Up Front/Commentary: Misleading spin was put on failed grocery tax end run

BOISE — Intentionally or not, the sophistication of Idaho voters was called into question this week.

Can they sift fact from fiction? Do they rely on good judgment and common sense to evaluate claims, or are they swayed by emotional appeals?

Can they be led by the nose?

Perhaps I’m reading too much into it, but cognitive abilities seemed to be the “between-the-lines” theme of the procedural maneuver that took place on the House floor Tuesday.

Rexburg Rep. Ron Nate — supported by an interesting combination of Democrats and far right Republicans — tried to side-step the committee process and pull his grocery tax repeal bill directly to the House floor.

The bill has been languishing in the House Ways and Means Committee for the past three weeks. It almost certainly will die there.

Since dozens of House members — perhaps even a majority — support repealing the grocery tax, Nate said the fate of the bill is evidence that the committee process is “broken.”

When committee chairmen deny introductory or public hearings to legislation that has such broad support, he said, they do more than prevent their colleagues from weighing in on the issue. They also effectively silence all the constituents those lawmakers represent.

“If the process is stopped before legislation even gets a bill number, or once it has a bill number it’s not even heard by the public or voted on by representatives, then we’ve stopped functioning as an effective representative democracy,” Nate said.

I have no doubt that Tuesday’s maneuver was a sincere attempt to give House members the opportunity to vote on tax policy that affects every household in Idaho.

Reading between the lines, though, it also provided an opening for election-year spin — an opening that Rep. Priscilla Giddings, R-White Bird, wasted no time in jumping through.

Barely an hour after Nate’s effort failed on a 49-20 vote, she posted information on her Facebook page criticizing House Speaker Scott Bedke, R-Oakley, her opponent in this year’s lieutenant governor race.

“The Idaho legislative process is broken,” Giddings wrote. “My opponent in the race for lieutenant governor is the speaker of the house, and he determines which bills get public hearings and which bills go to the Ways and Means Committee to be ignored indefinitely.”

Those who voted against Nate’s proposal, she said, “supported giving Bedke veto authority on grocery tax repeal.”

The vote actually had nothing to do with tax policy and everything to do with respecting the committee process. Moreover, while it’s true the speaker decides to which committee a bill gets assigned, committee chairmen decide which measures get hearings. Giddings knows all that.

Nothing about the House procedures, by the way, is unique to Idaho. Every speaker in the country has the power to assign bills to committees, and committee chairmen in almost every state decide which bills will or won’t get hearings. Absent that authority, legislatures would soon be buried under an avalanche of “good ideas.”

But why tell voters that when you can spin it into something more nefarious?

During Tuesday’s floor debate, Caldwell Rep. Greg Chaney described Nate’s proposal as a “staged attempt” to mislead the public.

“We are moments away from filling up the board with green and red lights, and that vote will be taken as a stand-in for the merits of the bill — which will be a lie,” he said. “But it will happen, just as soon as the vote is taken. I think we, as a body, have a responsibility to be honest with the public about how we comport ourselves.”

The question is, do voters have that same expectation?

Spence covers politics for the Tribune. He may be contacted at bspence@lmtribune.com or (208) 791-9168.