Sometimes I just have to shake my head and ask the question; how did we elect so many dumb people to our legislature? In a recent article published by The Idaho Business Review, Democratic Rep. Ilana Rubel wrote an op-ed on Idaho’s non-compete law and how bad it is for startup businesses and hiring talented people from out of state to come and work here. What in heavens name could our legislators have been thinking when they voted in favor of this law? It makes you wonder if any of them have ever had any business experience at all.
The really important question is how could they put this law on the books of a state that has a “Right to Work Law”? So it’s ok for employers to fire employees at will, but if they want to leave they can take them to court. Not to mention our new arrangement to give tax breaks to corporations to move here and hire certain numbers of employees even if they are going to compete with another Idaho Company who does not get the same tax breaks.
Does anyone see why Idaho muddles through when it comes to a thriving economy and why we are number forty-seven in median family income in the U.S.? We are our own worst enemy when it comes to growing our economy. We have one of the highest tax burdens among the states surrounding us and now we are going to make it more difficult to bring in new startup companies and harder for people to change companies for more money. On top of that, no one seems to want to address the problem of getting 35% of our state budget from the federal government. Maybe it’s time to re-educate our legislators in economics 101.
Non-compete clauses have been around for years I myself have been the subject of them many times but I have never found any of them to be enforceable or had a corporation challenge me in court. Why would a corporation want to keep someone in a job that they are unhappy in? Common sense would tell you that if someone is unhappy they are not going to be a good employee and may cause more trouble than they are worth.
All the legislature did was to put one more impediment for corporations to look at Idaho as a place to open a new business or relocate their old one. Our legislature needs to get their house in order before next year’s primary as I can see plenty of room for some new people to take over for those who like to make laws that hinder the business of doing business. What we need is less onerous laws and impediments to doing business in our state you only have to look at what happened when Trump got rid of most of the Obama regulations on industry. The economy started growing again and continues to grow each quarter, one only has to look at the GDP.
We have a governor’s race coming up next year and when you look at the three candidates, it will not be hard to choose which one will benefit Idaho’s economy more and lead us to greater prosperity. We already know Lt. Governor Little didn’t raise a voice about this law and encouraged the implementation of tax breaks to bring in new companies at the expense of Idaho’s taxpayers. Our Urban Renewal Cowboy Tommy Ahlquist likes to keep his hand in the municipal cookie jars when it comes to large urban renewal projects so he’s for picking winners and losers by big government since he morphed from being an ER physician to a UR developer. If Tommy is so concerned about the state, where was his voice when this bill was being proposed and voted on by the legislature? Evidently, he didn’t think it was important enough or maybe he feels we need more regulation since he is a major employer with Gardner Group.
Congressman Labrador, on the other hand, wants to cut taxes and cut regulations and get rid of tax breaks that you pay for to entice corporations to move here. He also wants to hold agency heads accountable for all new regulations passed and eliminate unnecessary jobs in state agencies. Idahoans will have an opportunity to choose their destiny in 2018 for the next four years and get rid of the crony legislators and agency heads who have been hampering the growth of our economy for the past 11 years. It’s time for us to take our state back from the crony establishment that has crippled the economy of our state with too many regulations and secret tax grabs like the deal made with Amazon to collect sales tax for the state.
Enough is enough, we all need to do our homework before the primaries in May of 2018 and make sure we know who is for helping the people and who is for helping themselves and their friends.
“We Get the Government We Deserve”
