The $13,300 battering ram
Frustrated by their repeated inability to sell a permanent tax, EMS trustees decided to give the electorate a head butt...or is it a hearing test?
Shameless Teaser Alert: there's salty language, but not until the last paragraph :) Extra-long read alert: This post started out to be short, then events put a wrench in that plan. You might want to set this aside for a moment of leisure (if you have any of those)
When I was 17, I traveled to Israel. One day, in Haifa, I was the only English speaker on a bus full of Hebrews. I wasn't sure of my stop, so I asked the bus driver in English. He, of course, looked at me blankly. So, instinctively, I asked him the same question, only at a shout. It wasn't until I was winding up for a third try that my brain clicked. He wasn't hard of hearing. I just wasn't speaking his lingo.
The parallels of that story to the promotion of the EMS levy make me smile. On that bus, it only took me two tries before I realized the hole in my logic. The EMS lobby is on try #3. They must have decided that the key is to tell the driver to turn his hearing aid on.
Coming in the next two weeks:
EMS SERIES
• When a ‘No’ Vote Doesn’t Mean “Hell No”
• Political cartooning with Artificial Intelligence
New reader or forgot what I said about something? Find past posts HERE
To this end, they hired a fancy "communications" consultant with $13,300 of public funds to fix the 'no' voters' hearing. Or perhaps the theory was that the hearing impaired sat out the first two elections because they didn't hear about them. Whatever the reason, their consultant is failing them because a case can be made that their publicly funded promotion is advocacy, which is against state statute.
Readers, I've seated you on the jury.
You are to decide a question of propriety. Is the EMS advertising campaign violating Idaho Code §74-605? It says:
"Public funds, resources, or property may not be used to advocate for or against a candidate or a ballot measure. However, public entities may provide neutral, factual information regarding the impact of a ballot measure, provided such information does not advocate for a position."
Court is in session. Valley Countywide EMS District is the defendant. I'm prosecuting on behalf of the voter. Here is my case:
In all the promotion, including weekly color newspaper ads, mailers and whatever else, the defendant has consistently used the words "critical and necessary" to describe the need for the levy. Does that sound neutral and factual to you? Isn't that really what the electorate is being asked to decide, whether the funds are critical and necessary or not? So by framing their side of the argument as fact, is the EMS lobby violating the neutrality intent of the statute? For this to be legal, there would have to be no dispute that these funds are critical and necessary and that the question the voters are being asked to decide is something different.
I give you exhibit A, a snapshot from a mailer sent recently by VCEMS:
In addition to the "critical and necessary" language, note the two, blue boxes that dictate to voters how they should frame their decision. According to this, the EMS lobby's interpretation is the only way to look at a 'yes' or 'no' vote. What if you plan to vote 'no' because you agree that funding is needed, but you want a temporary tax instead of a permanent tax? What if you vote 'yes' because you fell in love with the paramedic holding the puppy in the EMS ads and you will follow him anywhere? Are these boxes factual? Are they neutral? Are they even the explanation they tell you it is? Even if you are leaning toward approving this levy, have you ever seen anything so presumptuous and so condescending in your life?
Prosecution rests. The jury is excused to the comments section. I would love to see your deliberations.
I'm not interested in practicing law without a license, although John Grisham wrote a hilarious book on that topic called The Rooster Bar which I highly recommend for a winter fireside read. It ends in a beach bar in Senegal, which depending on how the national election turns out is where a lot of us might end up, but I digress...
Bottom line: EMS thought through the facts and came to their conclusions. I thought through the same set of facts too, and came to an entirely different conclusion. They have no right to to use public funding to dictate or 'explain' to me, or you, what a 'yes' or 'no' vote means.
I know my repeat button is stuck, but I have to return to a consistent refrain. Aside from the impropriety I'm alleging, the promotion is also vague and vacuous. They've done a decent job informing us of what the actual out-of-pocket cost will be. But they have been infuriatingly coy about any details about what the specific needs are and how they are going to spend it. There's a lot of "might, "could", "maybe" in their rhetoric.
Mainly, their promotion reiterates three broad claims without any illumination on how or why:
• the money will fund staffing, equipment, and maintenance of emergency medical services. That's as transparent as me telling my boss (Tom) that his Social Security checks will fund travel, food and lodging for an upcoming trip for me. He doesn't know if I'm taking my lover to Fiji or visiting our kids.
• staff and equipment shortages limit the ability to handle multiple emergencies at the same time. (how often, what time of year? What's the definition of "limit"?)
• fire budgets currently cover the funding shortage. There's no data on how many of those calls are minor stuff like chimney fires or false alarms so how do we judge whether or not this is a problem? I think I know the answer to this question, but without data specific to each fire district, we are all left to just make stuff up (like this question) according to our own databases. That is just not effective messaging.
Note to Future Communications Consultants: it's human nature to fill in blanks. If you leave an information vacuum, it's very likely going to get filled in with “misinformation."
One ad even spent our money to 'educate' us on the difference between a firefighter and a paramedic. I give you your tax dollars at work:
Does this work for you? Or would you like a little more detail before we pledge $4.2M in perpetuity (a total they never quote in their ads, BTW)? And if they react to this post with a snow of information, how are we to digest it in time to vote with confidence in less than 10 days? It's just too little, too late.
Isn't it the responsibility of the taxing district to provide the electorate with sufficient information to make us comfortable with the decision that we make? I may be full of myself. It won't be the first or last time my husband and my children have justifiably accused me of that. But is it too egotistical to suggest that a $13,300 consultant and an army of proponents hasn't delivered as much relevant information to you on this levy than a little old lady on a fixed income with a Substack account? And for free, no less?
Whenever I can, I will try to season my opinionating with some local lore. I close this post with a memory that popped into my head when I first started looking at this levy and EMS's "my-way-or-the-highway" attitude, going all the way back to it's birth without a vote in the backseat of the county commission meeting room.
For those who weren't here then: on the site of what is now The Rustic Inn in McCall, stood the Woodsman Motel & Café. It was a formica-table, grease-stained-carpet dive, and I mean that in the most loving and nostalgic way. But despite the dilapidated decor and the edge it skated with Central District Health, it always smelled heavenly. Dives that deep-fry everything, including an occasional mouse, are like that. It was run by a crusty husband-wife team. Their names were Ernie and Betty Woods (Woodsman, get it?). Ernie was the short order cook and resident maintenance man. Betty waited tables and dispensed advice that you dared not ignore (she would follow up on your next visit to make sure you were listening).
On the wall was a mimeographed sign with a cartoon (younger readers are now googling mimeograph). It mocked the slogan "Have It Your Way" that Burger King, the fast-food chain, was promoting at the time. The sign on the Woodsman wall said:
"This ain't Burger King. You get it our way or you don't get the son of a bitch at all."
As I vote for the third time on the same EMS proposal, I will think of the ‘we won't stop until it's done’ call to arms by the fire chief noted in a previous post and the sign in the Woodsman Café. And marvel at the similarity in sentiment.
Infrequently Asked Questions
This is a new feature I added to pose questions to public bodies or just to wonder out loud. Here's the first one:
• On Tuesday (Oct. 29), St. Luke's McCall Trauma Center is conducting a major disaster drill involving EMS and other response agencies. The event is to take place near Legacy Park in McCall. Nobody will dispute that an exercise with the goal of practicing catastrophe response is a good idea. There's only one, tiny problem with this one. Notice of an event that will disrupt the normal rhythm of downtown for 2 1/2 hours failed to make the print edition of the local newspaper. That’s where most people get their news about such things. So a large share of those doing business in McCall on Tuesday morning is at risk of being freaked out. When adequate notice to the public failed, I think the event should have been rescheduled. Why wasn't it? In this post's comments section, I have uploaded a detailed open letter to the parties involved asking this and more related questions.
Afterthoughts, Observations and Authentications
• didn't get the reference to temporary tax? Find my post on it here.
• Having opined on a problem, I feel it is my duty to offer a solution. I do not think that public funds have any place in "getting out the vote," even though it is permitted by state statute. Some readers think this series is a targeted critique of EMS. Not at all. All taxing agencies do this stuff. Agencies such as EMS/Fire are more likely to make emotional appeals to secure funding than a city council or a county commission. With that in mind, a citizen advocacy group should be formed for EMS/Fire similar to McCall's Hospital Foundation and MDSD's Education Foundation. They could not only fund advocacy advertising for levies (and say any damn thing they want), but they could also raise money to elevate the level of services beyond what the broader electorate is inclined to fund. They would be a private organization not subject to the strict restrictions that public money is under. So there would be no worries about crossing the line. They could also be the public face of the agency. Maybe bring back a version of the "boot" fundraising campaign of old?
• In last week's Star-News, somebody suspected us of using an old Star-News subscription list as our mailing list. It's a logical assumption, but the answer is no. I've placed a detailed description of its origin story in the comments.
ORIGIN OF LDVCE MAILING LIST
When we owned The Star-News, Tom and I used our personal, not business, email addresses. Over the 40 years that we ran the newspaper, we corresponded with just about everybody in the county at one time or another. Email apps store email addresses in a database file, so it was a simple matter to turn those DBs into a spreadsheet. There was so much correspondence over so many years, we couldn't tell specifically how those email addresses got in the DB. It could have been a submission like an obit or a classified ad. Some could have come in as cc's to another email. For instance, we would be copied on a group mailing sent by a club or organization. So if you received correspondence from a group that was copied to us during our years at the paper, you likely landed in our DB.
We didn't pirate the Star-News subscription list because we didn't need to. The list we generated from our DB had far more contacts from a much broader demographic. We looked at the regulations governing "unsolicited" correspondence. All email correspondence between personal addresses is considered personal correspondence. Going back to the group analogy. If you get email from a group, the Benevolent Order of Town Deer Lovers for example, you didn't "sign up" to be on that mailing list. It is assumed that because you are a member of the group that you want to read the group's newsletter. When you receive an email from an old acquaintance, you didn't specifically grant permission to that person.
Personal correspondence is outside the spamming/unsolicited mail regulations because if such a policy were in place, it would be unenforceable. And it would do more harm than good. Perhaps hearing from that old acquaintance was painful. But in more cases, hearing from blasts from our pasts is a pleasure. Technology, such as spam filters, blocking and unsubscribe buttons empower you to control your email consumption with a convenient click.
There is also an exemption for political correspondence, which this Substack clearly is. Have you been swatting unsolicited texts, emails and robo calls like flies during this election season? Me too. That's because politicians talk a big game about protecting your privacy but insist on preserving their right to invade it. The exemption for political correspondence is another crack I decided to slip through. I had a hunch that a blog dedicated to historical perspective and the airing of plausible alternative points of view is needed in this community. That has turned out to be true. Since my first pre-Substack mailing went out in May on the M-D housing levy, an astoundingly small number have opted out.
I deeply respect your privacy. Before I started the Substack, I sent two successive emails announcing it with an opt-out button at the very top. Maybe you remember getting those. It didn't blink because I hate that. But it couldn't have been more obvious if it had crawled onto your lap and called you 'momma'. Some did opt out and we purged them from the list. Happily, Substack now manages all of that. The manual management was mind-numbingly tedious.
Curiously, the letter writer was not on our original list, so either he subscribed voluntarily or he had a post forwarded to him or he wrote his letter under a pseudonym. Our readers are smarter than the average population. We presume you know where the unsubscribe button is located and that it isn't too much trouble to blow us into email oblivion if you so choose. That so many of you haven't is such a compliment. Thanks for reading! —TSG
OPEN LETTER FROM LETTERS FROM THE VALLEY COUNTY ELECTORATE
To: St. Luke's Trauma Program, Valley Countywide EMS, Local Fire Districts, Valley County Sheriff's Office
Re: Questions about training exercise
I was alerted to a massive training exercise you are conducting Tuesday by a reader. He stumbled across it on the Star-News website while looking up something else. The online story did not appear in the print edition (I looked through it twice) or if it did, it was in a location too obscure to be effective public notice of such a publicly visible event.
Unless things have changed dramatically in the two years we've been gone from The Star-News, only a tiny fraction of the newspaper readership looks at the website. Most read the print edition either in hard copy or in digital pdf form. It was pure coincidence that I was alerted to it.
Is this training drama still going to unfold in the middle of downtown McCall with the public largely unaware that it isn't the real thing?
Was there any thought given to rescheduling it until effective notice could be given? What is your policy on effective notice of these kinds of events?
Even though this is an event orchestrated by St. Luke's McCall, did anybody in EMS management give thought to how staging this event so close to an election in which EMS funding is on the ballot would look to the public? I am getting emails from readers who suspect it is a publicity stunt to sell the levy. I know it isn't, but once that wildfire gets started, it's hard to tamp down.
I don't manage the newspaper anymore, but I presume the people who do will report on such a spectacular event. Here's a sincere and friendly word of advice to EMS staff: don't fan the publicity stunt flame. Avoid any reference to being "stretched" or "understaffed" in any interaction regarding this exercise until after the election.
There are some other aspects of this that I would like to be educated on:
• The exercise involves an accident involving a tour bus and a hazmat truck. I am guessing that the chances of such a tragedy happening near Legacy Park are about .000000001%. So what is the benefit of disrupting downtown for 2 1/2 hours? Such an accident would more likely happen on the bypass, which was built to serve the types of vehicles involved in the exercise. And to avoid messing up traffic on the bypass, couldn't this have been staged in a pasture somewhere on Mission Street? That seems to be more realistic in terms of distance from hospital/ambulance facilities that would mobilize in such an event.
• Why choose such an unlikely event when you could use public resources to make sure you are prepared for a much more realistic tragedy, like a school shooting?
• I know that we want our responders to be prepared for the worst, but since instinctive responses are the product of repetition, how is this training effective? If such a thing has such a remote chance of actually happening, will anybody remember what to do if it does?
I look forward to the answers to these questions. I think many of your constituents do too. The most effective first response partnership is between providers and an informed electorate.
Yours for a strong partnership,
Tomi Grote