Narrator: 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.

Melissa Davlin: Now that the 2023 legislative session is done, it's time to look ahead at what future Sessions might bring.

Tonight, we get Governor Brad Little’s thoughts.

I'm Melissa Davlin.

Idaho Reports, starts now.

Hello and welcome to Idaho Reports.

This week we sit down with Governor Brad Little for the second part of a two part interview discussing his views on the 2023 legislative session, as well as what the coming years may bring.

But first, let's get you caught up on the week.

Citizens group Reclaim Idaho announced the formation of a new coalition called Idahoans for Open Primaries.

The group plans to collect signatures for a citizen's ballot initiative that would allow all voters to vote in party primary elections as opposed to just registered members of the party.

Currently, the Idaho Republican Party conducts a closed primary, allowing only registered Republicans to participate.

The petition would also allow ranked choice voting in Idaho, otherwise known as instant runoff voting, in which voters pick a first and second choice candidate.

If no candidate wins more than 50% of the first choice vote, votes for the last place candidate are transferred to the voter's second choice.

County clerks continue that process until a candidate receives more than 50% of the vote.

The 2023 legislature passed a bill to ban the practice.

The petition is supported by well-known Republicans, including former House Speaker Bruce Newcomb.

But on Thursday, Idaho Republican Party Chairwoman Dorothy Moon sent out a statement opposing the petition, calling it a leftist scheme that will benefit Democrats.

The coalition has until May 1st, 2024, to collect the needed number of signatures to get the question on the November 2024 ballot.

On Tuesday, Idaho Supreme Court Justice John Stegner announced his retirement effective October 31st.

In his resignation letter to Governor Little, Stegner cited financial considerations and disparities in pay between judges and attorneys.

Writing, quote, The job requires extraordinary hours to do it well.

In sum, the state is asking judges to do too much for too little.

Unquote.

Idaho's justices and judges were the only state employees to not receive a pay raise last year after the legislature failed to pass a bill addressing judicial pay.

Governor Butch Otter appointed Stegner to the Supreme Court in 2018.

The Idaho Judicial Council will recommend candidates to Governor Little to replace Stegner.

This week, producer Ruth Brown sat down with two physicians from St Luke's to discuss some of the medical and legal concerns around the state's abortion ban and how those decisions are affecting Idaho physicians.

Here's a preview of what Dr. Jim Souza, St Luke's chief executive physician, had to say.

Dr Jim Souza: The entire system is starting to shake now because, you know, the front line family physicians, OBGYNs working in the community, seeing the impacts on maternal fetal medicine, Doctors who are the most in the crosshairs of these laws are starting to ask, is it even safe for me to do this here?

And, you know, a visual of a system of care that I would just share with the audience, it's like a Jenga tower.

And you can pull out certain pieces and the tower still stands and we make do.

But as as the momentum for this exodus increases, we're going to have pieces of that Jenga tower that would literally collapse the system.

This is also more acute in rural communities.

Melissa Davlin: You can find that full interview on the Idaho Reports podcast.

You can find the Idaho Reports podcast on your favorite podcast player or find the link at IdahoPTV.org/IdahoReports and make sure you watch Idaho reports online for updates on ongoing court fights over the abortion ban.

In late April, Idaho reports visited Governor Brad Little at his home in Emmet to discuss the 2023 legislative session.

In the second part of a two part interview, I asked him his thoughts on new education initiatives.

This was a big year for education, of course, including the Idaho Launch scholarship, the program expansion for the Idaho Launch program.

But, one of the tweaks to the program that you proposed was telling students that they couldn't use the $8,000 for four year institutions like University of Idaho, Boise State University, LCSC, ISU.

We know that those universities offer training for arguably in-demand careers like teaching and health care.

Are you concerned about the new restrictions that were placed on that program?

Gov Little: I take a different view of it, significantly, because originally it was all going to funnel through Launch.

But actually when I started talking about it last fall, I wanted to go through Opportunity scholarships, which is what you're talking about as our traditional four year institutions.

The trailer bill basically said, if you want to go career technical, if you want to be a welder or plumber or an HVAC or a truck driver or a lineman.

You go through Launch if if you are a high school graduating senior and you want to go the traditional master's degree, the Opportunity Scholarships.

So put more money in Opportunity scholarships, and instead of having them all go through Launch, now Opportunity scholarships are one way and Launch is another.

But we have always, the history of this state paid for part of the cost of education for journalists, for animal scientists, for political scientists, for lawyers, for doctors.

But we never paid for career technical.

We had some programs.

Now, those great careers and career technical, we're going to have more kids staying in Idaho with great careers because the Launch program is going to be available to them.

Melissa Davlin: I know there were a lot of public school advocates who were very happy with a lot of the legislation that came out of this session.

Raise in starting teacher pay.

The, the making permanent the Empowering Parents Grant program.

Passing a bill that opens up open enrollment at all public schools across Idaho.

There was also a large investment in school facilities.

Tackling it through multiple ways, including the property tax bill.

But at the same time, you know, just last week, a fire caused by faulty electrical wiring burned down a good portion of a Pocatello High school.

And we know that there are a number of old schools around Idaho that have a lot of backlogged maintenance.

Are you worried that this year's investments might not go far enough for addressing these problems?

Gov Little: Well, it'll continue to be an issue.

And how we do that, the the part of the property tax bill I don't think addresses the big issue.

But remember, in property tax, the money that we're putting in this $120 million ongoing plus plus the surplus eliminator or part of it, the money that we put into teacher pay, teacher benefits, certified staff pay, school safety, technology and discretionary money, which is for anything.

Plus the money we're putting into roads, sewer, water and all those other programs are programs that are generally funded by property tax.

As this plays out and highway district commissioners, school board members, county commissioners, city councilman, see that, there should be a lessened need for property taxes.

Now, I'm not making any promises.

But those are all indirect property tax relief that are out there right now that will open up more avenues for us to do, which is our constitutional obligation, which is for school districts to run to run bonds.

And I understand why the bonds haven't been passing.

Particularly in the residential area.

People have had their property taxes double in in some instances, four or five years.

Well, you can see why people are we're having a hard time getting votes.

The the acceleration of real estate prices are going down.

We're we're paying for more and more of the services.

I don't know.

And that is going to be a big policy issue if we want the state to pay for all schools.

Because if you've got a school district that's done the right thing and has built their schools, they haven't grown too fast.

They've got capacity.

They've done the maintenance.

Well, you take the taxes from them and pay for the district that hasn't done anything?

How many?

My staff doesn't like when I say this.

How many basketball gymnasiums are you going to give every school district when they do it?

Those are big policy decisions that I'm more than willing to have with my legislative partners.

But let's see how all this money in property tax relief and roads and sewer and water go to alleviating the concern.

I think communities oughta pay for their schools.

We can help them as we do now, with bond levy equalization.

Melissa Davlin: But getting rid of that March election date, which was part of the property tax bill that passed, that complicates the conversation for a lot of school districts.

Gov Little: Yeah, we've got a election coming up here in just a few weeks here in Emmet.

That's it's and the the March date is not that important in this year but it's going to be real important in in a year from now when you have a big and.

But I, I believe that we shouldn't have too many election dates but remember we used to have every date was available for a school bond election.

And the deal that was cut between the legislature and the education proponents was keep November, keep May, keep March and keep August.

The school advocates were willing to give up August, but the legislature, to my less than enthusiastic response, did away with March.

I think March is critical in the long run to healthy school districts.

Melissa Davlin: You know, speaking of too many election dates, you've said that any fixes to the presidential primary are in the legislature's hands.

This is the first year they can call themselves back into session.

Have you heard anything about a special session?

Gov Little: I've even even before they amended the Constitution, I would have legislators call me and say, this is critical to my constituents or to me.

We need a special session.

Myself and literally all of my predecessors.

We have the least amount of special sessions in Idaho, or at least we have.

We've only had four in the last 20 years that there ought to be an agreement.

It ought to be widely viewed by the legislature before they come to town.

Otherwise, if you come to town and there's no agreement, the whole process for the public to engage is done in, you know, one committee room or one leadership room.

And so from the transparency side, I think that special sessions where you waive all the rules and and hurry things through is only should be necessary if there's a real emergency as we have in the past.

Melissa Davlin: Have you heard anything about lawmakers calling themselves back?

Gov Little: Always.

Melissa Davlin: One last question.

What didn't the legislature address this year that you wish they had?

Gov Little: Well, probably the only thing is, you know, the package that we sent to them, I said we got 95% of what we wanted done.

5% was I wanted to do some more paying down some more debt that we didn't get done.

But but we've done a great job of our rainy day funds, surpluses in our years.

I'm a little concerned about the spending level in the out years of some of the programs we have, because we've done a great job of getting getting our great bond rating.

We just issued $400 million worth of bonds for road projects, and in this market to get that done at 3.8% was was absolutely incredible.

Melissa Davlin: You started your second term as governor and the first one, The first term was marked in large part by COVID.

What do you envision for your second term?

Gov Brad Little: Not COVID.

Melissa Davlin: Not COVID.

I think all of us could agree with that.

Gov Little: Anything but COVID.

No, I mean, we█re going to implement.

You know, the, we propose.

The legislature passes laws and appropriates money, and then we have to execute.

And, you know, particularly our investments in education, whether it's what we did before in literacy or what we're doing now in competitive teacher pay and Launch in particular.

You know, Launch is literally, you know, there's some sideboards on it, but the Workforce Development Council is going to have to be attuned to students and employers about what they want.

We we believe it won█t be fully subscribed because, you know, if you need more nurses or you need more welders or you need more.

It'll take us a little while for either our community colleges or private institutions to build capacity.

But, you know, the bait is there.

The money's there.

And, you know, a lot of kids who wouldn't have had a chance to go on are now literally going to be able to walk out of high school, sign up for a program, and in two years they█ll be available.

Whether it's down at the lab at Idaho Falls, where they need 500 new people a year, whether it's construction jobs here in the Treasure Valley, whether it's, you know, advanced manufacturing jobs here or, you know, Lewiston is a good example.

There's lots of great jobs there.

But they they've got to be good welders.

They got to work for the Schweitzer Engineering.

So, you know, it'll it'll it'll be a game changer.

I believe so.

Melissa Davlin: How involved do you see yourself being with those workforce count Workforce Development Council recommendations on what's an in-demand career?

Gov Little: Well, they the workforce development Council and the legislation give they give gave them autonomy to decide.

And of course, they're they're very diverse group of businesses from all over the state, uh, educators.

They just have to listen to what kids and what the employers want.

And and then it's it says in demand.

So we don't want to be spending money on kids that aren't going to have a job.

But if the job market stays anything like it is right now, that is not going to be an issue.

So we're going to, we█ll get them employed real fast.

And I was at a national governor's conference on a kind of a workforce development, I was moderating the panel.

And one of the U.S. Department of Agriculture economists said from an internal re return on investment.

Buster wants to go back to the barn.

Melissa Davlin: Sorry Buster.

Gov Little: What we're doing is going to be the highest return for, what the state puts into it.

And of course, the kids will have to put some resources into it.

Quit.

I told you he wants to go back to the barn.

Melissa Davlin: He█s blaming me for it too, he's giving me the eye.

Gov Little: And more importantly, businesses are going to have to say, if you want welders, they're going to have to provide the welding equipment.

Health care is a good example.

These hospitals, they're going to need nurses.

But they're going to have to have their senior nurses there training other nurses to be nurses.

So the business is going to have skin in the game.

These kids are going to have skin in the game.

But we got a real robust community college system that I think will be very attuned to those.

Because they want those kids placed and going to work right away.

Melissa Davlin: Why did you decide to run for a second term?

Gov Little: Why did I decide to run for Senator?

Melissa Davlin: No, why did you, why did you decide to run for a second term?

Gov Little: Oh, we had we had lots to do.

There was there was no question about it.

I mean, as you pointed out, we were pretty distracted during the first term with COVID.

And, you know, kids not in schools, businesses being challenged, health care being challenged.

Now we can implement.

I mean, we recovered jobs faster than any state.

Idaho was the number one job producer after COVID, and it█s going to continue that way.

So now what I got to have is skilled up workforce and Launch and our higher education systems will get that done.

Melissa Davlin: You got a lot done that was on your priority list in this first year of your second term.

You've got three more legislative sessions left until 2026.

What's going to be on your priority list?

Gov Little: Well, you know, you've got to be responsive to what the economy does, what the job market does.

You know, I'm hopeful that Launch gets fully subscribed.

And then we'll know more about, I can't imagine the construction industry is going to stay as robust as it is, but it could.

And then, you know, if the construction industry slows down, how do we retrain electricians and plumbers and HVAC to do other jobs?

That's going to be part of it.

But I'm you know, there's great potential at the lab.

Obviously, the new Micron facility is going to, they're going to.

Oh, you don't think so?

You think I was wrong?

Melissa Davlin: Buster the economist.

Gov Little: But, uh no, there's there's lots going on, you know, And the other thing I want to see is the results of all our investments in literacy.

I'm serious when I say I want all kids reading proficiently at the end of the third grade.

And what do I have to do to inspire school districts to get that done is going to be important.

Melissa Davlin: Third grade literacy was top of the priority list for Governor Otter, has been top of the priority list for you.

Between COVID and other challenges.

We haven't seen much movement on those percentage rates.

Gov Little: Well, we you know, if you look down into the data, the one thing we do know is what's working and what's not working.

And some districts are making you know, some some districts have got 80%, 90% proficient by the third grade.

We need to take what's working in those districts and transfer it to other districts.

And I do think behavioral health and mental health is going to be an issue because, you know, these kids have challenges.

We literally this morning had a presentation by one of our interns about, you know, the challenges of social media on these kids and how we handle that, how we help them cope.

But I think a little bit of counseling early yields great results.

You let these kids problems get kind of ahead of them.

Then, you know, you got substance abuse, you got all these other challenges.

And people say, well, we didn't have all those counselors when I was in school.

Life is a lot more complicated now than it was when I was in school.

Melissa Davlin: It's more complicated now than it was even 15 years ago.

Gov Little: Yeah, or ten years ago.

Melissa: Right?

Gov Little: Yeah.

Melissa: Oh, Gov Little: Save me paying for a flat tire.

Melissa Davlin: It█s true.

Have you given much thought to running for a third term?

Gov Little: No.

I got, I got plenty of runway to get things done in the next three years.

And, you know, I've got, like I said, my my staff, my administrators, you know, we continue to work on.

In fact, this morning we had a meeting on, uh, you know, kind of getting the right signals to our administrators in our departments that we're going to continue to do that, kind of sharpen the saw to perfect what we're doing in in every agency.

And I'm I'm pleased.

With what's going on it's always a challenge, but if it was easy, everybody would be doing it.

Melissa Davlin: Have you ruled out running for a third term?

Gov Little: No.

Melissa Davlin: You haven't ruled it out?

Gov Little: Nossa Davli: What are the factors?

Gov Little: Well, there's lots of em.

There's lots of em.

I uh, but that's I mean, literally the one thing we are doing is we started doing it and we and I had another conversation about that today, is doing a five year budget to where whatever we do today doesn't put us in an economic hole where we either have to cut services or raise taxes.

So that's actually been one of my highest priorities, is that we we scale our spending with revenue growth, plus probably we█ll probably continue to do property tax relief and we might even we'll probably even do some more income tax.

Idaho is a tough state because we█ve got all these states around us that don't have income taxes and so we you know, we want to be competitive, but it doesn't seem to be stopping people from moving to Idaho.

Melissa Davlin: I wanted to ask about all of the growth that we've seen and the economic outlook and everything together.

You know, the legislature only has so much control.

You only have so much control.

Overall, are you happy with the trajectory that the state is taking, not just economically but culturally as well?

Gov Little: Well, it's I mean, it's changing.

We have so many people moving here.

It's it's going to continue to be a challenge.

You know, we made a great investment in our parks this year, the biggest ever by far.

But one of the things when I go and talk to rural Idaho is everybody leaves Boise and goes to Boise County or Owyhee County.

What do I do about emergency services?

You know, we had capital for a day and Bruneau, and one of the biggest hot issues was how do how do we pay for emergency services for all those city folk that come out and get in trouble recreating on the ground in our county?

And I think we're going to have we we actually need to there's a study going on now about how do we pay for emergency services in rural Idaho.

And we need to be cognizant that we all don't just say you guys bear the cost of the great outdoors in Idaho, and we will continue to be cognizant of that.

Melissa Davlin: Either that or you go and recreate, you█re on your own, that's a choice you make.

Gov Little: Yeah, well, you know, I think what we talked about is, is emergency services a vital service, and do we need to provide it?

And who pays for it?

Do the the taxpayers in Owyhee and Boise County have to pay for the emergency services for everybody from Boise and Nampa?

Or does the state share part of that cost?

Melissa Davlin: But there's been a lot of concern lately about extremist rhetoric you know, between last summer and the Patriot Front stopping by Coeur d'Alene Pride, people making not so veiled threats against law enforcement pretty close to your house who are trying to serve civil papers and warrants.

Do you think the state is doing enough to push back against that extremism?

Gov Little: Well, A, we want everybody to feel safe in Idaho, but a lot of the issue to me, are people that come here and they always talk about we don't want to be Seattle or Portland or San Francisco.

Well, we're not any of those.

And I understand people being concerned about it, but we need to let let them see what the difference is, it█s it█s not that the unsafe streets in those communities are in any way a problem in Idaho.

And public safety is something that, again, we're focusing on here, so.

Are you happy now that you're back at the barn?

He doesn't want to go any further.

Melissa: He's good.

Gov Little: There we go.

Melissa Davlin: You know, just just one more question from me.

You know, when you're you've still got three years left in your second term.

But we've talked a lot this year about Governor Batt█s legacy.

Have you thought at all about what you want your legacy to be?

Gov Little: All kids reading proficiently at the end of the third grade would be a great start.

You know, and I think that this, and this is akin to what Governor Batt, you know, that we're fiscally responsible, that we don't overtax, we don't overregulate.

We did an incredible amount of work in the first term on regulation.

Now we're continuing to modify that and make it better.

But I want Idaho to be a place in particular that an Idaho kid can get educated, whether it's career technical or traditional bachelor degree, and start a business and provide for their family.

That's, and stay right here in Idaho.

Play out in the great outdoors of Idaho and respectfully.

So.

Melissa Davlin: Alright, anything else you wanted to add?

Gov Little: I think that█s it.

Melissa: While surrounded by cameras?

No?

Gov Little: No, I think that's where I will de-mic, and depart.

Melissa: Perfect.

Yeah.

Gov Little: All right.

Melissa: Hey, thank you.

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.