Social issues preoccupy Idaho Legislature to the detriment of business, critics say

Like this year’s legislative session itself, a recent press conference with legislative leadership and the Idaho Press Club found that social issues sucked up most of the oxygen in the room.

Held on March 10 at the Beside Bardenay event space in Boise, Speaker of the House Scott Bedke, R-Oakley, Senate President Pro Tem Brent Hill, R-Rexburg, House Minority Leader Ilana Rubel, D-Boise, and Senate Minority Leader Michelle Stennett, D-Ketchum, focused primarily on legislation concerning issues such as whether transgender girls could play on girls’ athletic teams and whether transgender people could change the gender marker on their birth certificates — some of which don’t comply with existing federal law or court rulings.

Rubel said she was frustrated by the “hard right turn into divisive social issues” the Legislature had taken this year.

Such issues have been front and center this session because it’s an election year and legislators running for re-election want to push an agenda, even if the bills themselves don’t pass or are struck down by the courts later, Stennett said.

Business concerns

Major Idaho businesses Chobani, Clif Bar, HP and Micron sent a letter to the Legislature on March 2 expressing concern about some of these bills, as did Mark Peters, director of Idaho National Laboratory, on March 3.

“Passage of these bills could hurt our ability to attract and retain top talent to Idaho,” the four businesses wrote.

“As an institution, INL places great value on inclusion and diversity,” Peters concurred.

In addition, the Boise Metro Chamber has raised concerns about HB 440 — which bans preferences for minorities in state or local government hiring, contracting or public education — saying it would make it harder to recruit employees and hurt businesses.

Such social issues — combined with actions like the House voting down the higher education budget because, according to some representatives, it included funding to increase diversity — can give the impression that the state is not welcoming to minorities, opponents have said. Bedke said he planned to meet with the companies to explain that the transgender athletics bill, in particular, was an issue of “basic fairness.”

Hill said the Senate had amended HB 440 to carve out an exemption for higher education. Bedke said that the Idaho Transportation Department had also expressed concern about the state’s eligibility for some grants should the bill pass in its current form and that he hoped those concerns would be addressed.

Possible recession?

With the stock market’s recent gyrations and other indications that a recession may be looming on the horizon, the Legislature needs to look at issues such as reducing residential property taxes and potentially reducing appropriations, while at the same time being prepared to increase appropriations in areas drawn upon more heavily in a recession, such as higher education, legislators said.

“The best time to prepare for a recession is when you aren’t in one,” Bedke said, noting that the economic situation puts increased pressure on the Legislature to cut property and other taxes.

Rubel lamented that several bills that could lower residential property taxes were languishing in committee chairs’ drawers rather than being voted on by the House. However, even with the planned sine die adjournment of March 20, there is still time for the Legislature to address some of those issues, Hill said. That could include raising income eligibility and the credit benefit for the circuit breaker provision, which gives senior citizens and the disabled a break on their property taxes; raising the homeowner’s exemption from the current $100,000 and possibly indexing it to another statistic, he added.

A bill from Rep. Mike Moyle, R-Star, that had passed the House froze property taxes for a year, but it was amended in the Senate by Sen. Jim Rice, R-Caldwell, to instead limit cities and counties to a 4% budgetary increase per year. Bedke said he thought the House would concur with the Senate’s changes.