Published in the Post Register.

Just what is return on investment (ROI)?

When we talk about it in money terms, we’re usually talking about profitability. How much financial profit do we get when we invest our dollars?

Investing in communities, though, is an entirely different proposition.

Too often, we fall into the trap of assuming that a government should be run like a business. However, the government isn’t a business. Goals and outcomes are different — and they should be.

Rather than identifying and investing in profit centers and hoping for a return on investment in terms of revenue and profit, the government is meant to invest in communities. The return isn’t always a straight line to dollar returns, however. 

When we invest in communities, the returns are often in an educated and productive workforce, public safety and health. It’s hard to quantify your quality of life, but that’s the main advantage of government investment in our communities.

That’s not to say that there are no monetary considerations when you invest in our communities. For example, for every dollar spent on early childhood education, the Learning Policy Institute research indicates that we reap about $7.30 in economic benefits down the road. A better-educated citizenry and workforce contribute to long-term economic benefits that aren’t readily apparent just by looking at next year.

What about infrastructure? Well, according to a research review cited by the Economic Policy Institute, every $100 invested in infrastructure boosts private-sector output by an average of $17 in the long run. That’s right, we get an extra boost, on top of what’s already there, when the government invests in infrastructure.

So, where do tax cuts fall? Well, an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, ranking 11 different methods of economic stimulus, places tax cuts at number 11. 

Investing in our people, in our communities, provides us with benefits that we just don’t see when we let everyone fend for themselves. We poo-poo government safety net investments like food assistance and Medicaid. However, the incidence of fraud in these programs is low, and they help our communities in ways that private charity can’t. Indeed, research from Indiana University found that only 30% of charitable giving focuses on the poor and alleviating the issues they face.

It’s for us to take a look at our leaders and ask them to invest in us. We’ve been demanding that they invest in education. They aren’t. We ask them to invest in infrastructure. They don’t. We had to force them to invest in affordable healthcare by passing Medicaid expansion. And they still spend more time trying to get out of their obligation than they do addressing affordable housing issues. 

We have a historic surplus in our state right now. But, as my friend David Roth points out, is it truly a surplus? Or is it the result of years of under-investing in our communities and our people? It’s time for our so-called leaders to stop giving tax cuts to their wealthy donors and friends. It’s time for them to invest in Idaho.

Miranda Marquit, Master of Business Administration, is a nationally recognized financial expert, writer, speaker and podcaster. She is the state committeewoman for the Bonneville County Democratic Central Committee.

Published in the Post Register.

Are we paying attention?

More and more, it’s important to pay attention to what’s going on with our school board and city council elections. These aren’t always the sexiest elections — but they’re often the most important.

While it’s exciting to get caught up in a presidential race or look at Congressional races, the reality of the situation is that we’re most likely to have a real voice in the non-partisan races going on right here in our local districts and cities.

When we’re looking at the school board, auditorium district and city council, it seems small and mundane at first glance. But this is where the rubber meets the road. This is where we have the first line of defense when it comes to public health issues and where issues like “should we destroy this park?” are decided.

Unfortunately, because we tend to get caught up in big splashy races, we haven’t been seeing that some of our local positions are under attack by extremist groups. The trend is most glaring up north, where races include school board candidates who are backed by the Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF), which avowed on Facebook that one of its aims is to dismantle public education, even though Idaho’s constitution requires the support of public education.

We have city council and school board candidates here in Idaho Falls who are backed by people tied to the IFF — and could likely be swayed by those kinds of extremist views. 

One of the biggest concerns, though, is the fact a lot of what we’re seeing is the result of misinformation, as well as coordinated campaigns by IFF-like organizations across the country. There is a concerted effort to dismantle some of the systems that are most beneficial to society, including education, as well as block investments in our communities and people.

And these are decisions that have the biggest impact at the local level and are made by members of our city councils, school boards and other non-partisan boards. This is where we have the most pull, and this is where we need to take a stand against extremism right now. Once we get through the non-partisan elections, we need to take a hard look at who’s representing us in the statehouse.

At some point, if we expect to move forward as a state and even as a country, we need to look beyond partisan politics, especially in a state like Idaho that has a very lopsided one-party rule. It’s almost never a good idea when one party has outsized power — no matter what party that is. And when a small minority of loud and extremist voices starts dominating the party in power, things can get even worse, as we’ve seen in the last two legislative sessions.

It’s time to take a stand against extremism. Look at the candidates. Review their policies. And see who supports them. Because this year and next year could be a turning point for Idaho.

Miranda Marquit, Master of Business Administration, is a nationally recognized financial expert, speaker and writer. She is the state committeewoman for the Bonneville County Democratic Central Committee.

Published in the Post Register.

“If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and will never be.” — Thomas Jefferson

“Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility.” — Eleanor Roosevelt

I’ve been pondering the nature of freedom since visiting Boston and walking the Freedom Trail. 

In Massachusetts, it turns out, masking and vaccinations haven’t resulted in tyranny. There’s a freedom from fear, knowing that, for the most part, if I have an emergency, there will be a hospital bed for me. I can be reasonably certain I won’t bring a highly contagious disease back to my friends and family. 

Knowing that my Airbnb hostess requires vaccinations, it’s easy to freely interact with other houseguests. I’ve been able to enjoy time with old friends, thanks to the understanding that medical science is providing guidance line upon line, as we receive more knowledge. I know they won’t endanger me (or my loved ones) through a decision to spread a preventable illness. 

Certain people in Idaho, on the other hand, seem to suffer under the illusion that freedom means doing whatever they want, whenever they want, with no regard to their impact on others. 

However, as we’ve heard countless times before, “your right to swing your fist ends where my face begins.”

When living in a society — and taking advantage of the infrastructure, advantages and protections that everyone’s taxpayer dollars go toward — it’s laughable to pretend that you exist in a vacuum. That your decision to remain unvaccinated and willfully ignorant of the further light and knowledge available through science is somehow “freedom.”

You talk about “choice,” but you’re stealing others’ choices. Someone who ends up in the emergency room, through no fault of their own, is impacted by your choice to be unvaccinated. Sure, you’re suffering the consequence of your willful ignorance. But you’re not the only one facing the consequences. You’re forcing others to wait for hospital beds. You’re forcing deaths. Your “choice” results in livelihoods lost and families unnecessarily torn apart. 

You could have prevented this disaster, but you chose not to. In the name of some imaginary and immature concept of “freedom,” you’re proclaiming that somehow your “right” to spread contagion and ignore the progress of centuries is more important than everyone else’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

George Washington mandated smallpox inoculation to the entire Continental Army. Benjamin Franklin, after experiencing tragedy and learning more about inoculation, changed his position and began favoring mandates. They knew individual freedom has to be tempered by wider freedom as a society. Plopped down in the alternative reality of the Idaho “Freedom” Foundation, Washington and Franklin would be labeled tyrants for their views.

Idaho is first in Covid positivity rate, third in hospitalization due to Covid and fifth in Covid death rate, thanks to cynical extremists who use buzzwords in an effort to rile their base and line their own pockets.

Miranda Marquit, MBA, is a nationally recognized financial expert, writer and speaker. She is the state committeewoman for the Bonneville County Democratic Central Committee.

Published in the Post Register

Why are we paying to defend unconstitutional laws designed to disenfranchise us?

That’s the question I asked myself when I saw that the Idaho State Legislature had been billed right around $185,000 by the private counsel it hired to defend the anti-initiative legislation passed during the last session.

It’s not just private counsel that we, the taxpayers, are shelling out for, though. Each time the state legislature passes a law that flies in the face of our rights as citizens, the State Attorney General’s office has to get involved. We pay for that, too. But now, on top of paying the AG $60 an hour to fight against our best interests, the legislature has us paying about $470 an hour to private attorneys.

Last session, one of the earliest pieces of business enacted by the legislature was to increase its “constitutional defense” fund. These so-called representatives know they’re going to pass bad policy for problems that don’t exist — and they know full well that their statutes won’t pass constitutional muster. The fact that they allocate an increasing number of our taxpayer dollars into this fund is just more proof that many of our legislators have no idea what it means to be fiscally responsible.

Instead, they’re being irresponsible, ignoring the people’s business while they work overtime (we pay for that too!) to pass laws they hope will silence their constituents.

We have a “surplus” of more than a billion dollars. Rather than investing that money in the people of Idaho by tackling issues like affordable housing, education, updated infrastructure and healthcare access — things people care about — I worry that many of our current crop of legislators will simply throw more money into writing and passing bad laws.

Review the last two legislative sessions. Look at the laws that have passed. How many are designed to actually help Idahoans? Unfortunately, the consequences of many of the laws do actual harm. You’ll see bills that limit the ability of individual cities to provide needed services to their citizens. You’ll see legislation designed to effectively end our ability to take matters into our own hands when “representatives” don’t actually, well, represent us. And you’ll see a raft of poorly-worded bills that harm already vulnerable populations in the name of a made-up culture war.

Passing initiatives like the Quality Education Act are a good step forward as we take matters into our own hands. The legislature has decided that it’s not interested in funding education, so we’re working to do that. The legislature refused to pass Medicaid expansion, so we did that ourselves, too. But we need to do more than rectify their bad faith efforts at legislation after the fact. At some point, we need to stop electing them and paying them to work against our best interests.

Miranda Marquit, MBA, is a nationally recognized financial expert, speaker and writer. She is the State Committeewoman for the Bonneville County Democratic Central Committee.

Published in the Post Register.

Thomas Jefferson pointed out that sufficient leisure and education are necessary in order for us to have an informed and engaged electorate. I thought about this a lot a couple of weeks ago as I attended City Club to listen to Rep. Mike Simpson.

We talk about being engaged politically and how important that is. I talk about it all the time. 

But who has the ability to just show up in the middle of the workday in the middle of the workweek and listen to a U.S. Congressmember talk about an important issue? I’m lucky enough to have the flexibility to come on a workday. 

But what about those who have to work certain hours and have restrictive jobs? They have to pay to put food on the table. They can’t afford to take time off for an event like this. 

City Club makes an amazing effort, rebroadcasting for free and charging a small fee to sit in the gallery. But not every organization is City Club. Get involved on a nonprofit board? You might be required to donate at a certain level. Even when it comes to local politics, you need to have some means to travel to meetings and be involved in various committees. 

Often, decision-makers in parties and on boards are people who have the means to be there. The people most affected? Well, they don’t always have access.

There’s a lot going on here. But the main thing is that I’m fortunate to have time and means and flexibility to be informed and engaged.

It’s much harder when you’re stuck working multiple jobs for poverty wages and still try to get the kids to soccer practice and get their homework done. And it’s been harder since COVID.

So maybe instead of yelling about how people don’t participate, we should consider figuring out how to make participation easier. If an informed and engaged citizenry is actually the goal, we should be examining our systems of participation and finding ways to include the people who are affected by these policies and who suffer most from decision makers who have no concept of what it’s like to work so hard and still barely survive. 

My real concern right now is that our current policymakers and decision makers aren’t interested in an informed and engaged citizenry. When you hold “public comment” in a hard to get to place, during work hours, like the so-called task force on education is doing, you’re essentially making it clear you’re not interested in participation. In fact, between the all-out attack currently being perpetrated on our education system and our mounting issues with affordable housing, it almost seems as if certain elements of our state “leadership” are actively trying to quash citizen involvement.

Unless we insist on change now, and unless we re-commit ourselves to the idea that voting, reliable information and access to policymakers are good things, we could be in serious trouble. 

Miranda Marquit, MBA, is a nationally recognized financial expert, writer and speaker. She is the State Committeewoman for the Bonneville Democratic Central Committee.

Published in the Post Register.

According to the annual Boise State public policy survey, Idahoans’ priorities included education, jobs/economy, healthcare, coronavirus response and housing. Constituents have been clamoring for meaningful help with property taxes for two legislative sessions now. While it’s true that property taxes are mostly handled at the local level, the reality is that the legislature can also provide relief by raising the exemption, reversing the effects of a law they passed a few years ago.

Read that last sentence again. Our so-called representatives spend a lot of time passing laws that have negative impacts on Idahoans and then citizens try to clean up after them through initiatives or by asking them to pass different laws. A simpler solution might be to elect legislators that actually, you know, care about their constituents.

 Instead, our legislators, including those right here in Bonneville County, have been pandering to extremists. They wring their hands and make noises about their “concern” and then go ahead and enact legislation that doesn’t meaningfully address any of the issues Idahoans care about. This recent  legislative session featured grandstanding, poorly written bills that stamp on local control while restricting economic growth and an egregious limitation of our initiative rights.

At some point we need to move away from the ride or die mentality that only looks at the letter behind someone’s name and results in voting for a “team.” Instead, we need to be the educated and engaged citizens Thomas Jefferson envisioned. He expected people to learn about candidates and their policies. 

That’s what we need right now. We need to look at what these legislators are doing and the policies they’re passing. And we need to take action. It’s time to stop fighting with our so-called representatives and replace them with legislators who are less concerned about grabbing power for themselves and more concerned about actually fulfilling their roles as public servants.

Miranda Marquit, MBA, is a nationally recognized financial expert, writer and speaker. She is the state committeewoman for the Bonneville County Democratic Central Committee.

You may know Representative Barbara Ehardt as a basketball coach. She’s a nice lady and has given good service to Idaho Falls. However, in Boise, the story is a little different. Do you know her real record in the Idaho Legislature? 

It’s disappointing, but, unfortunately, Ehardt has failed to represent us on several key issues:

1. Property taxes
2. Education
3. INL
4. Issues that impact us here in Idaho Falls

Ehardt’s Record on Property Taxes

In 2020, Ehardt failed to address rapidly rising residential property taxes by not making any significant effort to either protect the portion of your home’s value exempt from property taxes or cutting them for our hard-hit senior citizens. A quick look through her voting record makes her priorities clear. Spoiler: most of her time is spent on pet issues authored with help from outside interests, not on the items many D33 residents say matter to them.

(Source: Ehardt 2020 legislative record.)

Ehardt’s Record on Education

Funding for Idaho’s colleges and universities.

Ehardt voted against funding for Idaho’s colleges and universities. Three times. These were not “extras.” There were basic appropriations needed to support our institutions of higher learning. She voted against these basic bills to fund education even though INL and other major employers need strong colleges and universities to supply their workforce.

(Sources: HB 603, 3/9/20, HB 641, 3/16/20 and H644, 3/17/20)

In committee during 2020, she voted to eliminate Idaho’s education standards for K-12. Efforts led by local Republican Senator Dean Mortimer helped block this egregious move. It’s deeply concerning and disappointing that a legislator that spends so much time with our youth would take such an irresponsible step without a plan for replacement.

(Source: Idaho Education News, 2/5/20)

Voted against basic safety requirements, such as criminal background checks, seatbelts for travel, and emergency evacuation procedures, for daycare facilities.

(HB312, 1/28/20)

Ehardt’s Record on the Idaho National Labratory

Authored a demand to end diversity and inclusion programs in our colleges and universities, despite insistence from INL and other major businesses that they need these programs. The Director of INL was so disturbed that he stated publicly that “diversity at the laboratory is really, really important to us” and is needed to build INL’s future workforce

(Source: Idaho Statesman, 10/6/19)

Opposed funding the Idaho Workforce Development Council which tailors Idaho’s education and training programs to the needs of local employers like INL and Melaleuca.

(Source: HB 542, 2/27/20)

Ehardt’s Record on Issues of Concern to Local Residents

Voted against the Idaho Patient Act, a bill championed by members of both parties and put forth by Frank Vandersloot in an effort to restrict overly-aggressive medical debt collectors. While the bill ultimately passed, Ehardt’s complicity with companies like Medical Recovery Services is concerning. It calls into question whether we can rely on her to fight for us, instead of against us.

(Source: HB 515, 2/24/20)

Opposed regulating vaping sales to minors. As a member of an Idaho Falls city subcommittee dealing with health, I understand that vaping among minors is a huge concern here in town. The bill ultimately passed, requiring regulation similar to tobacco. It’s disappointing that our local “representative” instead sided with a vape shop owner from Northern Idaho, Rep. Vito Barbieri, rather than putting the health needs of our youth first.

(Source: HB 538, 3/6/20)

Supported having legislative vacancies filled solely by political parties without the governor’s input. Our elected officials, whether we agree with them or not, should have input into replacements. After all, they are, ultimately, elected and accountable to We the People. We should not be letting backroom politics dominate our state.

(Source: HB 378 2/12/20)

Wanted to prevent the Idaho public from fully learning who is communicating with legislators on legislation. This is vital. Some of Rep. Ehardt’s bills are actually authored, in part, by outside organizations. Idaho has amazing Sunshine Laws and other transparency efforts. It’s concerning when someone who is supposed to represent us won’t be forthcoming about where the legislation is actually coming from.

(Source: HB 601, 3/10/20)

Supported spending over $7 million on office space for our part-time legislators at the expense of other priorities like education. These “leaders” pretend like we don’t have the resources to fund our priorities, particularly education, but are perfectly willing to allocate funds for their own comfort.

(Source: H289, 3/27/19)

Voted to limit Idahoans’ constitutional right to put measures directly on the ballot. We’ve shown ourselves judicious in the way we approach ballot initiatives. Very few have passed in our history. The process is already difficult and time-consuming. There’s no reason to make it impossible. Instead of stomping on voters, our “representatives” should be listening to us. Every living Idaho Attorney General, past and present, concluded this was an unconstitutional breach of citizens’ constitutional rights, and it was vetoed by Gov. Brad Little. 

(Source: H296, 3/29/19, and HB 303, 4/10/19)

Voted to block healthcare for the working poor and fought against Medicaid Expansion every step of the way — even though nearly 65% of the people living in our district voted in favor of expansion. Not only that, but Ehardt voted to add onerous restrictions on Medicaid expansion coverage, adding millions to the cost.

(Source: HB464, 03/21/18, and SB1204, 04/04/19)

Rep. Barbara Ehardt is a nice person and a great basketball coach. However, she neglects key local issues like property taxes, education, and INL. I might want her to coach my kids, but I don’t want her representing me in Boise.

Ed Marohn, a former Idaho Falls City Council member, was one of the first people to suggest that I might run for office. I’m honored that such an amazing human and part of the community would endorse me.

Jackie Larsen, a retired nursing administrator, knows more than most the importance of protecting people and adopting policies that promote our health. Thank you so much for your kind endorsement.

I remember admiring Linda Milam as I was growing up here in Idaho Falls. She’s the first mayor I remember. I’m so humbled that she would endorse me for state legislature.