However, I became outraged when four of these legislators tried to justify their reasons in today’s post register op-ed section.

I wrote an article that clearly lays out their hypocrisy.

Please comment, and especially use the Share feature to email two of those legislators and ask them to answer the charges of hypocrisy.

http://idahofallz.com/2007/03/08/legislators-reveal-their-hypocrisy-in-family-values/

I’ll skip the argument about how people still come across all kinds of “licensed” shady business’ and get to my idea: make it an optional certification. If a business wants to, they can become “certified” by the state and be able to display a plaque or something (like BBB or Chamber of Commerce members) people who don’t feel the need or have the money to become certified are free to skip it.

Consumers would then have a choice. If certification was important to you (in daycares, for example) you’d seek out those business’ that are certified, if it wasn’t (barbers), you’d just go wherever it was more convenient. Certified business’ could point at their certification as something important for their customers, and uncertified business’ might be able to offer lower prices (not having to pay for an annual certification) or being able to offer products/services/techniques that lie outside the bounds of official certification.

The market would determine which type of business will be more popular and profitable.

This way everybody wins!

Wow, “three in the 80’s, two in the 90’s and one in the 00’s”.

You are stronger than most of us.

Kevin Richert did eventually do an opinion piece about the topic on his Statesman blog. It was likely inspired, albeit perhaps indirectly, by your effort to get the paper to cover the issue. I called Kevin when his piece was posted and suggested that it might be helpful to the general public if the Statesman would take the time to do a piece about the ages, and urban vs. rural, etc. background on our 105 legislators.

I’m not sure of the average age of our legislators, but I do know that many of them are WELL past their child-rearing years. Not only has it been a long time since they had young children, but I think part of the daycare issue is the difference between generations and how things work now, versus how it worked “then”. People who were raising their children in the 1950’s and 60’s have a different perspective than do those of us who had our children in the 1980’s, 90’s and 2000’s. (I admit, I had three in the 80’s, two in the 90’s and one in the 00’s myself!)

Anyway, thanks again for getting the conversation started on here. If nothing else, this issue should remind all of us with young children that we can never be too careful when leaving our children with other people – even when only for short periods of time.

Our daughter makes well above the minimum wage and finds it difficult to cover day-to-day expenses. Her monthly grocery bill has nearly doubled in the last three years without a change in diet. Utilities have gone up. Gas has gone up. And she is just one person driving an older vehicle and living in an older rental.

For people with children on the majority of Idaho wages, finding affordable daycare is the first issue. For those who can afford it, only those in the Boise area have the ability to judge their choices based on licensing standards.

I say to JJ: Why aren’t your children walking or biking home from school?

Democracy depends upon an informed electorate but if the local paper doesn’t inform its readership of the very basic workings of democracy in this state how can we hold legislators accountable for bad decisions? The comments of those legislators voting no on minimum standards for day cares disclose a myopic and archaic point of view demonstrating how unfit these legislators are to recognize the connections between, and to solve, the problems facing them, which this year include dangerous daycares and a nursing shortage. But these legislators will suffer no recriminations if we are unaware. Big thanks to Dave for helping to plug the holes of our ignorance.