BOISE, Idaho — As Idaho enters phase one of Gov. Little’s Rebound Idaho plan, people are already asking, is this the new normal?
A lot of things may have a new normal, including politics.
House Minority Leader Ilana Rubel, says she and her colleagues know the next legislative session will not be normal.
So what will that look like?
For starters, Rubel does think that Gov. Little has done a good job with his plan to reopen Idaho.
"I was really pleased with the governor's approach to this. I thought the stay-home order, people might criticize it. But, I think it really helps save us from a much bigger spike in dust and infections,” Rubel said.
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Although she thinks the Rebound Idaho plan is solid so far, Rubel believes the Legislature could have done more for Idahoans before wrapping up the 2020 session.
"Well, I think the Legislature really blew it frankly, unfortunately that time was totally squandered on divisive social issues. I mean, we were in session with this and all they wanted to talk about was you know banning affirmative action and passing the anti-transgender bills. Doing all these, you know, hot button social issues that are absolutely useless to the waitress out there who just lost their job,” Rubel said.
Instead, Rubel says the Legislature should have concentrated on things like making sure education continues at an acceptable level during the pandemic.
“So many things that the Legislature could have been doing during that time that would have been actually useful, like looking at how are we going to manage remote learning across the state. It was pretty clear that kids were probably going to have to be leaving school. And then all over the state we had a lack of broadband access and areas where schools were totally unequipped. Parents and families were totally unequipped to be moving to an online learning model," Rubel said.
Looking ahead to the 2021 legislative session, lawmakers already know they will have a lot of tough decisions to make.
“It's going to be really tough to figure out how to balance the basic needs of the state in terms of making sure we still have some decently functioning schools, now that we still have law enforcement and fire departments. And in terms of addressing the property tax crisis, we already had underway, it's going to be a really difficult balancing act, to try to keep everybody happy and we're going to be looking at revenues that are just terrible,” Rubel said.
Rubel adds that the coronavirus pandemic has also reaffirmed what areas she thinks the state needs to improve. One example, Idaho's job force.
"We need higher wage jobs so that people can weather this stuff better," Rubel said. "The unemployment levels that we're seeing are terrible but I think one of the real problems that is compounding it is Idaho is such a low wage state. We have never invested in higher education, we've never invested in the workforce development that would get people those higher paying jobs, and so we are basically a very low wage state, which is never a good thing, but is especially terrible when everything comes to a screeching halt and we have so much of the state that has no cushion to fall back on, you know you have people who don't have a week's wages to live on in the bank."
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