Presentation of Idaho reports on Idaho Public Television is made possible through the generous support of the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the Great State of Idaho by the Friends of Idaho Public Television and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

>>While the state has a record breaking surplus, a number of local governments across Idaho still struggle to fund improvements and operations.

It's a taxing problem, but a handful of small resort cities have a potential solution available to them.

I'm Melissa Davlin.

Idaho reports starts now.

Hello and welcome to Idaho reports.

This week, Dr Jacqueline Kettler of Boise State University and Kevin Richert of Idaho Education News give us a rundown of Tuesday's election results and whether we can draw any statewide conclusions from them.

Then Logan Finney explores the impact of local option sales tax on Idaho resort towns and why other Idaho cities wish they had that option.

But first, Idaho has joined a multistate lawsuit against President Joe Biden's COVID vaccine mandate for federal contractors.

Governor Brad Little announced Thursday that Idaho will also bring another lawsuit concerning vaccine requirements for private employers who have at least 100 employees.

Meanwhile, Idaho's congressional delegation is trying to stop the mandates through legislation, with Senators Jim Risch and Mike Crapo joining Senate Republicans efforts to stop the mandate on private employers through the Congressional Review Act, which is how Congress can overturn executive branch rules.

Across the Rotunda, representatives Russ Fulcher and Mike Simpson co-sponsored a bill that would block funding for mandate, implementation and enforcement.

On this week's Idaho Reports podcast producer Ruth Brown spoke to University of Idaho law professor Shakira Sanders about the constitutionality of vaccine mandates for federal contractors.

It's a great conversation.

You can find the Idaho Reports podcast on all major podcast players.

And don't forget to subscribe.

This week, the CDC gave its final approval for emergency use authorization of the Pfizer COVID vaccine for children ages five to eleven years old.

On Tuesday, Idaho Department of Health and Welfare officials said those vaccines will be distributed to all seven health districts throughout the state and recommended adults reach out to their children's pediatricians to schedule appointments.

Idaho pediatricians are also stressing that those vaccines are safe and effective for children.

>>For the majority of children out there and the majority of my patients, this is a very safe and highly effective vaccine.

I highly encourage talking to your pediatrician or your doctor about your child's case.

But for the majority of healthy kids,this will be extremely safe to give will provide them with boosted immunity against the COVID virus and I recommend it to most families,and I certainly encourage you to speak to your pediatrician or physician about your child.

>>COVID mitigation efforts in public schools played into many of the school board elections across the state on Tuesday.

On Friday morning, I sat down with Dr. Jacqueline Kettler of Boise State University and Kevin Richert of Idaho Education News to discuss those results, as well as vaccine mandates at universities and what we can expect from the upcoming legislative session on November 15th.

Kevin, what are the big stories from Tuesday's elections?

>>Well, I think there are a lot of themes that kind of emerged on Tuesday.

first of all, we're going to see a lot of turnover in school boards, and we knew we were going to get that anyway.

When you looked at some of these big districts like Nampa and West Ada, these were open races to begin with.

So we knew we were going to get new trustees there.

We've had a lot of trustees decide not to seek reelection or just resigned mid term because of the stress and strain of being a trustee in the middle of a pandemic.

We also saw a lot of turnover by my count.

We had 47 incumbent trustees on the ballot on Tuesday.

Only 26 of them were reelected, 21 incumbents lost at the polls.

So I think what I take from that between those kind of results and what we saw with some of the turnout numbers and they were a little bit sporadic,but trying to compare turnout this week to two years ago, definitely some spikes in turnout in some districts.

I think there was a lot more interest engagement in these races and as we saw some partizan overtones.

And we're still trying to sort out the money aspect of it.

But in some races, you saw quite a bit of money going into these trustee races.

A very different feel to these races.

>>Dr.

Kettler I want to get your thoughts on that because these aren't on the surface.

Anyway, partizan races the we're talking school boards, we're talking city councils, we're talking, you know, most years elections that go unnoticed by a lot of people.

>>Right there.

These nonpartisan races often have very little attention, and turnout tends to be lower than what we see for national elections, right?

I think it's interesting, Kevin, you mentioned that a lot of incumbents losing, which is somewhat unusual.

I think that the kind of frustration that we saw in 2020 is continues to carry on about a variety of topics.

And so I think there was that element.

And so we saw some pushback of frustration mobilization on those elements.

But it is really interesting to see some of the partizan organizations and partizan messages being very prevalent in some of these races and really kind of driving the issue agenda in some ways, too.

>>Historically, when we have a large number of voters and a large number of candidates who are focused on a small handful of issues.

That are pretty specific to a moment in time.

Does that energy translate to future elections or is this kind of a blip?

>>I think that's an excellent question and it's something we'll be really watching as we move into the 2022 midterm elections, right?

Because we have, of course, some really big primary elections coming up in the spring.

But then also the midterm elections in the fall that will probably have impacts for congressional control, things like that.

And so I think it will be really interesting to see if some of these issues like education COVID protocols continue to influence.

But we also have an off year in midterm elections, often kind of a pushback or a response to the presidential election.

And so sometimes voters are trying to kind of temper a little bit and swing the opposite direction.

>>Right?

It doesn't seem like a huge surprise that there was push back.

This is something that we see often in off year in midterm elections that whoever's in charge in the White House voters tend to go the other way, right?

>>Yes, definitely.

And so we would expect this sort of trend a little bit.

But it's interesting that it feels different in the moment, and the turnout in some of these local races seems much higher than usual.

As Kevin mentioned, kind of depends on the race.

But.

>>But I don't think you want to draw too many broad conclusions about what we saw Tuesday with these school board elections Certainly, conservatives swept the biggest races in West Ada and Nampa and that may swing the balance of power, especially in West Ada on issues pertaining to pandemic protocols.

But I wouldn't want to draw too many conclusions.

These are hyper local races, and we did see some, some hard line conservatives lose.

David Riley, the Post Falls School Board candidate who was linked to some anti-Semitic tweets that he deleted off of his Twitter feed but nothing is ever permanently completely deleted off of Twitter.

Also had to explain away some ties to the far right.

He lost.

Two members of Janice McGeachin's Education Task Force, lost school board races in eastern Idaho,and I don't think you can entirely connect that to the task force, either.

These are really hard races to read, and I really think it's kind of a mixed result.

Conservatives definitely scored some wins,but it's not as clear cut as conservative activists might want to make it sound.

>>You know and of course, only some members of each school board were on the ballot.

Are these changes enough for us to see big shifts in things like mask mandates and other COVID mitigation policies?

>>Not just mask mandates and mitigation.

I mean, in Nampa, you have three brand new trustees that's a majority on the school board, and we've seen this in the past West Ada is an excellent example from a couple of years ago.

If you have a major swing in philosophy and ideology on a school board that can create some very immediate tensions between the board and the superintendent, the board and the administration, I'm not saying that's going to happen in Nampa.

I'm saying it has happened elsewhere.

>>You know, Dr. Kettler, is it pretty normal to have this much turnover, not just in midterms, but also when, you know, as a society, we're facing these large crises, whether it's a pandemic or a war or an economic downturn?

>>Yeah, I think I mean, it's not surprising to see some turnover, but the incumbency advantage is pretty strong in some of these.

I mean, up and down the board, but particularly some of these local election where there is just isn't often a lot of attention or mobilization.

And so I do think it's really interesting and how being in a pandemic broader societal and cultural debates are playing into really, I think, driving some people out to be engaged in some of these local elections and against the kind of the current officeholders.

>>I want to get your thoughts on what Kevin said about whether there ar any patterns or larger lessons to draw here.

Are there patterns or are these hyper local races that should be considered in a vacuum?

>>Yeah, I think that it is always we want to be careful about drawing conclusions from a handful of races.

And I think things can shift quickly, too.

And so there's still a lot of time for many things to happen before next year's elections.

But I do think we continue to see people very energized and continued frustration from multiple sides of the aisle on what's going on and current policies and things.

So I would expect that engagement to continue into next year.

>>Anywhere in the state did we see the same sort of energy from people who were in favor of a lot of these COVID mitigation policies or did that energy mostly come from people who were against mask mandates and distance learning?

>>I think that's hard to say.

I mean, I think, you know, definitely in West Ada, this was a factor I think in Nampa, it was probably a factor as well, even though Nampa hasn't had a mask mandate in place in the schools.

So, yeah, again, we've got races all over the state and a lot of small communities.

It's really difficult and really kind of reckless to try to draw too many sweeping conclusions about.

What drove the outcomes in some of these races?

>>I also wanted to ask you about school funding issues, and this has been something that has made headlines over the last week after Senator Jim Rice from Caldwell proposed eventually phasing out school bonds to pay for general funds.

>>The supplemental levees.

>>Sorry, the supplemental levees, not the bonds.

There were school funding issues on the ballot this week.

How did they do?

>>Well, the ones that I was watching most closely, we had three supplemental levees here in southern Idaho.

Maybe the most important one, certainly the largest one again, is West Ada.

It passed.

It didn't pass by a wide margin.

I think they got 52% support.

And that's all you need is a simple majority to pass a supplemental levee.

But I found it interesting that as voters came out in fairly large numbers to maybe send a message to the administration about COVID protocols, they also at the same time voted to pass a supplemental levee.

And West Ada's had trouble in the past.

Passing the supplemental levee So it seemed like the electorate out ther kind of decoupled the concerns, maybe that they've had about COVID protocols from the funding needs.

Because West Ada has said, look, we need this $14 million a year to backfill and to cover some needs that aren't being covered by state funding.

This is not a new levee, it's one that's been on the books for several years.

>>And and this is a school district,of course, that is growing rapidly with the population growth in Idaho.

>>Exactly.

And this is a district not only that goes to voters like many districts with supplemental levees.

This district goes back to voters regularly with bond issues because they need new school buildings because they've got all these new kiddos moving into the district.

>>I think it's interesting that this conversation about phasing out those supplemental levees is happening as Reclaim Idaho is gathering signatures to put more school funding on the ballot.

That forcing the Legislature's hand and and adding more funds into public schools >>And at a time that the state is sitting on a $1.4 billion budget surplus that they could put into a lot of things, including education >>You know, we've talked a lot about K through twelve education.

I wanted to ask you about higher education and the different institutions interpretations of vaccine mandates and how it applies to them.

And it doesn't sound like there's a unified approach at this point.

>>It is definitely.

It's a work in progress.

So we're sitting here, it's 9:20 in the morning on Friday.

The story could change by the time you hit the airwaves Friday night.

What we know at this point is that the universities are trying to figure out exactly how to implement and interpret this mandate that involves federal contractors And we know the universities are federal contractors because they receive $89 million in federal contracts.

What we know at this point is the University of Idaho is sayin something that other universities around the country have said.

We think this mandate applies to every employee on campus.

We're talking about almost 5,500 employees on the U Of I campus would would apply.

I want to correct something I said last week when we talked about this.

This doesn't extend to students unless they're employees of the university as well, but 5,500 employees of U of I could be affected by this, by this executive order.

>>Well, I imagine that there are a lot of student employees as well.

I know that when I worked there or when I went to school there, I think I worked for the university all four years.

>>I was a work study student too, so we don't know how many students would fall into that category.

But my guess is you're right, it's probably a pretty significant number.

>>And I have to ask you, you as an employee of Boise State University,what are you hearing?

>>I mean, I think they're still trying to figure out exactly what this was going to look like and what is going to apply, I think.

I mean, we've been receiving information on, you know, we there's a vaccine clinic on campus and encouraging people to utilize it.

And so I think I'll be interested to see what sort of communication we do receive.

>>And but to be clear, you know, as we're having this conversation on Friday morning, that decision hasn't been made, it sounds like.

>>I mean, not that.

I mean, I'm perhaps I'm not in the know, but I I've I've heard discussions about, you know, they're trying to figure it out or see what this means and to be aware of this discussion.

>>What's the state board of education saying about this, Kevin?

>>They've kind of taken a two pronged approach to it.

On the one hand, they are telling the universities, You need to plan to implement this, you need to go forward.

But they're also a party to one of the several lawsuits challenging this executive order.

So, you know, we'll see how this plays out in court and, you know, several federal courts, probably while we see how this is playing out on the campuses because the clock is ticking on the campuses, I mean, they've rolled back the deadline for vaccinations and it's now the first week of January, but that's still a fairly tight turnaround time.

>>Especially if they need people to ne fully vaccinated by that point.

>>Fully vacinated means two doses.

Exactly.

>>Now do you expect this to come up during the Legislature's special un-special coming back into session in mid-November?

>>To the extent that anybody can predict what happens during that special un-special unexpected session, yeah, it's definitely going to come up.

I think this definitely flavors the debate over vaccine mandates, because so far it's been a debate over private businesses like hospitals.

>>And let's talk a little bit.

We have about a minute left, but as we are approaching this session, aside from how this affects state agencies like higher education, what are you going to be looking for?

>>Well, you know, I'm going to look to see if there are any unexpected issues.

I mean, legislative leaders are trying to corral this session to focus on vaccine mandates, but the House is still also going to have to address the Priscilla Giddings ethics investigation and the recommendations from the committee.

But you put 105 legislators together, and unlike a special session where the governor really does set the agenda, you know who knows what's going to happen?

We are really going into a reconvened session unlike anything we've seen before >>All right.

Dr Jacqueline Kettler Boise State University.

Kevin Richert of Idaho Education News Thank you both so much for joining us.

While most Idaho communities had city council and school board races to consider, a handful of resort towns across the state had another issue on the ballot whether to raise local sales taxes for community improvements.

Logan Finney traveled to North Idaho recently to explore this unique funding option available to a small number of Idaho cities.

>>Whether you're buying groceries, clothing for your kids or a new car, you probably know what the sales tax is in Idaho, 6% on almost every purchase.

That is, unless you're in certain small resort towns that have the ability to implement a local option sales tax, local option taxes or LOT's are a sales tax that's available to small resort cities in Idaho, meant to capture revenue from travelers and tourists to the region Ponderay is a small city in northern Idaho of about twelve hundred people that passed a 1% sales tax in 2019 to fund two local park projects.

>>Most of the state is 6% Ponderay, it is 7%.

One penny of that stays home and goes directly to the city of Ponderay >>The city is using those revenues to design a regional sports complex, as well as a railroad underpass to give residents and visitors safe access to the lake.

>>What happens in Ponderay is we have two miles of lakeshore on lake Pond'Oreille and no public access.

We've had years of people, you know, trespass across the railroad tracks.

They find a way to get to the lake.

We're trying to make that a legitimate option for all of our residents and even the broader community.

>>Local sales tax revenues have been a windfall for Ponderay, allowing the city to punch far above its weight and compete for outside funding sources it wouldn't otherwise have access to.

Those include an $800,000 grant from the EPA to help clean up the former smelter site on the shore of the lake and a $1.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation to design the railroad underpass.

The sales tax provided Ponderay with match funding for both programs.

>>We could not have a shovel ready project for a city this size without the funding from the local option tax.

>>Ponderay is small in population, but it's also home to a number of retail and big-box stores.

In its first year, the 1% sales tax generated about $2.5 million for the city >>There's some other things in there, but you could basically say it doubled our budget.

>>Next door in the city of Sandpoint, voters passed a 1% sales tax in 2015 to fund improvements to the town's football stadium at War Memorial Field, including new grandstands, artificial turf on the sports fields and revamped access to Lake Pond'Oreille.

>>Whenever the city puts a local option tax on the ballot.

There's concern that it's not going to pass because you need a supermajority, but with that particular project, it really resonated with a lot of the residents.

>>After that measure, sunset at the end of last year, city officials decided to run it again, this time for sidewalk improvements and to benefit other parks in the city.

A majority of Sandpoint voters cast their ballots in favor of the measur this November election, but not enough for it to pass with the required 60% supermajority.

>>These improvements to our parks, our community visioned, and they will happen regardless of this lot passing or not.

It'll just take longer.

But we'd rather not consider raising our residents property taxes in order to accomplish these goals when there's other options.

>>Because local option taxes are only available to resort cities with a population under 10,000 people.

The door is closing on Sandpoint's ability to run them due to the city's growth.

>>This is something we've talked to our local representatives about on many occasions over the last couple of years because we have that concern that the next census, we were going to be over 10,000 and we lose our ability to ask our residents to support something like this.

And we've really felt that the 10,000 person cutoff was was quite arbitrary.

>>Officials in some larger cities like Twin Falls think that local sales taxes could be a way for them to rely less heavily on their property tax payers Twin Falls has a census population of over 50,000 residents, so they are not able to put a local option tax on the ballot.

>>The local option sales tax that is available up in Blaine County with many of the city's like Sun Valley and Ketchum.

They have a public transportation system that is that is not completely funded through local option sales tax, but it is.

It helps offset that.

>>Fights over whether to expand the local option tax go back decades at the Statehouse, with bills rarely moving forward.

There's been no indication from lawmakers that it will be on the agenda this upcoming session, and the cities and counties don't have a unified proposal to lobby behind.

>>Until that we're able to move forward with having a good clear understanding what one policy or one process would be for the entire state of Idaho we're not able to put together a piece of legislation that would be widely supported.

>>Instead, the Legislature's focus has been on property taxes in recent years.

Meanwhile, the state has a record breaking budget surplus, but commerce hubs like the city of Twin Falls and Ponderay say that the revenue sharing formula doesn't benefit them.

>>The state has had a banner year in revenue collections the city of Twin Falls, where one can argue several millions of dollars were generated will not benefit directly from that as a result of the redistribution formula >>Ponderay it got about $126,000 based on that formula last year, so that's $15 million to Boise, $126,000 back.

It's not someone trying to be mean to us as a small city.

It's how a one size fits all formula operates, right?

>>None of the officials we spoke to said they want to rely entirely on local sales taxes.

Rather, they see them as another tool they could use to diversify how they fund local government.

>>Property taxes are the bread and butter of cities.

It will always be probably the best fit for taxing the operations of local government functions, and there's actually a danger in that sales tax can be quite volatile, and if we lean on that too heavily, the city can certainly get in trouble.

>>I also know that there are individuals in the Legislature that really believe that property taxes are are a terrible form of tax and and that we got to find a way to reduce that.

I think probably where we haven't done a great job as cities is really sharing that property taxes is the only vehicle that we have to be able to supply goods and services that are critical and demanded by our citizens.

>>Property taxes are a perennial topic of discussion at the Statehouse and were the subject of sweeping legislation last spring.

Lawmakers haven't settled on proposals for the upcoming session, but in the meantime, local governments will keep leveraging their funding in creative ways.

>>Look, we're sending all this money to Boise and we're getting very little back.

If we kept a little bit at home, it's kind of a challenge.

Can we do more with one penny than they can do with six cents?

>>Logan Finney joins me on set now to discuss local option sales tax Logan.

You focused on Sandpoint, but there were other local option ballot measures as well on Tuesday.

>>That's right.

There were a total of five ballot measures related to local sales taxes across Idaho.

They were successfully passed in Crouch, Swan Valley and Victor, and measures failed in Sandpoint, as well as two ballot questions in Lava Hot Springs.

Across the state how many cities currently have local option taxes and what do they use them for?

>>Based on information from the associated tax payers of Idaho, plus these results from Tuesday, I count 17 cities in Idaho that currently have local option taxes in place, and they typically are on things that capture tourist dollars in these resort cities.

So things like short term rentals being hotels and motels or vacation homes as well as liquor by the drinks and restaurant foods, again trying to capture those tourist dollars from from recreation.

But they can also be on general sales like the 6% sales tax and the things I talk about in the package, and there are some specific exceptions to that.

The City of Sun Valley, for example, has a 1% sales tax on specifically ski lift tickets and season passes, whereas the city of Stanley has a 2.5% general sales tax on everything except for guided recreation packages.

>>And that 10% popular or sorry.

The 10,000 population cap made sense when this law was first implemented in the late seventies.

But cities like Sandpoint are going to start bumping up against that cap here pretty soon with the growth that the state has seen.

>>That's right.

The local option taxes were first allowed by the Legislature in the late 1970s after some lobbying for mayors of towns like Ketchum and Sun Valley.

And since then, larger cities have been asking to also have access to it.

We talked to the city manager of Twin Falls in the package, but I've also read articles in the Spokesman-Review from the 1990s, where city officials in Coeur d'Alene were lobbying at the time to be able to levy sales taxes on hotel stays.

But those conversations haven't made it very far.

>>Logan, you've also been covering redistricting, and the redistricting commission was scheduled to meet on Friday afternoon.

You can find links to the map on the Idaho Reports blog.

You'll find that link at IdahoPTV.org/IdahoReports These conversations Logan have been civil, but there are also disagreements about county splits.

>>That's right, when it comes to the legislative map, there are only so many ways that you can split up the state of Idaho into 35 evenly populated districts.

With all of the restrictions on the map, I like to say it's more of a math problem than a political problem when it comes to the legislative map.

However, with the congressional map, Idaho only has two seats in the House of Representatives, so there are many ways that you can split up the state of Idaho into two populations.

The conversations among the commission earlier this week sounds like they are leaning toward continuing the 50 year history of dividin Ada County to get to equal populous districts.

But there are a number of maps that do not split county lines and come within the permissible deviation There is some precedent from the US Supreme Court in a case out of West Virginia a couple of years ago that says states, if they have a compelling interest like not splitting counties, there is a permissible population deviation that can be put in place.

>>And we know that there are going to be some unhappy people.

Once these maps are released, we'll be watching for potential litigation.

Logan Finney, thanks so much for joining me and thank you for watching We'll see you here next week.

Presentation of Idaho Reports on Idaho public television is made possible through the generous support of the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Betts' family legacy of building the Great State of Idaho by the Friends of Idaho Public Television and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.