interstices

The 2011-12 college football bowl games have started and there are 35 of them.  The BCS games have a huge payout to the teams while most of the bowls put together a rather modest payout.  The teams that play in the games don’t necessarily get rich in the process, in fact some schools and conferences actually lose money.

The distribution of payouts for each bowl game are divided the the chart below into quintiles, so for 35 bowls each quintile has seven, arrayed from smallest to largest.  For comparison purposes the chart also plots US household income.

The distribution of household income in the United States in 2010 and the 2011-12 college football bowl game payouts are very similar for the lowest quintile: the 20 percent of the households and 20 percent of the bowl games account for just over three percent of the total.  At the other end the top 20 percent of households account for 50 percent of the income.  Meanwhile the top 20 percent of the bowl games account for about 68 percent of the payouts.

While the bowl game payouts may be skewed to the highest quintile it is worth noting that there is a significant amount of revenue sharing by all teams in the conference, after the bowl team travel expenses have been paid.  So by no means is the payout a measure of income to the teams that play in the bowl games. 

The Legislative Productivity Index, first introduced in 2009, is updated to reflect the 2011 session.  And the results show a less productive session than 2010, though better than the 2009 and 2003 sessions, both noted for the marathon struggles over taxes.  If the 2011 session is a return to “normal” it does fit in the range showing a continued decline in productivity since the mid 1990s.

Most sessions that rate lower in productivity are influenced primarily by the length of the session.  The 2011 session was not inordinately longer than many but it appears there were fewer bills introduced and passed.  Indeed, the data shows the number of laws was the lowest since 1985.  The 1985 session was 66 days, this year was 88.  The chart is being generous to 2011 because it shows total enactments (laws plus resolutions), and that makes it higher than 1992 only because of a larger number of Joint Memorials and other resolutions.  The only resolutions that really matter are the Joint Resolutions that are include a constitutional amendment.  The others are toothless memorials that have no force and effect of law.  So here is a chart showing enactments:

So as mentioned, the 2011 session compares to the 1991 and 1992 sessions for low number of enactments.  Those two earlier sessions were when the Senate was tied 21-21 and, due in part to the even partisan divide in that chamber, less than half of introduced bills were enacted.  This year 59 percent of bills were enacted.

Finally, it is worth noting that the role of the gubernatorial veto has been virtually no factor in the past two sessions.  The chart below includes a weighting factor for legislative productivity taking into account that passed bills should be more important than bills merely introduced.  A third (red) line takes into account bills that have been subject to a veto from the Governor.  There was only one veto this session so the red line virtually disappears behind the black line in the chart below.

Idaho Governor Butch Otter testified last week before the House Natural Resources Committee and claimed, “There are more people in one day, probably, that play golf on the floating green in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, than visit the Frank Church-River of No Return (Wilderness) in a year.”

The Idaho Statesman did a take down on Otter’s claim, showing that between river floating, hunting and steelhead fishing there are some 33,000 visitors per year in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness.  Read more at: http://www.idahostatesman.com/2011/03/03/1549713/otters-wilderness-math-doesnt.html#ixzz1FnmQBkIw

The Governor’s metrics were way off.  It was also a little apples and oranges to compare a daily versus an annual measure.  So what would the information look like on Wilderness use on a daily basis?  It turns out there is a Forest Service EIS that has some information on river use numbers in the summer months when river use is at its peak, similar to the golf season.  So what’s a head to head comparison look like?  Based on the data from the Forest Service EIS river use is compared to the newspaper report of an average 220 golfers per day, the chart below shows the results.

Golf and river floating both are at their highest use in the summer.  The numbers for the Wilderness rivers is for late May through Labor Day.  On a given day there are more than 450 people on the Middle Fork Salmon River, spread across approximately 100 miles as they float for five or six days.  Close to 80 people launch per day from the Boundary Creek (and later in the summer from Indian Creek).  A nearly equal number are on the main Salmon River making a similar multi-day trip, plus a number of people in powerboats.  Float boating between the two river sections exceeds 900 people on a given summer day, roughly four times that on the golf course at the Coeur d’Alene Resort with it’s signature floating green.  Add to that another 200 to 600 (this chart shows a low end estimate of 200) on the Salmon River in power boats and it’s a five to one beat down.  The Governor was way off on this one.

After some number crunching on the Idaho Governor’s election there appears to be some patterns that help explain the shape of the Governor Otter reelection margin and it’s location.  We earlier pointed out that Governor Otter seemed to benefit more among the counties that showed a larger increase in voter turnout rates.

While post-election analysis concluded Keith Allred’s Magic Valley and eastern Idaho strategy a bust there are indications of very minor shifts in voter behavior buried in the data.  These minor shifts are just that, minor, and they may not mean all that much. Yes, Allred did do worse than Jerry Brady four years prior in percentage of vote in almost all counties, but there were a few exceptions in eastern Idaho.  And it seems that Allred’s LDS church affiliation may have been a factor, however slight, in those exceptions.

Based on LDS membership by county (data downloaded from the Association of Religion Data Archives and can be found at this page at thearda.com) expressed as LDS percent of population by county, the plot below compares it to county level election results for Governor Otter.

The above chart shows that Gov. Otter saw his best increases in percent of vote in counties with low percentage LDS membership.  It should be noted that this is a measure of percent change in performance and many counties where Otter made the greatest gains were in Democratic leaning counties.  The most Republican counties would not have as much potential for growth because he already was harvesting a healthy majority of the vote.  The counties with low LDS membership are also those found more predominantly in the 1st Congressional District, which also had more counties show an increase in voter turnout due to the contested race for Congress. Nonetheless the Governor did the best in the counties with less than 10 percent LDS population.  In the heavily LDS counties Otter performed slightly worse than in 2006, and lost some ground (with Oneida County a sole exception).

While Gov. Otter’s percent of vote decreased, it increased for Allred in the higher percentage LDS counties.  We compare the Allred percent of vote to that earned by Jerry Brady four years prior.  There were only five out of 44 counties where Allred’s percent of the vote was higher than Brady’s and those five counties are about 70 percent or more LDS (Oneida County, again an exception).