When the Idaho House returns to Boise to sanction disgraced state Rep. Priscilla Giddings, R-White Bird, it can also reverse her singular achievement of the 2021 legislative session — and help Idaho’s youngest children in the process.
Earlier this month, the House Ethics Committee recommended Giddings be censured and removed from the House Commerce and Human Resources Committee. However, she will retain her perch on two major panels, Joint Finance-Appropriations and Agricultural Affairs. That’s a fairly tepid rebuke, considering how the reserve U.S. Air Force officer and three-term legislator abused a 19-year-old House intern.
That intern’s allegation of rape against former Rep. Aaron von Ehlinger, R-Lewiston, led the panel earlier this year to declare him unfit for legislative service. He resigned before the full House could ratify the committee’s recommendation that he be suspended from office for the rest of his term.
Giddings, who took von Ehlinger’s side, resorted to social media and her own newsletter to attack the young woman — even publishing her picture. When, during the von Ehlinger hearings, lawmakers called her on it, the White Bird Republican lied.
That led two dozen of her colleagues — Republicans and Democrats — to file a complaint, calling her behavior “conduct unbecoming” of a House member.
At her own ethics hearing this month, Giddings doubled down. Neither a sense of remorse nor any coherent defense crossed her lips. Her steady barrage of evasions and combativeness culminated in the committee’s unanimous verdict against her.
To enact the committee’s recommendation, the House must return to Boise and House Speaker Scott Bedke, R-Oakley, told Boise’s KTVB he’s weighing when to do so.
“People want to get finished with their vacations here in August and then you have the Thanksgiving and Christmas time after that,” Bedke said. “We will find a time in there when we can come in, as the original plan that we set back in May, and close up the books.”
With that comes another opportunity.
Because the House recessed rather than adjourned, all of the bills it left behind remain viable. The House sets its own agenda. Any one of these bills still can be passed into law.
Key among them is a three-year, $18 million federal grant to help Idaho’s early childhood education program.
Without that grant, Idaho’s 15 early childhood education collaboratives cannot expand into 20.
Without that grant, those collaboratives already established — including one in Kendrick-Juliaetta — can not draw on the resources they require to meet the community needs they’ve previously identified.
Approving the grant should have been a slam dunk. It enlarged and continued an existing grant. It had the backing of the Trump administration, Idaho Republican Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch as well as the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry.
Then Giddings took the floor, enveloping the grant in the culture wars and warping the debate by falsely equating the Idaho Association for the Education of Young Children, one of the program’s sponsors, with its national affiliate, which had no role at all in Idaho.
That’s about all it took. The Idaho House split right down the middle.
The Senate took charge, passing a new bill making clear that Giddings’ bogeyman would be excised: Money “shall not be used to dictate curricula for use by local collaboratives.”
But day after day, the Senate-passed bill sat on the House Third Reading calendar, awaiting a final vote. Bedke refused to act.
Since then, however, the balance has shifted.
Von Ehlinger, who voted against the grant, has been replaced by Rep. Lori McCann, R-Lewiston, who told the Lewiston Tribune’s William L. Spence: “I think we (the Legislature), as a body, need to do a better job supporting education.”
Several of those Republicans who voted with Giddings — including Moscow’s Brandon Mitchell and Rexburg’s John Weber — have collaboratives in their districts that would benefit from restoring the grant.
Add to this group Giddings’ seatmate, Rep. Charlie Shepherd, R-Pollock. After stumbling badly on this bill — he famously claimed it would make it “easier or more convenient for mothers to come out of the home and let others raise their child” — Shepherd said he would reverse course. Then he reneged, saying he lacked enough time to educate his constituents. “And if I cannot educate them on what the bill actually does in time, at this point, it’s almost political suicide for me to support the bill,” he told Betsy Russell of the Idaho Press.
Well, three months have passed, plenty of time for Shepherd to explain himself to his voters.
Besides, how many House members now know they can’t rely on anything Giddings says — whether it’s about an early childhood education grant or her own behavior? Among these, count at least two — Ethics Committee Chairman Sage Dixon, R-Ponderay, and Ethics Committee member Brent Crane, R-Nampa.
Said Dixon: “Being less than truthful during a public hearing while under oath abridges the trust of both the public and fellow members of the House of Representatives and can justly be construed as conduct unbecoming and detrimental to the House of Representatives.”
Said Crane: “When a legislator repeatedly tells half-truths, outright lies, fails to answer questions or be honest with the committee, this type of behavior will not be tolerated.”
It adds up to a margin more than healthy enough to pass this bill, send a second well-deserved rebuke to Giddings and a much-needed sign of support for Idaho’s beleaguered effort to help the more than half of Idaho youngsters who still report for the first day of kindergarten ill-prepared to learn. — M.T.
