OPINION: What to expect from the Idaho Legislature? Not much

Drawing from the sentiments of an old Yiddish saying, if you want to make Idaho legislators laugh as they convene Monday, tell them your hopes and dreams.

Want the Idaho GOP-led Legislature to encourage justice, if not harmony, by adding the words “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the state’s anti-discrimination law?

Or provide a genuine exception to Idaho’s abortion ban that protects the lives of women as well as the victims of rape and incest?

How about doing something to promote the education of Idaho’s youngest children — as virtually every other state now does?

Would it be too much to ask Idaho’s trucking industry to pay its fair share of building and maintaining highways and bridges — rather than shirking that responsibility and forcing ordinary motorists to make up the difference?

What about eliminating the cushy sales tax breaks for special interests that leave the tax rate unnecessarily high while still not meeting the needs of Idaho public schools?

Could we at least count on Gov. Brad Little to fill the void now left by a state Senate that has swung substantially toward the fringe of the Idaho GOP by promising to veto anything that reeks of the divisive culture wars — whether it’s imprisoning librarians, attacking diversity in higher education or attacking transgender citizens?

If not, then why not at least promise us to avoid passing obviously unconstitutional laws that will force taxpayers to hire private attorneys, at a rate of $400 an hour, to defend the indefensible in court?

It’s been more than 15 years since they promised to lift the sales tax off groceries. Could this be the year?

At least, will they respect the will of the electorate by not tampering with the Medicaid expansion voters approved in 2018?

OK, how about this? Why not promise that when the current legislative session ends in March or April, lawmakers will go home — and stay there? In other words, they won’t utilize their new constitutional authority to call themselves back into special session at any time for any reason.

Go ahead.

Make those requests.

Just try.

Wait for the snickers

Maybe roars.

Tears even.

With the overwhelming Republican majority in the Legislature under the influence if not the domination of the Idaho Freedom Foundation, you shouldn’t get your hopes up.

The bar is that low.

But we Idahoans have a right to expect this much from the conclave now underway in Boise:

l Stop taxing us out of our homes.

Under the leadership of House Speaker Mike Moyle, R-Star, Republican lawmakers have frustrated the one thing that protects homeowners from a red hot residential real estate market. The GOP essentially has frozen the coverage of the Homestead Exemption, which is designed to shield half of a modest home’s assessed value from taxation. It now provides a maximum benefit of $125,000. It should be $100,000 more, according to the State Tax Commission.

This alone explains why homeowners are paying more taxes while businesses are reaping a windfall.

Homeowners in Lewiston, for instance, saw their property taxes jump as much as 40% this year — while owners of car lots, retail outlets and hotels paid less.

While they’re updating the Homestead Exemption for six years of inflation, lawmakers should redeem their pledge to look after Moyle’s so-called “widow woman” by restoring the circuit breaker program that helps low-income seniors and others pay their property taxes.

l Don’t sabotage our own schools to benefit a few privileged families who can afford writing tuition checks to private academies.

Use whatever word you want. Taking state taxes to encourage private education is a voucher. Doing so is a blatant violation of the Legislature’s constitutional duty to “establish and maintain a general, uniform and thorough system of public, free common schools.”

Idaho’s schools already are among the least funded in the country. Siphoning off dollars will only add to the problems.

And no matter how large the voucher, it won’t pay the full tuition. So vouchers will subsidize wealthy families in urban centers where most private schools are located — while draining dollars from poor, rural schools that already operate on four-day weeks to pay the bills.

l Keep your word.

Reclaim Idaho’s Quality Education Act initiative was well on its way to passage when Little and the GOP pulled the rug out from under it. Rather than a $323.5 million infusion of cash into schools funded by restoring progressive tax rates on wealthy families and corporations, the governor and the Legislature in a hastily called special session, actually cut taxes on both groups.

But they pledged to spend $410 million on education — $330 million on public schools and $80 million for in-demand career training.

Reclaim Idaho took the win and withdrew its ballot measure.

That money should go where it was intended — smaller class sizes, more competitive teacher salaries and finally lifting the state of Idaho off the nation’s basement for what it allocates toward each of its school children.

It’s not a lot to ask.

But anything less than that will be a betrayal. — M.T.