“It just relieves the department’s responsibility to respond to every call,” said Sen. Bert Brackett, R-Rogerson, who is sponsoring the plan. He said 90 percent of the complaints the Department of Agriculture fields deal with horses. “This bill helps define who is responsible for what.”

The legislation splits animals into production animals, which are used for agricultural or commercial purposes, and companion animals. Horses could be either a production or companion animal. Some dogs, specifically guard dogs or stock dogs, could also be considered production animals.

Brackett said local law enforcement is already involved in complaints on companion animals, since they must take steps to prosecute any potential offenders.

The Senate Agricultural Affairs Committee approved the legislation Wednesday. It now faces a full Senate vote. It’s supported by the Idaho Farm Bureau as well as the Idaho Dairymen’s Association. Officials with both groups said it’s been a long process to change the state animal cruelty law.

Wally Butler, a range and livestock specialist with the Farm Bureau, said his group doesn’t want all horses to be considered livestock because it supports constructing new horse processing plants that could humanely slaughter horses that are neglected or have no useful purpose. Butler said labeling horses as companions could harm those efforts.

Brackett’s legislation, which doesn’t mention horse slaughter, now faces a full Senate vote.

UPDATE: The Senate approved the legislation on a 32-0 vote on March 22. It now heads to the House for consideration.

Merrill compared the changes to one potential activity in state parks, boating. “We plugged a hole in our boat that we’re trying to float with duct tape,” Merrill said. She added that the parks department is heading toward some rapids. She later told state lawmakers that she needed two paddles, but not a motor or yacht, to help the department make the transition.

State general fund dollars for parks dropped from $16 million in the 2009 fiscal year to almost $1.4 million in the current 2011 fiscal year. The total budget for parks, which includes user fees and federal dollars, went from $42 million to $30 million.

However, as funding has dropped, demand for parks has risen. Merrill said people visiting and spending the night in parks rose by 8 percent in the past year. Due to increases in the user fees, revenues were up by 11 percent during the final six months of 2010.

Merrill said the parks budget currently has a $4.5 million shortfall that’s temporarily being filled by layoffs of 25 employees and shifting money from cash reserves and RV registration costs. She said the department could maintain the status quo for three to five years, but needs to find that money elsewhere.

One area parks are looking for that money is in corporate sponsorships in parks, though Merrill said they would be tasteful and not, for example, that parks in north Idaho would be named after soft drinks.

“That’s not where we’re headed,” Merrill said. The parks department isn’t counting on sponsorships in its next budget, but Merrill said it could see $300,000 in yearly revenues in the future.

The ads in parks could be small, as they are in California

Many other states parks departments are looking into similar deals for corporate sponsorships. One company that specializes in working with state parks and private companies is Government Solutions Group (GSG), which is based in California. Idaho already has a contract with GSG for printing park guides. GSG prints and distributes the guides at no cost to Idaho or any of the 17 states it currently has agreements with. GSG’s profits come from selling ads in the print guides.

Chris Boyer, GSG’s chief operating officer, said the ads in park guides or small ads on park signs aren’t trying to distract from parks. “This is not about putting commercialization in the parks at all,” Boyer told IdahoReporter.com. “This is about a very understated, relevant messaging that goes into parks.”

Boyer said one example of GSG’s work is a sign next to a playground that’s sponsored by Juicy Juice. He said the juice company wanted to reach mothers and the signs talked about safety, fun and games. “It’s a very relevant message for moms, and they appreciate that,” Boyer said. GSG lists on its website that it also works with companies selling cars, insurance, and outdoors gear.

Sen. Bert Brackett, R-Rogerson, encouraged Merrill to not overdo the ads. “We don’t want to commercialize or sell off our parks,” Brackett said during a Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee meeting Tuesday.

IDPR spokesman Jennifer Blazek said the state is developing custom marketing plans for both reaching people in parks and getting people into parks. She said the effort’s a huge undertaking to understand how IDPR can do business and marketing better.

Rep. Marv Hagedorn, R-Meridian, said he thinks IDPR is thinking outside the box more than any other state agency affected by the drop in state revenues, though it’s still unclear if all their ideas will be successful.

Rep. Wendy Jaquet, D-Ketchum, said sponsorship is an interesting idea, but state parks need to be sustainable. “I don’t think they can make enough off of fees,” Jaquet said. “They need a permanent source of funding.” One way to boost revenue, she suggested, is charging more for out-of-state visitors to parks, though she said IDPR doesn’t see eye-to-eye with her on that issue.

Corporate sponsorship will be on the agenda when the Park and Recreation Board meets Feb. 9 and 10 in Boise.

“There are definitely cracks in our system that are beginning to appear,” said IPTV General Manager Peter Morrill, who said IPTV has put off maintenance for three years.  Morrill said IPTV needs to remove some of its analog broadcast equipment, now that it’s switched to digital broadcasting.  “There is still a boatload of analog equipment along mountaintops.”

State funding makes up 20 percent of IPTV funding, with grants and donations covering the rest of its budget.  Lawmakers on the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee questioned whether Morrill has looked at getting more private contributions to fund the statewide TV network.

“This committee got a lot of e-mails in support of public TV from last year,” Sen. Bert Brackett, R-Rogerson, said.  “If each one of those e-mails came with a financial contribution, you’d be in a much different financial situation this year.”  Last year, Gov. Butch Otter suggested that the state phase out its funding for IPTV, a move lawmakers didn’t follow.

Morrill said that IPTV increased the number of donors through fundraising, but the average amount given dropped.  “Times are not the easiest times out there,” Morrill said.  “Corporate contributions are very challenging right now.  It’s not an easy field to plow.”

Besides old equipment, Morrill said IPTV also needs to extra funding to not run afoul of mandates from the Federal Communications Commission to improve its emergency alert system and follow the CALM Act, which is designed to limit how loud TV commercials can get.  Morrill said public television stations, which don’t run traditional 30-second commercials, failed to get an exemption in the law.

That legislation would also require that all bikes riding on Idaho roads have working brakes. Werk said it would clamp down on “fixies,” which he called “a new craze” of bicycles with fixed gears and no brakes.

That legislation passed on a 20-14 vote. After the initial vote, several Republican senators, Steve Bair of Blackfoot, Russ Fulcher of Meridian, Brent Hill of Rexburg, and Bert Brackett of Rogerson, switched their votes from yes to no, to get to the 20-14 vote.

The Senate voted down another bike proposal from Werk that would create a $75 enhanced fine for traffic incidents involving bicyclists. That fine would be paid by the cyclist or driver found at fault. “We are trying to tell cyclists that if you endanger your life by breaking the law… that you should pay an enhanced fine and remember that for the rest of your life,” Werk said.

The enhanced fine failed on a 7-27 vote, with a range of reasons for opposition. Sen. John Goedde, R-Coeur d’Alene, said he opposed the measure on affordability grounds. He said cyclists with $4,000 bicycles could afford a $75 fine, but that the fine would hit children with a morning paper route hard. Sen. Denton Darrington, R-Declo, said he opposed increasing fines that could apply to drivers. Senate Majority Leader Bart Davis, R-Idaho Falls, and Hill said there were technical problems with how the legislation was written.

Werk has two other proposals related to bicycles that are currently on the amending order. The legislation requiring brakes and penalizing darting into crosswalks now heads to the House. Read IdahoReporter.com’s coverage of Werk’s bicycle legislation here and here. The text of brake legislation is available here and the text of the $75 fine legislation is available here.

“At this time, a release in inmates is not an option,” said Rep. Darrell Bolz, R-Caldwell. He worked on the IDOC budget that the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee approved Wednesday. IDOC Director Brent Reinke had said that releasing 250 inmates immediately could save the state $5 million. Idaho currently has 7,422 inmates in state and private prisons. Current projections show that rising to almost 7,700 by May 2011.

“The fact that we’re at capacity now makes it really difficult,” Reinke said about the proposed budget.

About half of the corrections budget is going to contracts with private companies that the state can’t reduce during difficult economic times. “That makes 44 percent of the total budget, and they’re basically fixed,” said Sen. Bert Brackett, R-Rogerson. “That means any holdbacks have to come out of the remaining budget.”

Contracts with the private Idaho Correctional Center in Boise will see a 3 percent increase in the next budget year. Reinke said that contract can’t change, but that private facilities are cheaper that state prisons. “Their contract rates are so low,” he said. It costs the state $40 per day for an inmate in a private prison, and $57 per day in a state prison. Reinke said IDOC is currently bidding out a new contract for inmates’ medical services, which should save the state money.

Another area of savings will be delaying the opening of new private Correctional Alternative Placement Program (CAPP) facility in Boise. The 400-bed facility specializing in 90-day substance abuse treatment is billed as a cheaper alternative to housing inmates. It was initially scheduled to open in May, then delayed six weeks until mid-June. On Friday, JFAC moved to push that opening back to September. “There’s not a year’s worth of funding,” Reinke said. “I don’t know if we can make it by September.”

Sen. Nicole LeFavour, D-Boise, spoke against pushing back the opening of CAPP. She said a lack of treatment options is a big obstacle to releasing inmates on parole on time. “The delay of this, I do worry, will only further that problem, and make it less likely that we will release inmates on time,” she said. “A lack of investment in this area will probably cost us more in the long run.” A report from the Legislature’s Office of Performance Evaluations released Feb. 25 said there are some slowdowns in Idaho’s parole process.

“A delay in education and treatment for inmates can be a delaying factor in parole,” said Rep. Shirley Ringo, D-Moscow.

State prisons would see a $6 million reduction, community corrections a $1.3 million reduction, and the Idaho Commission of Pardons and Parole a $135,000 reduction in the next budget set by JFAC, which starts July 1. Those would be on top of the holdbacks prisons are seeing in the current budget. Private prisons would increase $485,000, costs for placing inmates in county prisons and prisons in Texas and Oklahoma would rise $2.7 million. With the delays, costs for running CAPP would still increase $2.8 million. Bolz said even with the reductions, it’s likely that lawmakers will need to come back next year and find $2 million to $5 million in additional revenues for prisons. He called the budget set by JFAC a “target budget,” that would see some changes in the 2011 legislative session.

The decision to delay the higher ed special programs budget stems from $1.59 million in spending for the Center for Advanced Energy Studies (CAES). JFAC members weren’t critical of CAES, which leverages about $17 million in grants from the Idaho National Laboratory and other sources for research programs. Rather, the decision to delay came from concerns that moving the $1.59 million make it look like colleges and universities would be taking a larger spending reduction. Rep. George Eskridge, R-Dover, said that shifting the CAES money could be a roundabout way to make it appear that education spending had dropped further.

Sen. Bert Brackett, R-Rogerson, said it makes sense to consider the CAES spending with the rest of the higher education budget. “We owe it to the process to do more thorough discussion of all the implications and the ramifications,” he said. Brackett added that the appearance of a larger cut for education could lead universities to ask for higher student fee increases. He’s against that action. “I don’t personally like to do that. We’ve already done that considerably and I don’t think it’s fair to students, to put an additional burden on them.”

JFAC co-chairman Sen. Dean Cameron, R-Rupert, said he expects Idaho public universities and colleges to ask the State Board of Education for higher tuition and fees, but that he opposes that tack. “They have reserves they ought to be using instead of raising fees,” he said. Cameron called those reserves cash cows for the universities. In-state tuition at Idaho’s four four-year higher education institutions has gone up an average of more than 7 percent a year during the past decade. Cameron said JFAC could include instructions in the higher ed budget telling university presidents not to ask for tuition hikes. Rep. Cliff Bayer, R-Boise, said he’d support that effort. It’s unclear how the schools would deal with dwindling state support without raising tuition.

The decision to delay setting the special programs budget, which includes the CAES money, passed JFAC on a close 10-9 vote. Sen. Dean Mortimer, R-Idaho Falls, who put together the budget, said he’s addressed the concerns about the fund shift for the research programs. “I spent a significant amount of time working with these universities,” he said. “I think we’ve come to an agreement that will not change if we hold this.”

JFAC is scheduled to set the K-12 public schools budget Wednesday. It accounts for more than half of Idaho’s general fund spending.

JFAC co-chair Maxine Bell, R-Jerome, said changes to how the state funds the commission should start elsewhere. “We are not the policy committee to do the phase out,” she said. “That is above our pay grade.”

On Friday, JFAC also approved spending for the Soil Conservation Commission (SCC), which is also facing consolidation. The SCC works with local soil conservation districts on conservation and treatment programs. The governor’s budget included shifting all that funding into the Department of Agriculture, which JFAC did not adopt. Budget writers did shift four employees from the Soil Conservation Commission to the Office of Species Conservation (OSC) for programming work. Sen. Bert Brackett, R-Rogerson, said moving the employees makes sense, since their work comes from federal grants that are given to the OSC. “It reduces a layer of state government,” he said. “This will streamline it.” Brackett said those jobs would go away when federal funding runs out.

The SCC would lose seven staff in total, though administrator Sara Schmidt is fine working with a smaller staff, according to Rep. Darrell Bolz, R-Caldwell. “It’s not as bad a cut as it looks like on paper right here,” he said. Brackett added that the reductions would trim staff in Boise but maintain technical staff in the field across Idaho.

Several of the state agencies targeted by the governor have already made changes. The Idaho Human Rights Commission is set to merge with the Department of Labor and the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation is reshaping its business, including increasing park fees.

JFAC will consider the budgets of other state agencies that Otter wants to phase out funding for, including the State Independent Living Council, Developmental Disabilities Council, and Idaho Public Television, next week.

Read IdahoReporter.com’s story on the joint memorial here.

The federal legislation, proposed by Democratic Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, would penalize possessing, selling, shipping, or receiving a horse, a horse carcass, or horse flesh for the intent of human consumption. Those actions would carry a fine or prison term of up to three years. Conyers introduced the legislation last January. The plan has 180 co-sponsors, but hasn’t moved out of a U.S. House subcommittee since March 2009.

Sen. Bert Brackett, R-Rogerson, is pushing for Idaho to come out against the proposal before Congress acts. “I think it’s important for the states to weigh in, and that’s what I’m asking Idaho to do,” he said Monday after introducing the new memorial in the Senate Agricultural Affairs Committee. The wording of the memorial changed since last session and has been expanded to include all horses, not just domestic horses. “This is more precise and more targeted,” Brackett said. “In addition to that, the problem has become more acute with each passing year. There’s more unwanted, uncared for, and neglected horses, so the problem is still growing and still out there.” He said the economic recession is affecting horses and their owners. “Sanctuaries, safe havens, and rescue operations are literally being overwhelmed and the number of horses continue to increase every year. With the high cost of feed and hay and the down economic times, people are literally abandoning their horses. That results in a growing problem on public lands as well as parks, or wherever they get dumped out.”

The Senate is also considering a change to state law that would formally legalize the humane slaughter of horses. That proposed legislation from Sen. Tim Corder, R-Mountain Home, and Brackett’s memorial are both awaiting full hearings in the Senate Agricultural Affairs Committee.