Recent editorials from Idaho newspapers:
We the people hire and fire the Idaho attorney general, not the Idaho Legislature
March 18
Idaho Statesman
The Idaho Attorney General is a constitutional officer who is hired or fired by the people of Idaho every four years in an election based on his or her ability to uphold the Idaho Constitution and the rule of law.
What the Idaho Attorney General is not: a low-rent lawyer-for-hire whose goal is to weasel a victory for his clients at all costs, like some sort of elected version of an ambulance chaser.
Yet, that’s what some Republican Idaho legislators want to turn the position into - private legal counsel: One call, that’s all.
A number of bills targeting the Attorney General’s Office are underway in the Legislature, including one that would remove the attorney general as the primary defender of state agencies. Another bill would prevent the attorney general from representing Idaho’s interest in state lands. The House last week rejected the Attorney General’s Office budget.
The motivation for these pieces of legislation appear to be because some Republican legislators don’t like the legal opinions of current Attorney General Lawrence Wasden.
He declined to join a lawsuit filed by the Texas attorney general to challenge election results in other states, arguing rightly that how those states conduct their elections is their business, and other states shouldn’t be meddling in their affairs.
Wasden, in keeping with that position, signed a letter opposing federal House Resolution 1, the so-called “For The People Act,” because it violated states’ rights to conduct elections on their terms as decided by their individual legislatures.
Wasden has been able to maintain consistency on a number of issues, primarily because his opinions are based not on politics but on the law and the Constitution.
Some have suggested that Wasden’s opposition to the election lawsuit brought by the Texas attorney general, which the U.S. Supreme Court quickly and rightly dismissed, is the reason for this session’s legislative moves to defund his office and seek outside counsel.
Wasden also has a long history of issuing fact-based, Constitution-centered and legally sound opinions that some legislators just don’t like. They prefer to have a lawyer who will “take their side” and “fight for their cause.”
“I hear the term from our good attorney general that ‘I call balls and strikes,’ ” Rep. Bruce Skaug, R-Nampa, said. “Well, sometimes I want to hire an attorney who can throw a curveball, a knuckleball, a changeup, because I need that 100 miles an hour fastball on my cases.”
Skaug is one of the co-sponsors of a bill to allow state departments and agencies to use counsel other than the Attorney General’s Office.
Even though some believe competition will lower costs, this would do just the opposite.
Idaho Land Board members Tuesday voted to oppose a bill that would prohibit the Department of Lands from using the Attorney General’s Office, anticipating attorney fees would go from the current $405,000 to $1.8 million.
The state of Idaho gets in-house consultation at a rate of about $45 to $80 an hour, compared with $400 or more per hour in the private market.
Rep. Megan Blanksma has argued the Legislature would be able to rein in frivolous expenses.
But legislators have proved to be the poster children for frivolous spending - losing court challenge after court challenge because of laws they passed that were contrary to legal advice they were given by the Attorney General’s Office.
The state has paid over $3 million in legal fees since 1995 - some of it after ignoring Wasden’s advice and losing court challenges, according to The Associated Press.
For example, Wasden advised legislators in 2011 that a proposed fetal pain abortion law likely would be found unconstitutional. Lawmakers passed it anyway and lost a lawsuit in 2013, forcing the state to pay out $137,000, according to The Associated Press.
Time and again, Wasden has rightly cautioned against such laws as anti-transgender prohibitions, Medicaid expansion sideboards, abortion restrictions, restrictions on removing monuments, trimming the governor’s emergency powers and more.
The Legislature’s repeated disregard of the Idaho Constitution has gotten so bad that a group of former Idaho attorneys general and a secretary of state have formed a committee to challenge legislators’ unconstitutional proposals. They, too, warn against the dangers of inflated budgets, which they saw prior to a 1995 law to consolidate legal services in the Attorney General’s Office.
That law was precipitated by a more than fourfold increase in the state agencies’ legal expenses from about $1.3 million on outside lawyers in 1988 to $6 million in 1994, according to The Spokesman-Review.
We do not want to return to those days.
Lawyers for the state of Idaho should not be hired and fired by the Legislature, which has demonstrated an appalling lack of legal acumen. Attorneys general should not be hired and fired by department heads or commissions; attorneys general work for the people. They are hired and fired at the ballot box every four years.
Wasden, the longest-serving attorney general in Idaho’s history, has been hired and rehired by the people five times, first hired in 2002 and rehired in 2006, 2010, 2014 and 2018.
He routinely faces primary challengers and has dispatched each one of them. He has gone on to win the general elections resoundingly, with 60% to 74% of the vote.
The reason he wins so handily? He’s good at his job.
The voters of Idaho recognize that. We’re the ones who should be making that decision, not legislators who are motivated by politics and flawed legal reasoning.
Vote no on these damaging bills.
Online: Idaho Statesman
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GOP tax-cutters fly blindly into the mountain
March 18
The Lewiston Tribune
Passing reckless tax cuts has become routine for Idaho’s Republican Legislature.
Wednesday, on a party-line vote, the House did it again.
But rarely has there been such an obvious display of sheer stupidity. It almost makes one wonder how some of these people would fare if they were playing with their own money instead of yours.
For the better part of two decades, Idaho Republican lawmakers have followed a recipe for starving the beast of state government and public education.
First, they low ball their estimate of how much tax revenue the state will receive during an economic downturn.
Next, they cut more deeply into state budgets than warranted.
Finally, when their projections prove to be unduly pessimistic, they don’t restore spending. They declare a surplus - and hand the money over to Idaho’s economic elites.
And so it goes with House Bill 332, the eye-popping $389 million package that in the span of about 24 hours went from introduction in the House Revenue and Taxation Committee to passage on the House floor. It continues Idaho’s retreat from a progressive income tax toward a flat tax that works a greater hardship on people who work for a living.
If you doubt that’s been happening over the years, review your own income tax statements.
As the Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy documents, the permanent portion of this cut reduces income tax rates more at the top than at the bottom. The one-time rebate promises a paltry $50 for people at the low end of the economic ladder while leaving the lion’s share for those at the top.
So, the Center says, families earning less than $66,000 a year may not even notice the $78 to $231 reduction in their tax bill. But the top 1 percent will take home, on average, another $8,863.
Moreover, the bulk of a $17 million cut in the corporate tax bill will go to the 81 percent of shareholders who don’t even live in the Gem State.
Talk about adding insult to injury. This pandemic didn’t nail people at the top. They continued to work at home. Many of them were deemed essential workers. But what about the restaurant waitress who was already struggling to make ends meet on Idaho’s traditionally low wages when her hours were cut? If you want to help her, redeem the 15-year-old pledge to remove the regressive sales tax from groceries. Or rescue beleaguered homeowners who are paying more than their fair share of property taxes because the Legislature deliberately shifted more of the burden on them to benefit commercial and business property owners.
What about the students who spent the better part of a year falling behind in remote learning? Why would state lawmakers remain content to cut taxes when the state continues to allocate the least amount of money per pupil in the country?
This Legislature is about to pass the smallest increase in the public school appropriation in six years while continuing to raid the general fund - half of which goes to public schools - for transportation rather than make long-haul truckers pay the full costs of the damage they inflict on highways.
And where’s the guarantee that by cutting taxes now when the economy is on the rebound, this Legislature isn’t setting the stage for another bust when the next economic slump hits?
Now comes a double whammy.
Before passing the American Rescue Plan, Democrats inserted a poison pill: Any state that cuts taxes could lose the same amount from the federal bailout they’re about to receive.
Idaho’s share comes to $1.25 billion, according to the Tax Foundation’s inventory.
So between March 3 and sometime in 2024, the federal government may claw back the same amount - dollar for dollar - from Idaho’s federal package that lawmakers intend to parcel out among the comfortable and the investor class.
It’s not set in stone. The Treasury Department has to weigh in.
But Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, the ranking Republican on the Finance Committee, sounds worried: “If a state like Idaho wants to provide tax relief in the interest of economic recovery, and to help people return to earning their livelihoods, the American Rescue Plan says it will be financially punished by the federal government.”
So does Maryland’s state Senate, which put tax cuts on hold: “I think it’s a bit too early to know. We want to see how the Treasury interprets some of these provisions,” Senate President Bill Ferguson, D-Baltimore City, told Marylandmatters.org. “And you know, we want to make smart decisions with as much information as possible.”
As does Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, who’s leading a legal challenge against the provision. In their fillings, Ohio’s lawyers lay out the threat: “The tax mandate thus gives the states a choice: They can have either the badly needed federal funds or their sovereign authority to set tax policy. But they can not have both. In our current economic crisis, that is no choice at all.”
Yet, Idaho’s best and brightest would rather fly blindly into a mountain. Why not wait until the path is clear?
It makes you think they’re rushing to pass this bill before the rest of us figure out what’s in it.
Online: The Lewiston Tribune
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Legislature should support true education reform in approving $6 million federal grant
March 13
Idaho Press
Citizens should be paying attention to House bill 294, which would use state tax dollars for grants and scholarships to families to send their children to private schools.
The bill is careful not to mention vouchers, but let’s not play around: this is a school voucher program. We think the legislature should abandon this idea, and support more tangible benefits to young Idahoans, like approving the $6 million federal grant for early childhood education, which lawmakers rejected earlier this month.
Our concern with HB 294 is rooted in the Idaho Constitution. The state’s founding document details the legislature’s responsibility to provide a free, uniform education system in Article IX, Section 1 of the Idaho Constitution. It also specifically prohibits giving money to parochial schools - private schools tied to a religious entity.
Idaho is already lacking when it comes to funding a uniform education system, as evidenced by the 46 school districts that sought voter approval for $299.6 million in bonds and levies in last week’s election, Idaho Education News reported. The state faces a teacher shortage because we don’t pay these professionals enough. We should not take money away from an already strained system to fund private schools.
The Strong Students Scholarship program in the bill would give 90% of the money the state spends per-student to parents to use on non-public education, such as private schools or home-schooling, the Post Register reported. The state paid an average of $6,713 per student last school year, meaning the new bill would allow a student to transfer to a private school and use $6,041 of that funding.
We don’t want to see Idaho syphoning money away from a public school system that is already underfunded. The bill aims to give families choices, which we commend, but it undermines the state’s constitutional responsibility “to establish and maintain a general, uniform and thorough system of public, free common schools.”
We’re concerned that, if this bill is signed into law, private schools would be allowed to take government money with no accountability measures. Right now, non-government schools can accept or deny any student for any reason. There are no requirements for regular assessments, and no learning goals to be met. We know there are many private schools offering a terrific education for kids, but there should be more accountability where public dollars are concerned.
We agree with the legislature that our education system needs help. But this bill is not the way to help.
What would be helpful is our legislators accepting the federal early learning grant, which would provide $6 million to support pre-kindergarten programs, something we desperately need in this state.
Historically, pre-K happened in the home. Most Idaho families can’t afford to lose one spouse’s income. Things are even more precarious for single-income households. We would love to see every family able to prepare their children for kindergarten at home, but the reality is, this isn’t possible.
We are one of four states without state funding for early learning. A fall Idaho Reading Indicator found that almost six out of 10 children come to kindergarten not ready to read. If our children aren’t prepared to learn this fundamental skill, we’re in trouble.
Learning is a universal life experience. The legislature should support every Idaho child’s journey in education, from start to finish.
Online: Idaho Press
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