IFF - Idaho Freedom Foundation

The Pocatello Housing Authority recently spent nearly $14,000 in federal “stimulus” funds to plant new flowers and trees and install new sprinklers at a Pocatello housing project.  The project generated no new jobs, even though that's what stimulus money was supposed to accomplish.
 

Here's a simple proposition: Taxpayers have the right to know how every cent, every dollar is spent by their local and state governments. Even though that proposition is fairly simple, the state Legislature has struggled with even the smallest of measures to bring more government transparency to Idaho. Last year, the House split evenly on Hayden Republican Rep. Phil Hart's bill to require the state to start developing a spending database.

Despite the 2009 legislature freezing funds for time on the job pay raises for the state’s public school teachers, Idaho’s two largest school districts awarded the increases anyway.  They were obligated by multi-year contracts with local teachers’ associations.

More than $470,000 in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (aka the stimulus plan) funds have found their way to Idaho arts groups.  This money came from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and went either directly to groups like the Boise Contemporary Theater, the Idaho Shakespeare Festival and the Log Cabin Literary Center, or was distributed to groups statewide through the Idaho Commission on the Arts.

It took me about an hour to fill out my Census form. Not because I'm stupid and the 10 questions stumped me. I marked how many people live in at my address, because that is what the Constitution designed the Census to answer. I refused to answer the question of whether I own my home, because it's really none of the federal government's business. And then I paused for a long time. I was really torn about telling the federal government my race.

Idaho Freedom Foundation Executive Director Wayne Hoffman said Thursday the IFF will stand with the state of Idaho and join in any legal action to keep Idahoans free from having to buy health insurance under a federally-passed health insurance mandate.
 

The state Legislature will conclude its work this winter having determined that there's not a single agency in all of state government that can be eliminated. The conclusion could be interpreted to mean that every last agency is a necessary and proper component of the state government and that there is no duplication of services or opportunities to combine agencies. I find that hard to believe, and many Idahoans would, too, I suspect. The real reason agencies have staying power is that agencies have constituencies who would be upset if their programs were dissolved.

Click here to get your tickets to see Ron Paul in Boise.

Boise's urban renewal agency used $30,000 of taxpayer funds to write and market legislation to change how urban renewal agencies are governed and operate.  The revelation comes after inquiries by the Idaho Freedom Foundation to Boise's Capital City Development Corporation. 

The early graduation idea promoted by Reps. Steven Thayn of Emmett and Brandon Durst of Boise is the most innovative education concept to hit the Statehouse since the late 1990s. The Thayn/Durst plan, which passed the House 61-7 last month, would start a pilot project that would allow students to graduate early. That would save taxpayers money, a portion of which would be allotted to students in the form of a scholarship.