Posts published in “Idaho”

Boise City Hall is located on Capitol Boulevard, which is the sort-of grand entrance road leading to the front steps of the Idaho Statehouse, and only about two blocks away from the capitol. You can see the Statehouse from the city hall. You can almost see two units of government glaring at each other.

The Statehouse is dominated by Republicans, in its executive and legislative offices, and the city hall (notwithstanding that elected city offices are non-partisan) by Democrats, in the mayor’s office and strongly on the council. A clue to the latter reality shows up in one of the flags - there are several - typically aloft in front of the building, visible from the right angle from the Statehouse.

It is a Pride flag - one of those with rainbow colors, adopted most specifically by gender and sexual minority groups but also by others as well.

That’s the flag which implicitly though not specifically was targeted by House Bill 96, recently passed by the legislature and signed into law. The new law says that, “A governmental entity shall not display a flag on its property other than the following,” listing several exceptions which do not include the Pride flag.

Boise city hall’s Pride flag has not come down. Attorney General Raul Labrador and the Ada County sheriff’s office both contacted the office of Mayor Lauren McLean about it. At this writing, there’s been no change.

And there’s no real reason why there has to be. The new state law doesn’t say what happens if a city, or any other government entity decides to fly it anyway. There’s no fine, no penalty, certainly no prison time. Failure to comply is not declared to be either a misdemeanor or felony. (It did declare that an emergency was found to exist, though you really have to stretch the meaning of “emergency” to include the flying of a long-standing flag.)

This is really the legislature saying: This is what we want.

On that level, with no statement indicating a compelling state interest in the policy, and no consequences for flouting it … well, if you’re a city government (or for that matter a city) that doesn’t much like what the legislature does anyway, why comply?

The Substack Political Potatoes opined “Neither McLean nor Labrador is being subtle here. This is political virtue signaling, pure and simple. McLean is playing to her left-leaning base with the added bonus of triggering the far-right, and Labrador’s letter is designed to give his base something to post on X and Truth Social. It’s all the same playbook — pick a political hot potato, rally the base, and make it go viral.”

The symbolism for both sides plays out just fine.

Presumably, then, both sides benefit from an ongoing rhetorical shadow war, for which there’s really no incentive for either side to specifically prevail. While you’d never necessarily want to predict a hot-button topic will never go to court, my guess is that this one doesn’t.

The only problem here is for the people of Idaho, whose law books are being cluttered with statutes that have no practical purpose, no real benefit to the public, and intended only to fire ideological missiles over at the other side.

A point to ponder: Will those on the right start to wave a flag of their own? Representative Heather Scott, who was the originator of HB 96, is well known for a picture posing alongside a Confederate battle flag. Maybe that would suit their purposes in places where people like the backers of the flag law could mark their territory. (If you wanted to get creative, one category of allowed flags - “Official flags of countries other than the United States to commemorate special occasions” - might be made to squeeze in.)

No doubt it would make clear where certain Idahoans are coming from. Warnings, after all, may be needed.

Put these in the category of gifts that keep on giving - at least for commentators: Idaho legislation from the just-completed session that (mostly) generated some news coverage, but are not done with us yet.

Or with the legislature, which likely will be revisiting these subjects again.

(This list incidentally, is drawn from a rundown of “key actions” of the last legislative session prepared by legislative staff, available online. It’s worth your perusal.)

This isn’t strictly a rundown of bad ideas. I think at least one was well worth passing, potential uproar notwithstanding.

That is Senate Bill 1032, which requires school districts and charter schools to set a policy on student use of smartphones (the bill language is a little broader) during school hours. It does not dictate specifics but does “emphasize that student use of electronic communications devices be as limited as possible in school buildings and on school grounds or premises during school hours; and reduce distractions ...” Its combination of direction with flexibility makes it better than some comparable bills in other states.

Opinions on school day smartphone use are all over the map, and the debate will rage. Fine: It’s the sort of policy discussion people and their representatives should hash out.

But other bills carry different lessons.

House Bill 7, setting a minimum $300 fine for first time convictions of marijuana possession of three ounces, or less, has an open bottom end: No limit on how much is enough to run afoul of Idaho criminal law. A seed might be enough. Or less: A fiber of the offending plant presumably would qualify to place an unwitting person in violation of the law. You think it couldn’t happen? Famous last words.

Precision and definition matter. House Bill 270 is billed as covering indecent exposure, expanding on earlier law to cover exposure of certain breasts. And which are those? The bill does sort of define them (and I wouldn’t dare try to paraphrase any of this): “developed female breasts, including the areola and nipple; to expose adult male breasts, including the areola and nipple, that have been medically or hormonally altered to appear like developing or developed female breasts; to expose artificial breasts, including the areola and nipple, intended to resemble female breasts.”

Sympathies to the law officers trying to enforce that one. Either the law will be essentially ignored, or it will generate more culture war headlines for Idaho, bouncing the subject back to the legislature.

Extensive definition may bring to court Senate Bill 1198a, which ostensibly aims to “to ensure freedom of inquiry in higher education.” Except that it contains a long list of subjects and ideas intended to be banned from instruction (good-bye freedom of inquiry) in Idaho colleges and universities as too DEI: “any trainings, programs, activities, or instruction that is derived from or that promotes the tenets or concepts of critical theory, including but not limited to the concepts of unconscious or implicit bias, microaggressions, internalized racism, cultural appropriation, structural equity, settler colonialism, group marginalization, systemic oppression, social justice, institutional or systemic racism, white fragility, racial privilege, disparate impact, intersectionality, sexual privilege, patriarchy, gender theory, queer theory, neopronouns, transgender ideology, misgendering, othering, deadnaming, heteronormativity, allyship, or any other related formulation of these tenets or concepts.” None of these are defined, so good luck trying to follow the law.

Senate Bill 1210a, the “Idaho Medical Freedom Act,” likewise consists of a bunch of state-imposed prohibitions - this time on Idaho businesses. Building on a law aimed at battling efforts to combat the Covid-19 pandemic (what can you say?), this one says a business “shall not refuse to provide any service, product, admission to a venue, or transportation to a person because that person has or has not received or used a medical intervention.” A medical intervention “means a medical procedure, treatment, device, drug, injection, medication, or medical action taken to diagnose, prevent, or cure a disease or alter the health or biological function of a person.”

That’ll just thrill not only medical providers and places like restaurants that have to monitor their sites for health concerns, but anyone concerned with spreading contagious illness. Ebola, anyone?

Senate Bill 1012, creating a new wildlife depredations appeals board, exempts it from open meeting requirements. Shutting the public out is over time bound to create significant issues.

Check out the list of passed legislation for yourself, and have fun adding to this list ...

You can’t manage if you can’t measure it, goes to the old management theory. But it doesn’t work smoothly in some places.

Like the Idaho Legislature.

If you’re inside the legislative bubble, one of the most common and persistent questions - and this is true going back generations, and probably in legislatures all over - is: When do we get out of here? For several decades, the Idaho Legislature has set, long before the session ever begins, a target date for adjournment (sine die, in the jargon). That’s the point by which, leaders figure, lawmakers should be able to wrap up business. This year the target was March 21.

You may have noticed that they didn’t hit that mark, and at this writing they’re still going strong. Odds are they have another week or more left to go. Last year the target was March 22; they didn’t hit that one either. In fact, they usually don’t.

There’s usually some self-flagellation and talk by critics about wasting money on a too-long session. I don’t see it that way. True, the legislature sometimes  has wasted some money - not large amounts, in the statewide scheme of things - in the course of hanging around longer than they really needed to. But I see the “targets” as a term of art, a calendar notation to indicate simply that things should be winding down around then.

Legislatures should keep after their work as long as they need to get it done properly. Efficiency is a virtue, but not at the expense of rushing to hasty and poorly thought-out decisions. (Which they nonetheless … well, that’s a subject for another time.) So I won’t knock them for taking a few more days than they might have planned.

There’s another oft-noted area of measure you can apply to legislatures: Volume of legislation. For whatever reason, many state legislatures (Oregon is another example) this year have been producing larger than usual numbers of measures: Bills, resolutions, memorials and so on.

In Idaho, the legislature as of March 28 (date of the most recent report on totals as this is written) showed that 1,003 new pieces of legislation have been formally prepared through the state system. That’s a little staggering. From most decades past, the number seemed to habitually run in the 600s and 700s. Four years ago, that number was 803, so in the last four years the number of new pieces of legislation pushed through into introductable format (run through legislative staff who put it in proper legal format) has increased by a quarter.

That number doesn’t include other pieces of legislature - “changes, amendments. and engrossments” - which also are prepared, and when they’re added, the number for this year for all new legislation rises to 1,323. That compares to 976 from four years ago, also a really large increase.

Little wonder there seems to be more discussion about putting ceilings on the number of measures that can be drafted and introduced in a session. (Many other states do have such practical limitations; some restrict individual legislators to introducing no more than a specific number of measures.)

If that happens, it wouldn’t necessarily affect the volume of new laws the public sees and actually has to live with. As of March 28, the legislature had actually passed (approved in both chambers and sent to the governor) just 250 bills, which is fewer than in any of the three previous sessions. Actual productivity, then, as opposed to generating a lot of paper on the front end, might be down a bit this year.

Does any of that matter?

I would say, not much. What’s important about the legislature’s work, or at least what ought to be considered most important, is not the quantity of the work but rather the quality. How well considered is the legislation?

More on that soon.

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Higher education got a couple of messages in the last few days about where it stands in Idaho, and hints of where it might go. Taken together, the meaning is unmistakable.

One data point came in an obvious place: the legislature, and more specifically the budget-writing Joint Finance Appropriations Committee. On March 25 the committee was considering its final round (the procedure has gotten more complex the last couple of years) of budgeting for higher education, at a time when - it should be reminded - the state is flush with revenue and student populations and other activities at the institutions are expanding.

The committee has approved, more or less, a sliver of an increase for higher education generally. But on March 25, some of the members argued for dropping the ongoing funding for the University of Idaho and Boise State University by $2 million. (Back in the day, JFAC carefully avoided budgeting for individual institutions to avoid regional conflicts; but never mind.)

That $2 million is only a small piece of either university’s budget. Senator Codi Galloway of Boise, who opposed the move, accurately said, “The money here is not very important.” Galloway continued: “$2 million, when you take the balance out, the money is small. A message we send is big. If we ask our agencies to make changes, they make significant changes and we refuse to change course with them, then our power of the purse is no longer relevant.”

Well, accurate except maybe for the last few words, because ...

What was the problem the legislature was trying to telegraph here? One of the cut backers, Representative Josh Tanner of Eagle, said  “I’ve had a real tough time with universities. The more I dig in, the more frustrated I actually get. The more I actually look into – whether you look into the DEI aspects, critical race theory, the actual professors and some of the classes that are actually being taught – it saddens me to see the direction that our universities have taken.”

The one specific he mentioned here was DEI. But Galloway and others pointed out that the legislature has already acted against DEI, while the state board of education and the institutions have acted to cut it back even before being required to. (Obeying in advance, in other words.) Messaging on that subject was received and has been acted upon some time ago. As, quite reasonably, per Galloway: “We cannot ask people to make change, watch them make change and then continue to punish them.”

JFAC was deeply split on the cuts, which (because of the way one co-chair but apparently not the other interprets the now-complicated voting rules) was then sent to the Senate floor for action. Whatever the floor does, what you’re seeing here is something way short of a full-throated endorsement of higher education in Idaho - in fact, quite the opposite.

Now, the second recent news item, from March 20: The hiring of the new president of the University of Vermont - Marlene Tromp, who since 2019 has held the counterpart job at Boise State University.

She has an overall good track record at BSU, probably excellent if you consider the political environment she has faced, but people I’ve talked with were less surprised that she left than that she stayed so long. In many places (Vermont for example), and in the Idaho of years ago, the college and universities were seen as crown jewels in the state. Now they’re viewed - in many halls of power at least - as objects of disgust to be kicked at and hacked apart.

What does that suggest about the applicants to replace Tromp at BSU? For all Boise State’s recent growth and variety of successes, who would want the grief, or the risk that the institution might be wrecked under a DOGE-style administration?

Says a lot about the future, for a while at least, of higher education in Idaho.

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I don’t do a lot of predictions. But odds are good for a particular news story happening in Idaho soon, and with a reasonable set of probability about where it will happen.

Though it could happen anywhere - or to anyone.

This thought grows out of a pile of recent news stories around the country about activity by federal (and sometimes state or local level) immigration forces. A wrapup by Pro Publica said “Federal immigration authorities have a history of wrongfully detaining U.S. citizens. Advocates warn that the Trump administration’s immigration policies mean that more citizens will get caught up in raids and sweeps.”

It’s not that prior administrations never grabbed citizens and treated them, in the immigration system, as they shouldn’t have. It’s happened before. (If you’ve never seen the Cheech Marin movie comedy Born in East LA, it’s not a bad introduction - informative as well as entertaining.)

But things are moving into a whole new level under the Trump Administration.

The agencies even have been given arrest quotas; the pressure is coming on to ramp up those numbers. There seems to be less concern about making mistakes than about failing to hit the targets.

In making its assessment, Pro Publica of course had receipts. They cited a Philadelphia car wash employee who was handcuffed and facing the business side of a gun before he could demonstrate that he was, in fact, a citizen.

The news site went on: “In Utah, agents pulled over and detained a 20-year-old American after he honked at them. In New Mexico, a member of the Mescalero Apache nation more than two hours from the border was questioned by agents who demanded to see their passport. Earlier this month, a Trump voter in Virginia was pulled over and handcuffed by gun-wielding immigration agents. In Texas, a 10-year-old citizen recovering from brain cancer was detained at a Border Patrol checkpoint and eventually deported to Mexico with her undocumented parents and other citizen siblings in February.”

As a side indicator, there’s the case of an academic from France headed to a professional conference in Houston who was detained by customs, his phone seized and himself deported to France - because messages critical of Donald Trump were found on his phone.

Much of the recent activity has been happening toward the southern border states. But not all of it, and more will be coming north.

Won’t be long before Idaho sees some of this action - meaning I think it highly likely it will show up in news reports - if it hasn’t already. When large-scale “sweeps” happen, their agents tend to be not especially picky about who is seized.

Is this likely to happen more in some parts of Idaho than in others? Probably.

If I were to bet on the next Idaho occurrence, I’d go for Canyon County. About 26% of its population (more than 50,000 people) is Hispanic, according to census information, and Caldwell is thought to be the third most Hispanic city in the state, with Nampa coming in seventh. That could put a major bullseye on that area.

But consider too the northern Magic Valley. Here are the other cities topping that list of Hispanic populations: Rupert, Jerome, Burley and Hailey. Jerome County’s population is about 38% Hispanic - the closest in Idaho to a majority-Hispanic county.

It’s immediately followed (at 37.5%) by Clark County, which is Idaho’s smallest-population county, but might be attractive to immigration forces looking to simply swamp an area.

The point there is that if large numbers of people are swept up in these areas, they easily can include citizens as well as non-citizens.

If you’re thinking to yourself: I’m a citizen, I have every right to be here, or even ‘I’m not Hispanic’ - don’t get too comfortable. If you’re caught up in a sweep, none of that may matter until after your life already has been turned upside down.

You’re not safe now. None of us are.

For all of Idaho’s vaunted population growth, a lot of people have been making their way out of the state, or opting out of providing services. Doctors, teachers, librarians and many more: For a variety of reasons, but specific legislature-passed state policy clearly among them.

Let’s add child care providers to the list.

This comes out of a report just released by IdahoStars, a block-grant-funded (so don’t expect this to continue long into the Trump Administration) effort run at Moscow through the University of Idaho, with the Idaho Center on Disabilities and Human Development and Idaho Association for the Education of Young Children.

It wasn’t put together by a private non-profit group, though some of the new reports’s conclusions could match up with one.

At a time when Idaho’s population continues to grow, IdahoStars report said more than 2,400 people working in child care in 2023 left work in that area, with turnover at a high 37%.

The overall number of people working in that field in Idaho fell by 3%, at a time when it should be rising. The number of available “spots” for children in Idaho child care centers has dropped around the same time by 1,321.

That in turn led to an estimated economic cost for the state of about $478 million, IdahoStars said.

Many of the reasons for that are endemic to the way child care operations usually run. Many are large in size and don’t pay especially well. Stress can be considerable. The report said, “Working in child care is rooted in a passion for early childhood, but the job is overly taxing and drives individuals out of the field. Low pay, long days, constant changes in leadership, children, co-workers, and requirements as well as the physical and emotional toll of the job all contribute to leaving the field.”

The workers were asked what would be needed to get them to return. More than two thirds cited higher pay, and almost half the rest talked about “bad management.” Obviously, that’s not true everywhere, but it seems to be common enough to represent a problem.

The turnover and diminished staffs are resulting in specific problems statewide: “High turnover rates lead to increased recruitment and training costs for child care providers. Constantly hiring and training new staff members to replace those who leave is not only time consuming but also financially burdensome for child care centers. These costs can strain the financial sustainability of child care businesses, potentially leading to increased fees for parents or closure of facilities.”

All that is worth bearing in mind in considering House Bill 243, at this writing House-passed and awaiting final Senate action, which hacks away at regulations covering child care, and would let child care centers set their own staff-to-child ratios. Convenient for center operators trying to save money and avoid finding hard-to-get staff; but problematic for children and parents.

The Senate committee hearing on it was heated. Christine Tiddens, executive director of Idaho Voices for Children argued, “Stripping these key safety standards from law opens the door to operators and bad actors who cut corners to save costs. In a child care setting, cutting corners results in babies being put into harm’s way.”

The bill supporters’ argument? Here’s Senator Brian Lenney of Nampa:  “I’ve heard cities and bureaucrats saying that they know how to run a day care better than a day care owner. It’d be like a bureaucrat telling a farmer the best way to milk a cow.”

If the bill passes, and it seems to have a good chance, we’ll know a year from now how well that logic held up. And how well Idaho children fared under its terms.

And we’ll know more - if there’s any money to pay for updated studies then - about how many child care providers still are offering their services in Idaho.The number may be down from where it is today.

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When the highly controversial Idaho school voucher measure, House Bill 93, landed on Governor Brad Little’s desk, his office asked for comment from Idahoans about what he should do: Sign the bill, or veto it?

The bill had been passed by both chambers of the legislature, but not overwhelmingly: 42-28 in the House, and 20-15 in the Senate, meaning the Republican caucuses were split on it. A veto likely would not have been overridden. That means a veto would not have been performative or a statement of concern; it would be decisive.

It turns out that a veto is what most Idahoans want. We’ve known that for some time. In the Boise State University Idaho Public Policy Survey released in January, 53.3% said they opposed vouchers to 38% who supported them. The proposal was defined in the survey as “use of tax dollars to help pay for a private or religious education if a parent chooses not to send their child to a local public school,” which if anything may have been a favorable description.

But we don’t have to rely only on that to gauge Idaho’s attitude toward the subject. Actual opposition in Idaho may have been larger, to judge from the response to Little’s invitation. A lot of Idahoans did respond, as 37,457 phone calls and emails poured into the governor’s office. And 86% of them opposed the voucher bill.

Little, without making any direct reference to this, then signed the bill into law. In fact, the statement he released about his signing made no direct reference to the content (other than the cost) or the meaning of the bill at all, or the overwhelming wave of opposition to it.

This legislative session is packed full of bills most Idahoans, if informed of them, likely would oppose. But no significant roadblock or blowback has surfaced yet.

Most Idaho legislators no longer appear to see themselves as representatives of the people. In many cases, they seem empowered to do whatever they want to do - carry out their personal preferences. That’s constrained mainly by the will of a few interests - the state Republican Party organization, the Idaho Freedom Foundation, a few others - which have outsized impact on Republican primary elections. Voters, whether aware of what their legislators are doing or not, have been imposing no political penalties for failing to represent them.

The Idaho Legislature keeps re-emphasizing the point, over and over and in recent years in session after session. Examples are all over the place. (And outside the Statehouse too, as shown by recent events at a Kootenai County legislative town hall meeting, in which citizens were largely reduced to being mute observers - and dragged out when that boundary was challenged.)

On Wednesday (March 5) the Idaho House approved a proposed constitutional amendment, House Joint Resolution 4, to allow only the legislature, not the voters, the ability to decide policy on marijuana and similar substances. (It still needs Senate approval to reach the ballot. That’s intended to work as a brick wall against a proposed ballot initiative to “decriminalize cannabis now,” petitions for which are circulating. (In 2022, an Idaho Statesman poll found that about two-thirds of Idaho adults favor legalization of at least medical marijuana.)

The point here isn’t who’s right on that subject. It’s that most Idaho legislators don’t trust the people who voted them into office to decide this issue for themselves.

To become effective, HJR 4 would need approval from a majority of the Idaho voters in the general election a year from November. Would they approve such a proposal to take power away from themselves and give it to legislators? Good question.

In all, the voters seem to figure less and less into these equations.

They could. They can. But it will take some work to make themselves solidly felt as a force legislators ignore at their peril - including the ouster of a bunch of legislators who currently ignore them.