Idaho lawmakers adjourn, settle education budget

BOISE (AP) — The 2013 Idaho Legislature adjourned Thursday, nearly a week later than expected, after lawmakers finally completed the $1.3 billion education budget.

Back in January, lawmakers predicted two issues might prove troublesome: repealing Idaho’s personal property tax on business equipment and Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter’s plan to create a state-based insurance exchange.

Instead, it was the school spending plan — something that must pass every year — that kept lawmakers in Boise beyond Easter. Given it’s the first education budget since voters in November rejected the 2011 “Students Come First” overhaul plans, however, some lawmakers weren’t surprised it became a sticking point.

“You take the inherent friction ... and the fact the budget makes up 50 percent of the entire state general fund, you’ve got an issue that’s ripe for problems to occur,” said Senate Majority Caucus Chairman Russ Fulcher, R-Meridian and an instrumental player in the group of 18 senators whose efforts rejected the initial education budget last week.

The Legislature adjourned at 11:30 a.m., with the House and Senate completing the requisite formalities — and informing Otter they were leaving town after 88 days.

Sen. Shawn Keough, R-Sandpoint, agreed the unsettled environment surrounding how Idaho should improve schools spawned the friction that left the Legislature in a four-day limbo.

For one, she said, the Idaho School Board Association arrived pushing collective-bargaining laws that were largely rejected by voters with the “Students Come First” package. One passed just before adjournment, on a 47-21 House vote and after long debate, to give school districts more power to reduce teacher salaries and trim their contracts.

Keough, a Joint Finance-Appropriations budget committee vice-chair, said wounds these school board bills re-opened contributed to disagreements.

“It just created a different tension that was still somewhat adversarial, when it didn’t need to be,” Keough said.

The 2013 session wasn’t all education.

Idaho is among just a handful of Republican-led states now designing its own health insurance exchange, the online marketplace for individuals and small businesses to purchase insurance come Jan. 1. Otter pushed hard for this, arguing it would keep Idaho in control of its own destiny, be cheaper for residents and better for state insurers than an alternative run by the federal government.

It passed after 16 hours of combined House and Senate debate, over fiery objections of some lawmakers who feel President Barack Obama’s 2010 insurance overhaul, which requires the exchange, is an overreach of federal authority.

And lawmakers also managed a partial repeal of the state’s personal property tax, a $20 million break that eliminates the annual assessments on computers, desks, chairs and other business equipment for 90 percent of Idaho’s businesses. Otter had sought a full repeal of the $141 million annual tax, but said Thursday he’s satisfied — at least for now.

“I would strongly encourage the Legislature to continue the work of relieving all Idaho businesses of this burdensome and onerous tax,” he said.

Some early-session expectations didn’t materialize. For instance, some thought 2013 could include tough firearms-related measures to uphold Second Amendment rights, over fear Obama’s administration would move aggressively to restrict them following December’s Connecticut school shooting.

But a headlines-grabbing bill making it a crime for Idaho law enforcement agents to help the federal government confiscate any newly banned weapons misfired in the Senate. This absence of significant action, said Rep. Vito Barbieri, R-Dalton Garden, resulted partly because lawmakers realized Idaho already has pretty stringent gun protections on the books.

“The fervor there at the first was tempered by time,” Barbieri said.

Some Democrats and Republicans were crestfallen the Legislature didn’t take up a bill to expand Medicaid, another key provision of President Obama’s 2010 overhaul. Actuaries say expansion will save Idaho taxpayers millions, while covering more than 100,000 additional low-income Idaho residents.

“We really missed what I think is the greatest opportunity to benefit Idaho citizens and Idaho tax payers,” said a disappointed House Minority Leader John Rusche, D-Lewiston.

House Speaker Scott Bedke, R-Oakley, predicts expansion will re-emerge in the 2014 Legislature, when the anti-Affordable Care Act vitriol of this session will still be fresh in lawmakers’ memories.

Add this to the mix: It will be an election year.

Medicaid “is going to sound a lot like the exchange debate this year,” Fulcher said. “That’s 2014 for you.”

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AP writer Hannah Furfaro contributed to this report.