also applaud Henderson, Nonini and Hammond for their outreach efforts. Fifth District legislators have gained a reputation throughout the state for working as a team and getting out to meet with constituents.
When first elected, Nonini and Henderson started meeting with major Kootenai County employers. They were joined by Hammond after he was elected.
Each December the trio conducts a town hall meeting for the general public and this year added a meeting with precinct chairmen. In the next few weeks they'll meet with key business people.
Great ideas often come from the citizens closest to any particular issue. Our Fifth District legislators clearly understand this. We hope their enterprise spreads.
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