Kustra: Until we have term limits for elected officials like Risch, vote for challengers
The dreaded campaign commercial will soon disappear from our TV screens, computers and mobile devices, and our viewing life will return to normal. Some commercials, whether they are touting Republicans or Democrats, accurately portray the character and the record of the candidate. Then there are those that puff up the candidate’s record and career to fiction far removed from reality. That thought occurred to me the other day as I watched Sen. Jim Risch’s commercial as he baled hay and hugged his gun.
In my years as Boise State president, I spent lots of time with Republican officeholders in Idaho, over the lunch and dinner table and in private office meetings. This is where you get the real scoop on how pols really think about what they do in office — moments of truth when they confide in what they think of their fellow officeholders, stuff you won’t hear on the campaign trail or in any of the countless speeches public officials give.
What I learned about Risch over the years from his fellow Republican officeholders is that he is the perfect example of a guy who just stood in line long enough to finally get the nod for higher office. His brief governorship was a particular disaster, and he only got that job by succeeding then Gov. Dirk Kempthorne when Kempthorne was appointed Secretary of the Interior by President George W. Bush.
Risch’s major accomplishment as a short-term governor was to author a phony tax overhaul that shifted school funding from the property tax to the sales tax and forced schools to rely more heavily on sales and income taxes. Although taxpayers complain about the property tax, it is one of the most reliable sources of revenue for our public schools because it does not fluctuate with swings in the economy as the sales and income tax do. Without the property tax, public schools across the nation and in Idaho would founder without the revenue to educate our kids. That didn’t stop Risch from ramming through legislation in one day that cut $260 million property tax revenue from schools and replaced it with $210 million of sales tax revenue by increasing the sales tax by a penny.
According to Idaho Education News, the Risch plan cut property taxes, but provided no real tax relief thanks to his increase in the sales tax. Politicians are often accused of speaking out of both sides of their mouths and Risch perfected it with his property and sales tax hoax. To make matters even worse, the recession came along two years later, depressing income and sales receipts and depriving our public schools of the revenue Risch disingenuously claimed would be replenished by the sales tax. Even without a recession, schools could never expect the Idaho legislature to fund education sufficiently from income and sales tax revenue while Republican majorities in the legislature spend most of their time scheming to lower taxes and depriving schools of adequate funding.
The same Republicans mouthing their support for Risch’s reelection today stood solidly behind him in 2006 as he enacted the so-called tax reform that played to voters’ displeasure with taxes so he could use it in his 2008 campaign for the U.S. Senate. In this case, I was a witness to the intimidating tactics Republican leadership used to help Risch with his bogus tax reform.
Idaho’s university presidents were meeting with the State Board of Education prior to the tax shift vote and in our presentation to the Board, we expressed concern about Risch’s proposal, suggesting that it would not only deprive public schools of funding, but it could also impact higher education funding, as well.
Once news of university presidents raising questions about the Risch plan hit the airwaves, the Republican Combine in Idaho sprang into action. By the end of the day, I received calls from the Senate majority leader, the co-chair of the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee and, to top it off, our current governor, then serving on the Republican leadership team. They all chastised me for the gall of questioning a tax reform initiative of Gov. Risch. Brad Little told me I should know better, an obvious reference to my having played the game of Republican politics in another state legislature. In other words, I should know that my duties as a university president come in second to serving the partisan interests of Sen. Risch and the Republican leadership in Idaho.
I knew better all right. I knew that Risch no more cared about property tax voters than he cared for a colonoscopy. I would learn later from an Idaho Education News report that not even Little thought the plan was such a great idea. Risch had one goal in mind that remains today his career goal. Do and say what it takes to get elected and then do and say what it takes to stay in office, regardless of how far you must stray from the truth. He has perfected such behavior to an art form as did Little and the cast of Republicans who chose a bogus tax shift over the quality of Idaho’s schools.
This episode in my former life as a university president came to mind as Risch runs for a third six-year term, just one example of how the long-serving incumbent uses cheap political tricks to confuse voters. But there are also examples of his nonfeasance in office. Just consider how the senator as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee could have used the authority of his chairmanship over recent years to investigate and research the Trump tentacles that have wrapped themselves around ruthless strongmen across the globe and mixed Trump’s own personal and business interests with the nation’s interest.
He did nothing but keep the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the sidelines as U.S. global leadership lost its footing. He did return to Idaho occasionally to disabuse voters of any negative reports on the Trump presidency and to berate reporters who questioned his misleading and erroneous reports from the nation’s capital.
Term limits for our public officials make lots of sense for Idaho officials who represent us in Washington, but until then, voters can support fresh faces and new ideas like Paulette Jordan, Rudy Soto and Aaron Swisher.