Governor C. L. “Butch” Otter - The State of Idaho Press Conference Audio

Press Conference Audio

Audio for March 10, 2010

Idaho Department of Commerce Director Don Dietrich goes on the offensive in our aggressive efforts to attract business to the Gem State. Don solicited businesses in Washington and Oregon fed up with tax increases. Earlier this week Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter sent an open “love letter” to Oregon and Washington businesses informing them of the advantages of relocating their businesses to Idaho. Below are links to two interviews Dietrich gave on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 in Seattle and Portland:

KIRO FM
Seattle
The Dori Monson Show
PODCAST:
http://www.mynorthwest.com/?nid=577&a=15516&p=&n=

KPAM AM
Portland
The Victoria Taft Show
http://www.kpam.com/programming/victoria_taft.php
Follow link, scroll down a little, and then click on : Taftcasts 3/9/10 1PM - SEG 1

Audio for March 4, 2010

The Idaho Board of Examiners met in emergency session on March 4th at 2:00pm to discuss a shortfall in the Tax Refund Account. In attendance were Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter, Secretary of State Ben Ysursa, State Controller and Board of Examiners Secretary Donna Jones. On the phone, Attorney General Lawrence Wasden, and Idaho Tax Commission Financial Officer Mark Poppler.

An audio recording of that meeting is available HERE.

Emergency Board Examiners Meeting
March 4, 2010
Governor’s Ceremonial Office

Governor: Everybody here at the appointed time, the special emergency meeting at the board of examiners would come to order. Madame Secretary.

Donna Jones: Mr. Chairman.

Governor: Wait a minute, the chair would recognize, who’s our secretary?

Donna Jones: I am.

Governor Otter: The recording secretary? Oh, OK, the chair would recognize the presence of all members, or the attendance of all members.   Mr. Wasden being in D.C. in attendance by phone, Mr. Ysursa, and myself. Madame Secretary.

Donna Jones: Mr. Chairman there is this special meeting as you know we’re having an emergency meeting under the regular agenda we have one item, it’s from the Idaho State Tax Commission and Wayne Hammon will speak to this.

Governor: Mr. Hammon

Wayne Hammon: Mr. Chairman and members of the board can I draw your attention to 67-2343 paragraph two which states that special meetings can be held without 24 hour notice provided that an emergency exists, and that the reason for the emergency is stated at the outset of the meeting.

The purpose of the emergency session today is the fund balance of the zero in the State Tax Commission’s refund account. Having the account at zero results in the Tax Commission being unable to issue refunds that’s are due to tax payers at the present time. Mr. Chairman, Mr. President if I could draw your attention to this piece of paper with very small print on it. This is provided by the Tax Commission when we met with them yesterday. On Friday February 25th the Tax Commission notified the Board of Examiners that there may be an issue with the refund account. We received that notice late Monday, and on Tuesday we looked into what there was and met with the tax commission again on Wednesday. At the end of February, which was Sunday evening, this account had 10.2 million dollars it at the end of January it had 82.9 million dollars in it.

So between the end of January and the end of February the account had paid out over 90 million in refunds and received only 17.2 million in deposits. Between February 28th and March 3rd that number had gone to zero. We we’re now at a point where tax payers who are seeking a refund will not be paid. The Tax Commission is estimating that it will need 45 million dollars to cash flow the remainder of the fiscal year. Given how things flow DFM spent some time yesterday with the Tax Commission staff and worked out based on historical patterns what the real need probably will be, and we’re recommending to you that you approve the Tax Commissions request at the level of 30 million dollars. We believe, DFM believes,

That 30 million dollars will allow the Tax Commission to cash flow the account without delaying refunds and move us into April of the largest single tax collection month. It should be noted that as you are all aware. That at the end of the fiscal year, or the end of June, anything in this account in the access of 1.5 million dollars is reverted back to the general fund. And so by moving money into the fund, and should receipts come in online that money will be returned to the general fund. It’s a similar action that you took last year, we moved 20 million dollars in this fund, 13 million were reverted at the end of the year. With that Mr. President and board members, I’m happy to answer any questions, we also have on the phone with us officials from the Tax Commission, Mark Poplar who could address any…

Governor:   What, any questions? Yeah Lawrence.

Lawrence Wasden: My understanding is that the statutory provision for the tax commission to take this action, my question is in regards to which fund are we authorizing this. Is it the general fund or is it the tax receipt to go into the refund account?

Wayne Hammon: Mr. Chairman and Mr. Attorney General, the request is for the money to come from the general fund, and that’s the same avenue that the board of examiners used last year.

Lawrence Wasden: Governor…

Governor: Yes.

Lawrence Wasden:   …and Mr. Hammon, I had a conversation earlier with Brian Crane, is he available to address an issue of the statutory [inaudible]

Wayne Hammon: Yes he is.

Governor: Relative to Lawrence’s question. What other funds would the Tax Commission have with income tax, sales tax, all those tax receipts other than deposit them in the general fund?

Brian Crane: Mr. Governor and members of the board, the statue is 63-3067 and what it directs is that the board of examiners has the authority to transfer from the tax collections fund or account, I think it uses the term account, into the tax refund account. I’ve talked to the folks at the controller’s office to double check on which accounts we’re using and everything else. So what I understand the code hasn’t caught up to the way the state actually accounts for everything. It actually does go from the general fund into the tax refund account at this point.

Governor: I understand that, my question has to do with the source of the funds that we would now move today.

What other funds do they have, or accounts do they have out there, sales tax or income tax would come in and not go into the general fund fund.

Wayne Hammon: Mr. Chairman, I that’s what Brian is speaking to. What we do, is when receipts come in, 20% goes into the refund account. 80% goes into the account that Mr. Crane referenced, and so 80% goes into the receipt account is that what you called it? We sweep that into the general fund every day, the controller does to the collections account. So it goes into the collections account, and then the collections account is put into the general fund every day when the controller. So to the attorney generals question, yes, what you would probably technically do is move the money from the general fund back to the collections account into the refund account, but the source is the general fund.

Lawrence Wasden: Thank you very much Governor, I appreciate the clarification.

Governor: Further questions or comments.

Ben Ysursa: Only if some of the folks from the Tax Commission have any comments on the 30 million dollar figure verses their requested 45 million dollar figure.

Mark Poppler: Yes, this is Mark Poppler, I’m the financial officer, the 30 million dollars would be a huge improvement over what we have of course. That means that would probably, intentionally be slowing our process down even further by a couple of days, because I’m sure with 30 million dollars the fund is going to be close to zero many times over the next couple of months until April when they all come in.

Governor: Mark, this is Butch, what do you mean by slowing the process?

Mark Poppler: We try to, Mr. Governor, we are trying slow that refund intentionally anyways so we are offsetting the [inaudible] a little bit internally. [inaudible] But we have purposely added an extra day to make sure that we’re not sending them out…

Governor: Mark, hadn’t we made a promise and in fact used some advertising money in order to encourage people to file electronically and therefore get their return that much quicker.

Mark Poppler: That is true.

Governor: Are we going back on that?

Mark Poppler: [inaudible] …on an electronic filed return we think that’s a reasonable target. Whereas, 10 is the IRS target.

Governor: Could you repeat that delay?

Mark Poppler: About 12 days Mr. Governor on electronic filed returns if there are no problems with it. [inaudible] or first time refunds they go through additional checks which takes some additional time. If someone is filing on paper, the time is about 3 weeks right now and will slow down to 6 weeks to 8 weeks over the next couple of months.

Wayne Hammon: So Mr. Chairman, I might add to that. We met with Mark yesterday, so the average electronic transfer, if you file electronically you get your refund within ten days. What they’re saying in order to balance that to make that we don’t hit zero they anticipate adding two days to that process. It will be 12 days instead of 10. So that we could check the balance in the account every morning before we hit process. Typically it’s on auto pilot, they just process them as fast as they can, by waiting over night, you add two days to the process.

Governor: So we’re writing checks every day?

Wayne Hammon: We write checks every day.

Mark Poppler: Yes sir.

Governor: How about Saturday and Sunday?

Mark Poppler: No, only on work days.

Governor: When is the Postal Services cutting out Saturdays? So the cash flow anyway then, do you agree Mark that DFM cash flow requirements to your request is 45 million and that 30 million will accomplish the same thing, only by taking the return up by 2 days from 10 days to 12 days.

Mark Poppler: Yes sir, we think that with 30 million that will alleviate most of the problem, and we can deal with the other shortfalls by slowing things down further.

Governor: I don’t want to delay this, or extend this meeting any longer than we have to.

But I would like to hear, at least from DFM or tax or somebody that this is an extraordinary event for us.   I don’t remember calling one of these emergencies before. We have twice as much, let’s see last year we put in 20 million this year we’re putting in 30 million is that reflective of the tax collections?

Wayne Hammon: Mr. Chairman and members of the board, it is. If you look back at the information provided, you’ll see that last year by the end of March, the fund hit a balance of $12,000 that’s more money than the refund I’m getting, but that’s not very many refunds.

Governor:   You‘re getting a refund?

Wayne Hammon: No, I’m not. But if you look at the month prior to that, we issued in January of 2009 we issued 29.5 million in refunds.

In January 2010 we issued 12.9, and this year we issued 16.7. In February of last year we issued 80 and in February of this year we issued 90. So we’re going to get to the same place we did last year, it’s just its happening earlier this year. Which is why for the emergency session. Typically when we file this notice, we have more time before the fund typically hits zero. This year, that moved along much quicker.

Governor: Further questions or comments? If not…

Ben Ysursa: I would make a motion to let the Board of Examiners authorize the transfer of 30 million dollars from the general fund to the refund account.

Lawrence Wasden: Second.

Governor: Ben moved to second that we now transfer, the authorization for 30 million dollars from the, tax collection-no, from the general fund to the tax collection account.

Wayne Hammon: And from the tax collections account to the refund…

Governor: …to the refund account, is there further debate?

Lawrence Wasden:   I do think it would be worth making a request for both DFM and the Tax Commission, to keep the board informed of what’s going on in case we come short again and need to address this another time between now and June 1st.

Mark Poppler: Governor and Mr. Wasden, we would certainly do that.

Governor: Yea, a little more timely notice on this would be good.

Donna Jones: It’s embarrassing to bounce checks.

Governor: We wouldn’t want Donna to go to Jail. Is there further discussion? Hearing no further discussion, the questions is shall the motion prevail. The transfer of 30 million dollars to the tax collections account from the general fund account, and then from the tax collections account to the refund account. All those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye.

All: Aye

Governor: Did you vote Lawrence?

Lawrence Wasden: I did, I voted aye.

Governor: Ok, the motion has passed. There’s no further business. Thank you Lawrence, thank you Mark.

Audio for February 26, 2010

Here are some selected audio clips of Governor Otter discussing the public input the State of Idaho has received on the http://efficiency.idaho.gov Web site and the action the state is taking to thoroughly review and enact as many of those suggestions as possible.

Audio Clip #1
“Well, our efficiency connection with the folks of Idaho has become a tremendous resource for new ideas. And not only that, but fashioning extensions of some of the older ideas, but so far we’ve implemented upwards of 80 of those ideas and inculcating them into the operations of government.”

The Governor says another 300 ideas are undergoing further review and study by state agencies. Everyone that submitted an idea for review and included their contact information received a response back from the Governor’s Office.

Audio Clip #2
“Many of those as we answered them back to say, “Ok here’s what we’re going to do with your idea,” or “We just want you to know it’s a great idea and we’ve already been practicing that in government for some time,” and explaining in which agency that we’re already doing the curtailing or the efficiencies that they talked about, but we’re going to keep that website open, we hope to keep the energy up because as we continue to go in toward the next year we don’t see this economy recovering that fast so we continue to need these cost cutting ideas-these efficiency saving ideas.”