A Kinder, Gentler Idaho Governor?

By Sharon Fisher, 2-24-10

Idaho Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter feels misunderstood, wishes people would have more compassion for him, and if the economy would let him, he would like to make people happy.

That’s the impression he wanted to leave with the Idaho Press Club during its annual breakfast with the governor this morning.

When newspapers describe budget cuts he’s making, which he said are constitutionally required to maintain a balanced budget, “there’s always an assignment of some personal philosophy,” Otter said, who added that he “bristles” when an article assigns motivation to him without asking him why. “And then when I explain them I’m ‘covering up,’” he said.

This year, with the repeated holdbacks, has been particularly tough, Otter said. “Holdbacks are never fun.” Being able to give money to a program, or to tell an agency to go ahead and spend the money and it would be paid for out of a supplemental is a lot easier to deal with, he said. “I used to think it was the other way around, but I don’t any more,” he said, saying later, “I would like to see some compassion that this is a tough, tough position to be in, and it’s not fun.”

“Just once, I’d like to see a headline that says, instead of ‘Otter Cuts Grade School,’ ‘Otter Obeys the Constitution,’” he said.

While such cuts could be avoided through an increase in revenue, Otter said there isn’t the appetite in the Legislature to raises taxes. When it was pointed out that Oregon had just voted for a tax increase, those were “voters who raised taxes on the other folks, for the most part,” he said. When it was pointed out that many of the suggestions on the government efficiency site he had set up involved raising taxes, “the overwhelming abundance are in favor of cutting back someplace,” he said.

A number of questions related to Otter’s initial plan to phase out general fund support for a number of commissions, as well as Idaho Public Television, followed
by last week’s revelation that it was all a psych-out to get the groups to respond to a request for a business plan, followed by Otter’s own op-ed explaining his motivation and taking newspapers to task.

In retrospect, Otter said, perhaps he should have gone to the State Board of Education, which governs Idaho Public Television, and leaned on them harder to make the station, which underwent a more than 40 percent reduction in its budget last year, more responsive to calls for cuts this year. “I have to go through the chain of command,” he said. “The interpretation and urgency I put on it wasn’t shared as greatly by the state board as I had hoped that it would.”

In fact, two years ago, Otter looked at removing Idaho Public Television from the State Board of Education, as other agencies such as the Commission for Libraries were. However, because many of the licenses and so on were in the name of the state board, the cost to change that would have been “astronomical,” he said—plus education truly is a major function of the network, he said. “Where could it go and still perform one of its core missions, educating people?”

Otter also weighed in on several legislative issues, such as whether to cut the 1 percent cost of living adjustment for state retirees (he was against cutting it), a bill by Representative Steve Kren, R-Nampa, gutting the emissions control bill (he’s against most aspects of it and has told Kren so), the grocery tax credit ("I think it’s important to folks that we keep that promise"), public school budgets ("If I were in the legislature, I would try to direct most of that money to the classroom and contact with students"), and what to do with $71 million banked for possible use by Medicaid if it turns out not to be needed (passing at least some of it back to agencies that have been cut).

If Otter is again in the position he enjoyed during the first year of his term, with budget surpluses, he’d like to go back to some of the programs he initiated there, such as $100 million toward opportunity scholarships, an expansion of the grocery tax credit, and perhaps raising more money for transportation by lowering the sales tax and increasing the gas tax. “‘Happiness’ would be a good start,” he said.

Otter also talked about his re-election campaign, which he has not yet formally announced though it is taken to be a foregone conclusion. He said he had hoped to wait until the legislative session settled down before he announced, so it wouldn’t be a distraction. However, the filing period starts on March 8, and the legislative session now looks like it’s going to go into April, he said.