This is the eighth installment in a nine-part collaborative series by the Lewiston Tribune, Idaho Falls Post Register and Idaho Statesman examining the role and function of committee chairmen in the Idaho Legislature.

Monday: An interview with Rep. Lynn Luker, R-Boise, chairman of the House Local Government Committee.

State Sen. Dean Mortimer, R-Idaho Falls, is a quiet, gentlemanly lawmaker, not given to lengthy floor debates or grabbing headlines.

"I have to say that Sen. Mortimer is one of the (senators) I know the least," said Michelle Stennett, D-Ketchum, the Idaho Senate minority leader, who said she makes a point of getting to know her colleagues. "He has always been nothing but kind."

But Mortimer will become a more high-profile lawmaker this year as the new chairman of the Senate Education Committee. That's where many of the most sweeping proposed reforms in Idaho public education will pause on their way to the full Senate or to death. At the same time, he will retain his seat on the Legislature's joint budget committee, which holds the state's purse strings.

He will sit on the budget committee at a time when lawmakers and Gov. C.L. (Butch) Otter are determined to restore the millions of dollars schools lost from budget cuts during and after the Great Recession. Otter said Thursday that he'll ask lawmakers to return education funding to 2009 levels, which could mean an estimated $44 million more for schools.

Mortimer isn't new to education. He served on the House Education Committee during his first two years in the Legislature in 2007 and 2008. For the past six years, he was vice-chairman of the Senate committee.

His mother was a teacher and teacher's aide and an instructor in primary, the Mormon name for Sunday school.

"Education is one of the most critical things we have in this state," he said. "It affects everything we do."

Son of a politically minded dairy farmer

Mortimer, 63, grew up in eastern Idaho where his father owned two dairy farms, each of which failed. Mortimer would milk cows at 5 a.m. and climb into a van driven by one of his older brothers to deliver the milk to homes in the Idaho Falls area. Then he'd go to school.

He was exposed to politics early.

"My mother and father were very involved politically," Mortimer said. "They knew who was running. They had an opinion, and they tried to support and encourage good candidates."

In Mortimer's house the family talked politics. "We talked about Frank Church and Steve Symms and all of the other people," he said. Church was the last Democratic U.S. senator from Idaho, serving four terms until Symms, a Republican, defeated him in 1980. "We talked about the Constitution and about the importance of being responsible and being good citizens."

Teacher pay, licensing on session's agenda

Mortimer's committee expects to take up tough issues this session. Among them: a teacher licensing plan tied to higher pay, and the state's troubled broadband service that provides schools with robust, high-speed Internet service.

Teacher licensing and a career ladder that links salary to performance were a key recommendation from Otter's Task Force on Improving Education in 2013. The task force proposed three teachers' licenses, each with different pay ranges, and handing out bigger pay checks to teachers based on performance. The system would replace the long-standing practice of doling out raises based on years of teaching and college credits amassed.

Mortimer is already at odds with Sherri Ybarra, the newly elected state superintendent of public instruction, who said last week that the state should delay implementing the plan for a year until details are worked out.

"I wouldn't go into this session with that strategy," Mortimer said.

Lawmakers are reluctant to pay teachers more under the existing system, and there is a commitment among legislators this year to put dollars behind a pay plan based on performance, Mortimer said. "The question you have to ask is, if you put it off a year, do you lose the financial commitment and emphasis."

Who'll pay to keep Internet turned on?

Teacher licensure may be tough, but possibly the most vexing issue Mortimer faces is dealing with the broadband service provided without cost to schools around Idaho.

A state judge ruled in November that the $60 million contract the state awarded for wiring schools is illegal, because it stripped Boise's Syringa Networks of work that had been part of the contract. The state reassigned that work to Qwest (now CenturyLink) a month after the state awarded the contract in 2009, prompting Syringa to sue.

The project also depended on federal funding generated by a monthly fee on cellphone and landline bills to expand broadband that covered about 70 percent of the costs. But the federal government stopped putting money into the project in 2013 because of the legal dispute. The Legislature stepped in last year, approving $11.4 million to keep broadband services going through next month. The judge's ruling means the Legislature may have to put in more money this session.

School districts worry that if a solution isn't found, their service could go dark.

Mortimer supports broadband in schools but has no solution to offer. The Syringa lawsuit is not finished, and the Federal Communication Commission is investigating.

"It is too early to say what is gong to happen in the Legislature," he said. "We still don't have, in my opinion, a clear direction."

Concentration of power draws concern

Mortimer expects to draw special scrutiny this year because he is one of two Senate chairmen who will have seats on the budget committee, the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee. The other is Steve Bair, chairman of the Resources and Environment Committee.

Traditionally, chairmen of other committees haven't held seats on the finance committee, because it was feared the chairmen might push the committee to fund their policies, said Rexburg Republican Brent Hill, the Senate's president pro tem.

With some openings still on the budget committee after all Senate committee assignments were made, Hill decided to experiment by letting Mortimer retain his seat there.

Stennett is cautious. Committee chairmen on the budget committee can lead to "small groups of people making the decisions for the greater whole," she said.

Rep. Maxine Bell, R-Jerome, the budget committee's House co-chairwoman, is concerned too. Nearly half the state budget goes to education, she said, and much of the policy will come through Mortimer's committee. It will be difficult "trying to maintain integrity on what is policy and what is funding," she said.

Mortimer said he understands the squeamishness. "I hope I will be very mindful of those concerns as I serve," he said. But he adds, "I think I have a better understanding of our education process and education budget than a new person coming onto that committee."

Otter is unconcerned. "Dean is a quick study," the governor said. "He's a hard worker, and he's a guy I that I think is up to the task."

Teachers union says: listen to everyone

Education interest groups say they are eager to get to know Mortimer better.

"I hope he listens to all input that is brought before (the committee) and encourages his committee to do the same," said Penni Cyr, president of the Idaho Education Association, the teachers union.

Mortimer said his style is to include and engage people in a discussion about education - particularly after the defeat of former state schools superintendent Tom Luna's Students Come First initiative. Over opposition from the teachers union and others, lawmakers in 2011 passed laws that would have limited teacher bargaining and put computers in the hands of high school students. Voters repealed the laws in 2012. Mortimer supported the laws but said Idahoans were cut out of the process.

"That's a mistake," he said.

Now, as he faces disparate groups of lawmakers and interest groups, he said, "I will include them and listen and try to build consensus."