Thursday, February 19, 2009

Politics and stuff

As you may or may not know, I was given the privilege (yes, privilege) of testifying in front of the Idaho State Senate Local Government and Taxation Committee on Monday with regards to a bill, S1081, that I co-wrote with our local Senator Shawn Keough. Without going into too much detail, let me just say that the bill was designed to ensure that our county receives its fair share of the bed tax that our lodgers are required to collect.

Sadly, though not surprisingly, the bill was killed in committee. On the positive side, one piece of it will be resurrected this session and tagged to another piece of legislation. That part will make sure that one county can't dominate the regional representation on the council, thereby unfairly skewing the distribution of the grant dollars to their own consitituents.

I was asked by one of the committee members if I thought that the representative for my region was influenced by his employer to take money away from our county. I said yes. And do you want to know what the best part of the whole thing was? My regional representative's employer sent his LOBBYIST to testify against the bill, thereby proving my point. If they are NOT receiving more than their fair share of the money to offset their advertising costs, why would it be necessary to have their lobbyist testify against it at all?

Politics, such a beautiful thing.

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