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2025 Legislative Round-up

January 27, 2025

Subject: The Moment We’ve All Been Waiting For

Late January isn’t generally known for being the time to drop some of the most consequential bills, yet here we are.

Tax cuts, private school subsidies and Medicaid expansion repeal all hit the docket.

Could this be a sign legislative leaders are listening to constituents and the rank-and-file lawmakers on both sides of the aisle who have repeatedly asked for substantial bills to be introduced early?

Could it mean the legislature is fixin’ to get out of Boise by March 21 as promised?

Only🔮Moylestradamus (R-Star/Salon-de-Provence)🔮 knows.

If their top priorities like these bills are taken care of by then, it’s as good of a shot as any.

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Medicaid expansion is officially on the chopping block at the Idaho legislature

The legislative makeup has been getting friendlier and friendlier to fans of repealing the program ever since 61% of Idahoans voted to adopt Medicaid Expansion in 2018.

But that doesn’t mean it’s a slam dunk.

Rep. John Vander Woude (R-Nampa) introduced the bill Friday and has sponsored similar efforts in the past that have failed to advance in his own committee.

His vice-chair, Rep. Marco Erickson (R-Idaho Falls), supports monitoring and potentially modifying the program as-needed.

Rep. Lori McCann (R-Lewiston) said she’s worried repealing Medicaid expansion would have disastrous consequences for rural hospitals in her district and across the state.

Rep. Jordan Redman (R-Coeur d’Alene) supports reforms over repeal.

Still, six other Republicans [Reps. Beiswenger, Burgoyne, Cayler, Leavitt, Rasor and Thompson] on the committee all signed the state GOP’s “integrity in affiliation” pledge to adhere to the party platform when voting on issues.

That guiding document includes advocating for a full repeal of Obamacare, which enables Medicaid expansion.

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Another round of income tax cuts could be coming to Idahoans next year

It’s officially time for our Annual Historic Income Tax Cut Bill™©®.

Speaker Mike Moyle’s effort makes good on his promise to roll double or nothin’ on Gov. Little’s proposed $100 million tax cut.

First, it would cut Idaho’s personal and corporate income tax rates from 5.695% to 5.3%. Add in a dash of exemptions for retired veterans younger than 62 who are still working other jobs and a carve out for capital gains tax on gold and silver, and baby, you’ve got a $253 million stew goin’.

But wait! There’s more!

Moyle promises two more bills yet to be introduced to lower Idaho’s state sales tax rate and help relieve county property taxes on homeowners.

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Private school subsidy tax credit introduced in the Idaho House

We got a preview of this on the first day of the legislature earlier this month and only a few new details emerged.

Specifically, if passed, those lower-income families that got priority in the initial funding rounds would no longer have that leg up.

Under the bill, beginning in 2027 families who previously received the tax credit – regardless of income level – would take precedence over new applicants.

If the program is oversubscribed, that scenario could certainly be a rallying cry for supporters hoping to expand it beyond the initial $50 million budget.

The bill’s introduction came shortly after Idaho’s three largest education-related interest groups came together last Monday to urge the legislature to reject any form of taxpayer-funded subsidies.

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SOTW:

“I can’t tell if I’m a kingpin or a pauper,” shouts Anthony Kiedis after telling people to “Give It Away” on the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ bedrock 1991 album, Blood Sugar Sex Magik.

That’s essentially what House Majority Leader Jason Monks (R-Meridian) told the handful of lawmakers who opposed giving themselves pay raises this year from about $19,000 to $25,000.

House lawmakers who opposed the pay hike largely consisted of the incoming class of more conservative freshman, though it also included Boise Democrats Monica Church and Chris Mathias.

You can imagine at least some of them dishing another line from the song back to Monks: “How come everybody wanna keep it like the Kaiser?”

Kaiser Wilhelm II, of course, was the last Emperor of Germany and King of Prussia who could not hold on to either of his crowns after his country’s defeat in World War I.

Enjoy Flea’s driving bass lines, Chad Smith’s punctuating snare hits and that weird, but essential mouth harp.

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January 20, 2025

Subject: Trouble in paradise (AKA JFAC)?

Are you back in the swing of things yet? Have you gotten ready, eaten breakfast and have your gigantic cup of your favorite caffeinated beverage in front of you for the 7:15 a.m. pre-FAC meeting?

No? Me neither. But we’re working on it. (For my editor reading this, it’s a joke. Of course I’m watching)

Lawmakers are still easing their way into the session after two weeks in Boise, though more bills are getting introduced. Once they hit their stride, expect RSs to be flying fast and furious.

More significant, I’d argue, is the discord on display in JFAC late last week.

It seemed like they couldn’t agree on anything Thursday. Not a revenue forecast to base the state’s budget on, nor a health benefits package for state employees, let alone proposed pay raises for them, which is what we’ll dive into next.

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Idaho worker raises stall in budget committee

Full disclosure, I am technically a state employee and will be affected by whatever decision JFAC and the legislature at-large chooses to make. I am not advocating for any particular outcome in this newsletter and I hope it’s clear in the story as well.

Now, I thought this was the most illustrative example of the fractious meeting on Thursday because it showed such a divide that didn’t seem to fall along typical political party or ideological lines.

You had Sen. Janie Ward-Engelking, a Boise Democrat, siding with Rep. Kevin Cook (R-Idaho Falls). Cook’s proposal offers a 4% merit raise based on an employee’s performance evaluation.

That’s compared to a flat, $1.55 per hour raise across-the-board, which works out to a much larger pay bump percentage-wise for lower earning workers. Employees whose wages are less than about $64,000 would get at least a 5% raise under the latter plan.

Cook and Ward-Engelking said the percentage-based plan would help retain higher paid workers who could make far more in the private sector.

But conservative fiscal hawks, like House Assistant Majority Leader Josh Tanner (R-Eagle), backed the flat, $1.55 an hour raise despite costing about $4.4 million more overall. Tanner said the government shouldn’t be competing with the private sector anyway and to let workers swap jobs if they want to leave.

JFAC punted on the issue until later this session.

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Idaho lawmakers unveil their own 'DOGE' effort to cut state code books

“Idaho was DOGE before DOGE was cool,” said Gov. Brad Little in his 2025 State of the State Address earlier this month.

For the uninitiated, DOGE (pronounced D’oh-j, like the meme [RIP Kabosu]) stands for a proposed federal Department of Government Efficiency under the incoming Trump administration led by X and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, along with former GOP presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy.

The goal is to slash $2 trillion in federal spending, including eliminating entire agencies.

But back to Idaho.

When Little first took office in 2019, he ordered state agencies to review their own administrative rules and regulations to simplify and eliminate unnecessary bureaucracy. Bureaucrats have since cut hundreds, if not thousands of pages of red tape with the help of state lawmakers.

Enter House Speaker Mike Moyle, who said he wanted to undertake a similar initiative with state laws. If approved, those reports would need to be on his desk by Sept. 1.

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Anti-SLAPP legislation introduced in the Idaho Senate

We’ve got another repeat bill from last year.

Sen. Brian Lenney’s (R-Nampa) proposal hopes to stop baseless lawsuits in their tracks before those getting sued are buried by steep legal fees.

It’s a tactic used by wealthy companies, organizations or individuals to silence critics whose wallets are nowhere near as deep.

Under Lenney’s bill, those being sued could file a motion to dismiss the case in the early stages of the legal proceedings and potentially recover attorneys fees if they win.

Thirty four other states and Washington D.C. all have similar laws to varying degrees.

His proposal last year failed on the Senate floor, though Lenney said the political climate has shifted in his favor this time around.

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SOTW:

I’m not going to lie, this was a bit of a difficult week to actually pick a song for y’all. But I’m going to go with my first instinct.

When Speaker Moyle waved off the possibility that state agencies might not have enough time or resources to comply with his DOGE-like bill’s Sept. 1 deadline, he said you could walk into any HQ right now and “they can tell you where the bodies are buried.”

“Bodies” by Drowning Pool is by no means a song I particularly like, but damn if it isn’t catchy. Might I suggest the same title, but by a far better band? Billy Corgan screams better.

Honorable mention goes to a band my 17-year-old self was obsessed with for a good six months. If you’re a fan of math metal, you probably know Between the Buried and Me. Let’s go with “Backwards Marathon” from their catalogue.

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January 13, 2025

Subject: …and we're gaveled in once again

Welcome back, everyone! I've missed your bright, shining faces that I don't actually get to see since, you know, this is an emailed newsletter. But the sentiment is there.

The 2025 Idaho Legislative Session kicked off with a bang, huh? I'm not talking about Gov. Brad Little's State of the State Address, which was far shorter than years past, but a blowup within the tiny Democratic caucus. We'll get to that in a bit.

First, we should review Little's annual speech, which is his seventh, by the way. He seemed to hit some high notes with legislators -- I'm namely thinking of his call for another $100 million round of tax cuts and signaling he's down to support some type of private school tuition subsidy -- though Republican leaders want to go even further.

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Gov. Little supports private school subsidies, tax cuts in annual address

Little has been cautious when the subject of private school tuition subsidies -- whether they come in the form of a voucher, tax credit or education savings account -- comes up. In the past, he's deflected the calls to pass some kind of legislation on the subject coming from school choice supporters, saying Idaho already has plenty of school choice options.

It seems he can no longer play that card given the gains pro-subsidy lawmakers made during last year's GOP primary.

So, he's tossing in $50 million for legislators to negotiate over and shape the program how they will. A few caveats, though: the bill must prioritize lower-income families, there must be some kind of accountability mechanism and it cannot divert money away from public schools.

JFAC co-chair, Rep. Wendy Horman (R-Idaho Falls) and Senate Majority Leader Lori Den Hartog (R-Meridian) have been working on their tax credit proposal that ticks at least two of those boxes, and, wouldn't you know it, it would cost exactly $50 million. We're still waiting on that bill to be introduced.

As for Little's other priorities, we have a nice roundup of those in the story above.

You can catch Republicans' reactions here, with the Democrats' response here.

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Idaho Legislature's first order of business: overturning same-sex marriage

Day one of the legislative session essentially shines the sole spotlight on the governor. Day two is when things really get started, and boy, did they.

House State Affairs is the nexus of most controversial legislation at the capitol and Tuesday was no different.

The committee unanimously (keep that in mind for a second) voted to introduce two resolutions. One urges the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse its 2015 decision to legalize same-sex marriage nationwide. The other commends the Boise State University women's volleyball team for forfeiting three matches to San Jose State University because of a transgender player on its team.

Neither carry the force of law.

Still, the two Democrats on the committee, Reps. Todd Achilles (D-Boise) and Brooke Green (D-Boise), got major pushback from their supporters and other party members for voting to introduce the proposals at all.

Their first statement didn't include an apology. Instead, they said they supported all lawmakers "having the ability to discuss these issues through the democratic process" and hoped Republicans would offer them the same courtesy.

The Idaho Democratic Queer Caucus issued a statement blasting the two. "As Democrats, this was a moment to stand firm against harmful distractions and protect the values we fight for. Instead, these votes contributed to the harm caused by advancing bigotry."

Both lawmakers posted apologies on social media the following day, which the caucus cheered.

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Idaho Legislature introduces bill targeting ballot initiatives

New year, same goals for several Republicans. Historically, legislators have both successfully and unsuccessfully tried to add further restrictions to Idaho's ballot initiative process after successful campaigns they didn't like. Most recently, that was the 2018 approval of Medicaid expansion.

Since then, lawmakers have tried several times to make it harder for an issue to get on the ballot, including one law passed in 2021 that got overturned by the Idaho Supreme Court.

This time, legislators are taking a new approach. The bill from Rep. Bruce Skaug (R-Nampa) would require any ballot initiative or referendum to pass with a 60% majority at the ballot box instead of the simple majority it needs now.

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SOTW:

What do you do when the people who love you catch you doing something that hurts them?

The age-old question is explored in-depth by Jamaican poet, Shaggy, in his 2000 number one single, "It Wasn't Me." Over three minutes and forty-seven seconds, Shaggy tells his friend, whose girlfriend caught him cheating on her with the girl next door, to deny, deny and deny some more.

She saw them on the sofa.

She saw them on-camera.

She saw them in every other situation imaginable.

Shaggy advised his friend to tell her, "It wasn't me."

It's not a perfect comparison to what happened with Reps. Achilles and Green's votes on Tuesday, but their original statement saying they needed to introduce the bill in order to challenge it and vote against it wasn't true. Their constituents didn't buy it, considering the resolutions would've failed to be introduced at all if there had been enough lawmakers who voted against it.

The Idaho Democratic Queer Caucus and even Idaho's Planned Parenthood branch publicly blasted them for "…failing to oppose bigotry at every opportunity…" A perfunctory vote, in their minds, is still a statement that they aren't taking every chance to vote their values.

Both lawmakers came to the same conclusion as Shaggy's friend:

Gonna tell her that I'm sorry for the pain that I've caused

I've been listenin' to your reasonin', it makes no sense at all

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Other notable links from this past week:

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