$2 billion
Idaho schools will receive the second installment of payments this month designed to fix school buildings in serious disrepair after the state voted to authorize $2 billion in funds for such projects in March. The vote came after a scathing ProPublica report about how decades of neglect made schools unsafe and far from optimal learning environments in the state, which ranks last in total funding per student in K-12 education. The report details frequent floods, leaking roofs, discolored water coming from faucets and a host of other health and safety concerns. About half of Idaho Superintendents surveyed by ProPublica said they have at least one building in their district that fails to meet accessibility standards in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Idaho is one of two states that requires a two-thirds majority vote to pass school bonds, whereas in most states only a simple majority is required. This has made it difficult or impossible for school districts to pass bonds for routine maintenance as buildings fell further into disrepair and became overcrowded. Additionally, the Idaho Freedom Foundation, an advocacy group, has targeted Superintendents and other school personnel, restricting the information they are allowed to share with voters about proposed bonds, under the guise of a 2018 law passed to promote election integrity. They asked that fines be assessed on Superintendents and other personnel for describing buildings as “aged” or “overcrowded” or the assertion that students “need modern, safe, and secure schools.”
Multiple studies have tied physical school structures to academic performance and general student well being, citing concerns with air quality, temperature control and lighting as having direct impact on student learning.
43%
According to a report by KFF, 43% of adults in the United States who would describe their mental health as “fair” or “poor” had an unmet need for mental health services or medications in the last year. Numbers remain elevated across all types of insured groups, including 46% of people with employer-sponsored plans, 45% with a plan purchased through a state marketplace, and 44% with Medicaid coverage. Racial disparities also exist with 50% of white adults who report fair or poor mental health saying they received mental health services in the past three years, compared with 39% of Black and 36% of Hispanic adults.
The KFF report examines several barriers to access even for insured individuals, including difficulty finding and identifying a trusted provider, transportation and mobility issues, continued shame and stigmatization around mental health services, and a variety of challenges navigating insurance coverage and payments.
A Senate Commission, proposed earlier this year by Senator John Fetterman, would explore policy solutions for each of these barriers, as well as addressing burnout and workforce shortages among mental health providers.
$10 billion
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, each year, states lose out on at least $10 billion of revenue from large multinational corporations shifting profits earned in the U.S. to foreign tax havens. Not only could this revenue be used to supplement critical services like public K-12 education, health care services and public safety, but corporate profit shifting also gives multinational corporations a tax advantage over domestic businesses, which often lack the resources to engage in international profit-shifting strategies.
The Center proposes a solution known as worldwide combined reporting (WWCR), which enables states to recover revenue lost to international tax avoidance by closing loopholes in the corporate tax code that allow profit shifting. WWCR treats a parent corporation and its separately incorporated foreign and domestic subsidiaries as one entity. This requires multinational corporations to report profits from all subsidiaries, including those shifted from the U.S. to foreign tax havens, as the first step in calculating their tax liability.
In the 1980s, twelve states required WWCR, whereas now, ten states allow multinational corporations the option to file using WWCR (the one exception being Alaska, which requires WWCR for oil companies). Minnesota recently pursued mandatory WWCR and a WWCR bill was introduced in Nebraska’s special legislative session in 2024, though it failed to advance from committee. As legislators embark on the 2025 legislative session with a $432 million projected budget shortfall, WWCR is one solution which could be used to shore up the budget now and into the future, while holding large multinational corporations to the same standards as their domestic counterparts.
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