An NPR member station
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

State Lawmakers Sometimes Aim Small

KTVB-TV

The Washington and ldaho legislatures will take up big systemic issues such as public school funding when they convene next month. But you might be surprised to learn that many individual legislators have modest goals when you ask them what they hope to accomplish.

Republican Shawn Keough from Sandpoint, in the northern panhandle of Idaho, is entering her 11th term as a state senator. She’s one of the senior members and as such she’s involved in high level work, such as writing state budgets. But it’s the problem solving that makes the job satisfying for her.

"I am able to make differences every once in a while that are positive in people’s everyday lives and that’s what keeps me going," Keough said. "I had a case this fall where a lady had her driver’s license revoked.”

The Idaho Department of Transportation sent this woman a letter by first-class mail that reminded her she needed to renew her license. Turns out she never got the letter. And when she did find out about the renewal it was too late. Her license was revoked. That caused quite a hardship because the woman is a caregiver for her husband and they live in a rural area. She needs to drive to satisfy their needs.

“But we were able to get her license back and now I’m looking at a systemic change that goes back to more concrete delivery than first-class mail, like certified mail, for example,” Keough said.

It's not earth shattering work, but it helped someone with a problem.

Besides the driver’s license notification bill, Keough also heads to Boise with a few other goals. She’d like to find more money for rural towns that need to fix or replace water and sewer infrastructure. At the top of her list is finding money to straighten out a particularly dangerous stretch of U.S. Highway 95. That’s Idaho’s north-south artery. The offending area is a sharp curve near the McArthur Lake Wildlife Area north of Sandpoint.

Across the border, northeastern Washington Republican Rep. Shelly Short agrees that her most important work is often the least glamorous.

“I do a lot of interaction with state agencies. I read a lot of rules," Short said. "Legislation, although that’s what our focus is, between that and the budget, when we go over to Olympia, that’s, ironically, a small part.”

But legislation is at the top of Short’s 2017 agenda. Her top priority is securing a tax incentive for a manufacturing company that wants to build solar power components in her district.

“They’re hoping to get the tax incentive, much like aluminum smelters have," she said. "I started it last year so I’m building on that with some clawback language, things that are going to give certainty to people who are concerned about those kinds of things, that there are job performance metrics.”

Spokane Valley Republican Sen. Mike Padden often works on a variety of smaller projects, whether trying to find funding for a trail in his district or help for a small business. He still remembers a bill from about 15 years ago when he was a state representative in the minority party, when sometimes passing small bills was the best you can hope for.

“This particular bill allowed the Union Gospel Mission and the Lion’s Clubs to be able to give out free glasses to poor folks or homeless people that needed them," Padden said. "The state had required an eye exam by an optometrist or an ophthalmologist. So anyway, we were able to get that through. They had 10,000 glasses that were ready to distribute over time.”

If you go back through legislation passed during any session, you find that most of it is pretty limited and pretty mundane. Sometimes it’s simply getting a resolution passed or getting something named as their state’s official something-or-other. Those are the accomplishments legislators are often most proud of and first to mention when they’re running for re-election.

Related Content