Legislature tackling growing government spending

In the last four years, Idaho has grown government spending by 54% from a $9.0 billion budget to the current year’s budget of $13.8 billion. In the last couple of decades, the legislature has never reviewed more than 19% of total state spending before approving the budgets.

The budget-setting process begins with the combined Senate and House budget committees sitting together in one committee called JFAC. Of the hundreds of budget bills JFAC has sent to the Idaho senate floor since 2019 for final approval, not a single bill has been rejected by the senate with a demand that JFAC sharpen their pencils. The legislative budget process for years has essentially amounted to a rubber-stamping process of the governor’s budget recommendations.

This year, things have changed. Because fiscal conservatives were elected to the House and Senate in the last election cycle, we were able to substantially change the budget-setting process this year in cooperation with the co-chairs of JFAC. These budget reforms are significant.

Many may remember how President Ronald Reagan always wanted the ability to line-item veto the budgets passed by Congress. Our most significant budget reform this year is separating the base budgets from the line items. The Idaho legislature will now be able to consider the line item requests to grow Idaho’s government agencies in separate budget bills. The Democrats and some liberal Republicans really resisted this change, but conservatives prevailed in big wins on the House and Senate floors. This year and in future years these budget reforms should allow the legislature to reign in unreasonable growth in government spending.

Just last month Bayer US LLC donated $4,500 to House and Senate leadership’s political campaigns and $10,000 to the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry (IACI). Subsequently, Bayer has had one of their government relations employees and their Boise lobbyist attempt a bill in the Idaho Senate. S1245 would have limited the ability of Idahoans to sue the company for harm caused by chemical pesticides like Round-Up. Bayer bought Monsanto in 2018, and since then there have been billion-dollar jury awards against the company for harm caused by Round-Up.

S1245 came to the floor Thursday of this week, and there was excellent floor debate by the Democrats and by the most conservative Republicans, including me. We prevailed on the Senate floor when S1245 failed in a 15-19 vote. The 15 votes in favor of the bill included senate leadership and the more liberal Republicans, while the Democrats and the conservatives wing-tipped for the victory against the bill.

Another great victory this week was an overwhelming passage of my bill, Senate Bill 1258 on the Senate floor in a 33-2 vote. Several years ago Bonner County vacated the last half mile of Camp Bay Road. The road was a county-maintained road that provided a public right-of-way to the public waters of Lake Pend Oreille at Camp Bay.

When the county abandoned the road to a private developer, M3 Companies out of Arizona, Bonner County residents and all Idahoans lost public access to Lake Pend Oreille. Fred and Jennifer Arn of Sagle privately funded civil litigation to challenge the county’s decision and to restore the lake access. Unfortunately, Idaho Code is written in such a way that the county’s decisions and actions are protected from judicial review.

But public lands and waters are a vital resource to the people of Idaho. While hunting and fishing are a recognized right in the Idaho Constitution, what better place to hunt and fish than the public lands and waters of Idaho? My bill, S1258, will add new requirements to Idaho’s laws. If it passes the House and gets signed by the governor, any time a county or a public highway district wants to abandon a public road or right-of-way that provides us access to public lands and waters, the county will first have to secure a replacement public access that is substantially similar to the access being vacated and that provides the public the same scope of use as the road being abandoned.

Please kindly let House Transportation members know that you support S1258 by writing them an email at emailidaho.com/house-committees. The bill has been assigned to their committee for consideration of whether it advances to the House floor.

If you have any questions, please contact me on my cell phone at 1-208-610-2680.

Idaho Sen. Scott Herndon represents Bonner and Boundary counties in District 1. He can be reached at sherndon@senate.idaho.gov.