Mat serving up Sushi in September!

Hey everyone!

Come celebrate the end of the session with me at Superb Sushi Downtown.

Join me on April 17th any time from 5-9PM.

Stop in for a quick visit or stay as long as you like!

We’ll chat about the legislature, plans for the summer and what I am working on for next session. 20% of the proceeds go to Erpelding for D19, and will be used to help bring balance to the legislature. So come in, have some amazing sushi and hang out with me.

If you cannot make it – please contribute and help me keep up the important work necessary to expand our minority in the legislature. Click below to stay involved!

Rules of Engagement

1) Legislators are people who also care about this process. You must be respectful.

2) Anything you add to the petition should also be something you would  feel comfortable sending to your Grandmother.

3) Double check your grammar.

4) Please add your name and city to the bottom of the petition.

5) Thank you for getting involved, your support makes a difference.

An Individual Right & Personal Responsibility

The Second Amendment grants all United States citizens the right to bear arms. Yet, we don’t always treat our rights as U.S. citizens responsibly. In the United States, only around 50% of gun owners store their weapons in a locked location, and 20% have loaded weapons in an unlocked location.

As a supporter of gun rights, I believe we have a personal responsibility to keep our guns under our control. I encourage every gun owner to get a trigger lock or a gun safe for his or her weapons. Currently, Idahoans can go to any police station and get a free trigger lock for their firearm. However, trigger locks can be cut off with bolt cutters, and gun lockers/safes are much more difficult to access unless you have the key or know the code.

This year I hope to introduce a legislative initiative to enact a 3 year sales tax holiday on gun safe purchases in Idaho. 40% of families with children keep firearms in an accessible and unlocked location. Nationally, an estimated 2,200 children and adolescents are injured or killed by a firearm either unintentionally or due to a suicide attempt. Idaho can help minimize accidental injuries or deaths, by advocating and incentivizing gun safe purchases. Encouraging Idahoans to buy gun safes will make our homes more safe, benefit local businesses, and create a discussion about responsible gun ownership in Idaho. Gun safes also help keep legally owned firearms out of the hands of those unstable enough to commit violent acts.

Mental Health & Counseling in Idaho

Nearly every family has someone who they care deeply about, but worry about their mental health. Most mental health issues do not cause a person to be violent, but those who are prone to violence should be identified early. The problem is that Idaho struggles to fund mental health care for its citizens. According to the Idaho Chapter of NAMI, on a per capita basis Idaho spends about $44 on mental health annually while the national average is $120. Additionally, mental health issues often begin to manifest during adolescence, and Idaho falls far short of the number of high school counselors available to work with our emerging adults. Idaho’s high school student to counselor ratio is 447:1, far above the recommended 250:1.

We are a very responsible state, and we believe that family comes first. Our challenge is that often families don’t have reasonable access to mental health care, and recent cuts to our state education budget have further limited our ability to diagnose, treat, and support family members with mental illness.

Decreasing gun violence in the United States means securing our legally owned weapons away from those who would intentionally or unintentionally do harm to themselves or another person; effectively funding programs for the diagnosis, support, and treatment of severely mentally ill patients, and having an open dialogue about what responsible gun ownership means in Idaho.

I own a small business that has to pay this tax, and it is frustrating. Luckily in 2008 and 2009, the Idaho legislature passed H599 & H0083 that created a $100,000 personal property tax exemption. This exemption will provide tax relief to about 85% of Idaho’s business owners. The $100,000 exemption goes into effect when the state’s general fund grows 5% larger than the 2008 general fund. The trouble is that our economy really shrunk during the recession, and everyone has taken cuts to survive the downturn.

In 2008 our state collected 2.82 billion dollars in tax revenue which is used to fund public education (k-12 & state universities), roads, health and welfare, and public safety (to name a few). However the recession has slowed our economic engines, and we are growing at a slower pace. We are now well into fiscal year 2013, and DFM’s current revenue projections indicate that we will generate around 2.67 billion dollars in tax revenues by June 30th, 2013. Our state will need to generate around 2.94 billion in revenue before the exemption goes into effect, and that is likely to happen in the next couple years.

I believe in sound fiscal policy, and this is sound fiscal policy that will provide tax relief for small businesses while maintaining essential services such as schools, public safety, and roads. We might just need to wait a little longer for our economy to recover.

Now comes the big fight. The $100,000 personal property taxes exemption is going to be a major tax break for small to mid-sized businesses. In 2013, the personal property taxes the legislature will be discussing will largely impact big businesses and producers in Idaho. They will still be paying personal property taxes when the exemption goes into place, and the discussion about eliminating this tax hinges on the fundamental idea of how should taxes be paid in Idaho. Remember that in 2012, the Idaho Legislature gave these large corporations another tax cut worth 35 million dollars by lowering the corporate income tax rate. That tax cut only benefitted the top 17% of Idahoans, and a full repeal of the personal property tax without replacing revenue would harm more people than it will help.

For example, the Soda Springs School District gets approximately 50% of  its funding from personal property taxes levied in Caribou County. Eliminating the personal property tax will cause a significant impact on their schools. Additionally, finding a replacement source includes taxing real property (your home), increasing sales tax (your toilet paper), or increasing your income tax.

Any way you look at it, the tax revenue has to be made up somewhere, and I worry that the hard working middle class will be taxed more for the services they desperately need.

Note: Hyperlinks are provided in blue, just click the blue letters and it will take you to my source. I am working hard to learn this material, and if I have posted anything that is erroneous or I have misconstrued any information please email me at mat@erpforidaho.com. I will change it immediately. 

The most concerning part of their resolution is the NUCLEAR OPTION included in their policy statement. This option creates a mandatory deadline that gives the school board 100% authority to impose the “last best” offer on teachers. The concern is that it removes the teachers’ right to bargain for the best possible outcome for students, and it provides school boards the opportunity to stymie good faith negotiations by waiting for the deadline.

According to Betsy Russell of the Spokesman Review, “Among the provisions sought by the Idaho School Boards Association: allowing districts to impose contract terms unilaterally on local teachers unions if agreements aren’t reached by a firm deadline”

Many teachers are getting paid less now than they were three years ago, and as our economy improves they have a right to ask for wage improvements. Additionally, teachers should have a strong voice in how best to improve our schools. School boards have been elected to administer the schools, and their responsibility is to hear the voices of all stakeholders and the nuclear option does not maintain the historically positive relationships between teachers and school boards.

For more information on issues specific education improvements click here.