What You Want
What Idahoans Care About
By Shea Andersen, 1-06-06
It's perfect timing for a public-opinion survey to hit the streets: the Idaho Legislature is set to take up the gavel Monday, a governor's race is in the offing, and the state is growing faster than all but two others in the nation.
So when Jim Weatherby and others at the Boise State University Social Science Research Center unveiled their latest public policy survey Friday, they had a lot of ready listeners.
And those listeners might be surprised: all that foofraw about property taxes? Not such a big deal when Idahoans compare it to education funding.
Yes, it's true, Idahoans get all fired up about property taxes. But if you ask anyone if they want their taxes to be lower, they'll say "sure!"
Okay, the news:
Betsy Russell from the Spokesman-Review has the quick-and-dirty on her blog Eye on Boise.
Check out the Associated Press writeup on it, fresh from the news conference Friday.
Those of you who need the press-release version written as the surveyors would have it done, go to the Boise State University release on it.
New West spoke with Weatherby briefly Friday, and he too was surprised, after all the news coverage (obsession?) with property taxes, to find that Idahoans had other things on their minds.
"There wasn't as much focus on property taxes as a priority," Weatherby said. "When asked the series of questions about legislative priorities, health care costs were 'it.'"
Property taxes, Weatherby said, were "a fairly distant third."
Memo to lawmakers going into the session Monday with property-tax-guns a-blazing: ease off, Tex.
"I think they have to be careful with this issue," Weatherby said. "There's voter anger on this issue, but it's not to the level of revolt."
That said, Weatherby did allow that lawmakers would be silly to walk away from the session having not addressed the matter at all.
There's lots more meat on the bones of the survey, and I encourage folks to dissect the results. Weatherby and company have been doing the survey for the last 16 years, so they know what they're doing.
And then: off to the Capitol!
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Anna Daley said: "Solid story, Jason. It's so important to have journalists, like you, who can research such an important issue and deliver an unbiased report."