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: Nationally, indigenous people are reported missing or murdered at twice the rate of non-tribal members.

What's the picture here in Idaho and what can agencies do to address it?

I'm Melissa Davlin.

The new season of Idaho Reports starts now.

Hello and welcome to the 52nd season of Idaho Reports.

This week, producer Ruth Brown travels to the Nez Perce and Coeur d'Alene reservations to explore the high rate of missing and murdered indigenous people.

Then Kevin Richert of Idaho Education News joins us to discuss upcoming school elections and the latest in attorney General Raul Labrador’s lawsuit against the State Board of Education concerning potential open meeting violations during discussions leading up to the University of Idaho's acquisition of the University of Phoenix.

But first, on Thursday, the ninth Circuit Court of Appeals temporarily blocked enforcement of a state law that would require students to use bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their sex assigned at birth as opposed to their gender identity.

After the 2023 legislature passed that bill, a group of students sued to block enforcement of the law, which was scheduled to go into effect on November 3rd.

This week's injunction stops enforcement of the law for the time being, allowing an appellate court to review the ruling.

Last week, the state published its first revenue report for the 2024 fiscal year, which showed tax collections for the first quarter have come in about $39 million below projections.

But officials aren't worried about that, affecting the state budget more broadly.

Division of Financial Management Administrator Alex Adams sat down with associate producer Logan Finney to talk about the bigger picture.

If this $39 million miss this first quarter manifests throughout the year and we don't make up any of that ground, our ending balance for the year would be $280 million.

That's about a 5% cushion.

If somehow we got beyond that, we have $1.2 billion in the rainy day fund.

So I think we're well prepared to weather any any economic storms that may be ahead.

But when I look at this compared to where we were last year, it's early.

What we've been doing is working.

And I feel very good about the trajectory that we're on.

And speaking of that $280 million cushion, one could call that a surplus because it's over what the state is projecting to bring in, in past years, we've had a massive surplus up to in the realm of $2 billion, and the legislature passed as part of their property tax relief bill, a surplus, eliminator to dispense out some of those funds.

How how has that affected the picture here?

It, is, the $280 million that much smaller because of better predictions because we are spending some of the surplus?

Tell me that story.

Yeah.

So we've worked very closely with the legislature and budgeting the last couple of years and we saw a spike in state revenue during COVID.

So just for context, in fiscal year 2020, State was collecting $4 billion in revenue.

In ‘21, it grew to $5 billion in revenue and in ’22 it grew to $6 billion in revenue.

So we went from $4 billion to $5 billion to $6 billion in a three year stretch.

That's 20% year over year growth.

I don't think there was anyone that thought that was sustainable.

And a lot of it was driven by heavy debt finance spending at the federal level.

When the feds send everybody $1,200 or $1,400 checks, you sell a lot of ebikes, you sell a lot of kayaks.

A lot of people eat out meals that they wouldn't have eaten out otherwise.

So we saw that buoy sales tax collections in a manner that nobody predicted was going to be sustainable.

we didn't build that into ongoing spending.

We always knew that revenue was going to fall off and we built this year's budget around $5.5 billion in revenue.

That's partly because of COVID aid wearing off, but partly because of sequential tax cuts, as you mentioned.

So revenue dropping was, you know, always predicted both through rational policy decisions had been made by the legislature and signed by the governor, as well as weaning off of record levels of debt financed federal spending.

You can listen to the full conversation with Alex Adams on the Idaho Reports podcast available wherever you get your podcast.

Or if you prefer, you can find a transcribed version of the conversation online at IdahoReports.org For years, tribal leaders across the country have been trying to educate the public on the high rate of missing and murdered indigenous people.

This summer, producer Ruth Brown spent time on two of the state's reservations, speaking with tribal members about the scale of the problem, what needs to change and the voices that need to be heard.

Ruth Brown: Each year, about 80 indigenous Idahoans are entered into the missing person database run by the National Crime Information Center, according to a 2021 Boise State University report.

That rate is nearly double that of missing Idahoans of every other race.

Many of those people are later located or taken out of the NCIC system.

Others will stay in that system for decades.

Bernie LaSarte: In our neck of the woods.

We’ve had a young gal that has been missing since 1987.

Brown: Tina Marie Finley went missing from the Coeur d’Alene reservation after attending a birthday party in Tensed in 1988.

LaSarte: She's still gone.

She hasn't been returned to her family.

She hasn't been properly buried.

But there's many more like that statewide and nationwide.

Brown: Idaho Reports went to Lapwai and Plummer this summer to talk to Nez Perce and Coeur d’Alene tribal members about the national epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous people.

Idaho is home to five federally recognized indigenous tribes.

Natasha Anderson: I think what I've learned the most from being on the commission is just how widespread this issue is, and how difficult it is for families of missing and murdered indigenous people to come and have to tell their story over and over and relive that trauma again and again in order to get attention on the issue.

Brown: Nez Perce Chief Judge Natasha Anderson sits on the Bureau of Indian Affairs Not Invisible Act Commission, formed after the act was passed in 2020.

Anderson: I think the main goal of the commission is to elevate the voices of families on the ground that have been crying out for attention to the issue.

The statistics of Indigenous people, particularly Indigenous women that go missing, are so high.

More than double the national average that something needs to be fixed.

Something needs to change.

Brown: Other examples of missing Indigenous people in Idaho include Matthew Broncho of Fort Hall.

Last seen on March 20th of 2019.

Or Kacy Ross, of Plummer, who was last heard from on March 19th of 2020.

And her last known location was Spokane, Washington.

Solving the problem isn't simple, nor is it easy to point to one reason as to why the rate of missing Indigenous people remains so high.

Jurisdictional barriers continue to be a problem in Idaho and nationwide.

Anderson: I think the most pivotal thing that could happen is that Idaho would amend its definition of peace officer to include tribal law enforcement officers.

Right now, because tribal law enforcement officers aren’t included in that definition, that really restricts a lot of the things that they can do.

As well as the ability of local or state law enforcement agencies to collaborate on investigations and things like that.

The communication and willingness of agencies to collaborate and share data or information is just not what it should be when you have someone missing.

LaSarte: There's no central data collecting, so that's part of the problem.

Because every agency uses their own data and none of it, the right hand doesn't talk to the left hand, nobody talks to each other.

So that's a big problem.

And, you know, of course, and then there's the tribal sovereignty and, you know, there are some issues revolving around that and reluctance to share.

Which I think is going to change.

I think that there's been a lot more awareness going on in the past few years and tribes all over the U.S. are taking notice and, and understanding that some of the challenges are within our own tribes.

That we do need to share some data.

We don't need everybody's data.

We just need whatever pertains to missing and murdered native people.

Brown: Bernie LaSarte co-chairs the missing and murdered Indigenous Peoples Subcommittee.

She said tribal members who live off reservation or on other reservations often get misclassified as being Caucasian or Hispanic.

That creates the potential for undercounting missing indigenous people.

LaSarte: We need to work together with the county, with the state, with other other tribes, with our federal partners in collecting this data.

So we know how many are actually missing.

We need to help with investigations because tribes are pretty compact and they have no jurisdiction even across the county line.

So we need that extra support.

One of the biggest things that I hope that comes out of this is that we do have agreements to work with one another.

Anderson: What I've been heartened to see since I took the bench for the Nez Perce tribe in January is the local judges of the Nez Perce County, we've been working in a sort of Lewis-Clark Valley DV response team.

So building those relationships, getting to know who our partners are, who our counterparts are.

That doesn't just stop there, the Nez Perce reservation spans five counties, and each of those counties work differently with the tribe.

Brown: Outside of jurisdictional issues, some point to the historical persecution of indigenous people as one of the reasons that the rate of violence against native people, especially Indigenous women, remains so high.

tai simpson: There is 400 to 500 years of settler colonization and dehumanization and displacement and violence and forced sterilization which makes these numbers offensive but also unsurprising.

We are not seen.

We are not heard.

We are not deemed worthy.

We are not human enough to uplift.

In a way we’re resources and energy is invested in our safety and in our wellness.

This is systemic.

It's institutionalized.

And it's the narrative and the conception that people have of who indigenous people are.

This isn't an Indian community issue.

This isn't just about Native folks in Idaho.

This is a community safety issue.

Brown: In 2022, the Idaho legislature established an alert system specific to endangered and missing Idahoans.

That system brings some hope to tribal members.

simpson: If we respond singularly one at a time to big sensationalized cases, then how many others white, black, brown or otherwise go and stay missing without response because they're not sensationalized?

Because they don't have a social media presence.

I think that this alert system is an equalizer at the very least, in ensuring that energy and resources are poured into everybody who goes missing.

Because we all deserve to be home.

We all deserve to be safe.

Brown: But the system isn't used in every missing persons case.

According to records pulled by Idaho Reports, the new alert system has not yet been used to help locate a missing indigenous person in Idaho.

Before requesting an alert, police must believe the missing adult is in jeopardy of immediate danger or death.

Tanea Parmenter: We haven't had any requests for an Indigenous person to be issued on the alert.

The law enforcement agency must feel that there's enough imminent bodily harm or death to immediately push out to cell phones.

In one case we have as a current case, there's not any imminent bodily harm or death with that person.

So as soon as we have somebody that has that, then we definitely would issue an alert.

Brown: In other words, just because an alert hasn't been issued for an indigenous person yet, that does not mean that no tribal members have gone missing.

Parmenter: This year, our area of focus is training.

Especially training for law enforcement and for community members.

And so we want to make sure our law enforcement understand how to handle a missing person case, especially when it comes to a missing indigenous person.

Brown: LaSarte knows families on her reservation that are still searching for or mourning for their family members.

Like those who knew and loved Tina Marie Finley.

LaSarte: I've worked very closely with her sisters, and they mourn for her every day.

They haven't been able to put her to rest.

And that's what we want, is to bring our people back home.

Joining me to discuss her reporting is Ruth Brown.

Ruth, thanks so much for all your hard work on this.

One of the things that you really explore in the online version of your story, which viewers can find at IdahoReports.org is how so much of this data is siloed between different agencies.

Correct.

It is one of the fundamental problems, I think, with this issue.

So part of the problem is the National Crime Information Center lists actively missing cases.

For example, IS, and which is a different set of data than the Idaho State Police Clearinghouse.

For example, right now, there are currently three active cases of missing indigenous people in the state of Idaho.

That is not representative.

In NCIC specifically.

Yes, in NCIC.

That is not representative of the number of indigenous people that go missing every year or the rate at which they go missing every year.

It's important to remember that indigenous people go missing at twice the rate of every other race in the state of Idaho.

And so And many of those missing people are ultimately found.

Yes.

Sometimes found dead or alive.

Yes Right.

And that's part of the reason in the disparity between the numbers of active missing cases and the high rate that we're seeing.

One of them is a snapshot in any given day, and one of them is an annual look at how many people are reported missing.

Correct.

If someone is in NCIC, there has been a formal police report and they are a designated missing person.

There are other cases that maybe it hasn't, it's not a formal police report, but they've inquired about, you know, my brother, my sister, my spouse hasn't come home in a few days.

And when we're talking about adults, it is a free country.

You don't have to report to anyone.

And so that makes it complicated.

Children, for example, are automatically put in NCIC when they go missing of course.

Whether they're runaways or go missing under other circumstances.

Correct.

Whereas adults are not automatically entered.

So it makes it very complicated.

Additionally, all of the law enforcement agencies across Idaho, we have tribal police, state police, local police, do not necessarily always share data and information about people who have gone missing.

This makes it very complicated.

It's both a jurisdictional issue and maybe in part a cultural issue.

I felt very privileged this summer to talk to tribal members about missing and murdered indigenous folks and what they see as issues that could improve communication among law enforcement agencies.

I talk in my story at length about data, but also changes that could be made in the state that could help the problem.

But the scale of it is shocking.

I cannot stress that enough.

The rate at which Native people go missing in this state and across the country is shocking.

I don't think we should be entirely surprised because the rate at which indigenous folks experience violence is also shocking.

The DOJ will report that I think it's 84% of women who are indigenous will experience violence in their lifetime.

81% of Indigenous men will experience violence in their lifetime.

And so I, I cannot express the importance of this enough.

And ultimately, there are a lot of intersections here with the justice system, with investigations, with public health.

And as we've talked about in education and justice and public health, that you can't really solve a problem if you don't fully understand it.

Real quick, before we move on, what was your sense as you conducted these interviews about the the appetite for tackling these really difficult issues and solving them?

So you talked about you can't fix the problem.

You also can't fix a problem if you don't talk about it.

You can't fix a problem if you don't listen to the parties involved.

One of the things I, I heard over and over is that the indigenous folks that I spoke with do not feel heard.

There is a missing and murdered Indigenous people subcommittee that will offer recommendations to the state.

I hope that those recommendations are heard by the legislature and state authorities, but I think there is a growing appetite for it.

It's becoming more and more.

Any report on those recommendations in your online story, which people can find at IdahoReport's.org Thanks so much, Ruth.

Correct Also joining us today is Kevin Richert of Idaho Education News.

Kevin, so much happened over the summer in the education realm.

Let's touch on a few of those.

Quite a bit.

Let's touch on a few of those stories right now.

Can you give us the latest on the University of Idaho's acquisition or planned acquisition of University of Phoenix?

There is a lot up in the air about this purchase and a lot that is still needs to be resolved.

The big issues right now are accreditation.

Both the University of Idaho’s accreditor and the University of Phoenix’s accreditor have to sign off on this deal.

Neither have done so.

Meetings with the accreditors are likely to occur in the next few weeks.

Financing.

I mean, this is a $685 million purchase.

So the nonprofit that the U of I has created to oversee the transaction, may have to go out to bond.

And that's a pretty big undertaking.

And then you have the lawsuit that is going on.

Raul Labrador’s lawsuit against the state Board of Education saying that the state board violated open meeting law when they held three closed door meetings to discuss the purchase.

And those meetings were before the planned acquisition was even announced in the first place.

Right.

This goes back in March, April and May.

There were three separate executive sessions held by the state board.

The state board argues that they were allowed to have these closed door discussions because there is a clause in state law that allows discussions of preliminary negotiations of a purchase when a state agency or a public agency is in competition, that's the important wording here, with other states or other nations.

That really, I think, is the crux of the lawsuit right now.

Ruth and I were both at a hearing on Thursday.

Let's talk about that hearing.

So Attorney General Labrador is suing the state Board of Education, a rare move which we can talk about another time.

Absolutely.

But the stakes here are pretty high.

Usually if there's an open bidding violation, an agency can very easily correct it and it's nothing more than a slap on the wrist.

A don't do it again.

And that's exactly the crux of this lawsuit right now, is that the state board really fairly defiantly decided not to cure the mistake.

Not to admit that there was a mistake in the open meeting law, which is a fairly simple procedure.

You just say, we screwed up, we're going to go back, we're going to start over again.

State board had a meeting back in July and came out of an executive session, another executive session, to discuss the lawsuit and said, No, we're sticking to our guns.

We think we were completely within the law.

So now you have this really it's this an existential lawsuit in terms of the future of this transaction.

If Labrador prevails in court, we're basically back to square one.

It really jeopardizes the whole purchase going forward.

It's not just an open meetings dispute right now in terms of the stakes involved.

Just to fully disclose, Idaho Public Television is under the state Board of Education.

Ruth, did you get a sense on what the timeline for that decision might be?

So the judge, I mean, this afternoon or next week or next month could issue a decision regarding the summary judgment.

But he did make clear that once the summary judgment is issued, if there's anything left to be decided, he wants to go to trial, I think within three months, which would be peak of the legislative season, depending on when it's issued.

So.

And also affects the timeline.

It all effects of the timeline.

Correct.

U of I and Phoenix are hoping to have this deal sewn up by early 2024.

They could still be in litigation in early 2024 at this rate.

Very easily.

It's and that still leaves you with the questions about accreditation, and are accreditors going to be balky about approving this deal if the lawsuit is still in play?

Or how does this affect financing?

I can't imagine that an active lawsuit is going to make it easier to finance this deal.

And it's interesting, you know, again, touching on that potential cure, they could have sidestepped all of this by going back and curing it when the complaint first arose over the summer.

No, this has become a really pitched battle between Raul Labrador and his staff and his office, and that the state Board of Education, which is made up largely of appointees, you know, from Governor Brad Little's office.

So the politics are very obvious and very apparent in this whole dispute.

You know, coming up soon in the K through 12 education realm, we have school board elections coming up statewide.

What are you going to be watching?

More politics.

I mean, these are some in spots, these school board elections are going to be very interesting.

You know, a lot of school board elections around the state are still really low key, really low budget affairs.

A lot of uncontested races.

A lot of school districts still really have to kind of scramble to find people to serve as school trustees.

I mean it's a volunteer job.

You take a lot of grief from constituents about, you know, you name it.

About, you know, school schedules, you know, about, you know, you know, indoctrination in schools, all that hot, hot button stuff, all kind of funnels to the school trustees who also have really important work to do, like hiring and sometimes firing school superintendents.

I mean, it's.

Budgets disciplinary measures, all of these things.

Yeah, student discipline.

A whole gamut of stuff.

All of which has the potential to really tick off your your local constituents.

So it's a thankless job.

And in some districts, though, you have folks really putting a lot of money and a lot of effort into trying to get a seat on the school board.

So in spots like West Ada, Kuna, Caldwell, those are districts I'm watching down here.

West Bonner, which has been so much in the news all summer.

Coeur d’Alene.

Those are going to be some hot school board elections coming up on November 7th.

And we've seen that trend toward contention, especially since the COVID years.

It's been ramping up with talks about indoctrination and social justice for a long time.

But now it's really, you know, kind of at a fevered pitch.

Yes.

And I think that aftershock is still, you know, playing out in some of these school board elections.

And, you know, I've been watching the money.

I've been watching some of the campaign contributions and in the school board races and again, a lot of school board races, not much money.

Lot of candidates haven't even raised $500, which is the threshold at which you have to file a sunshine report with the state.

You have one candidate in West Ada, Tom Moore, he’s a retired real estate broker who has loaned himself $50,000 to run a campaign.

For again, this is a volunteer position.

I have never in my time watching school board elections, seen that kind of money in a school board race.

And it's prompted the incumbent, Rene Ozuna, she's raised so far about $10,000, which would normally be quite a bit of money in a school board election.

$10,000 is still quite a bit less than $50,000.

That won't be the only issue on the ballots on November 8th.

Aside from city councils and mayor mayoral races, we also have school bonds and levies across the state.

Right.

And in spots these are going to be really important school bond and levy elections.

The ones I'll be watching most closely, Pocatello has a bond issue, as we recall, back in the spring, Highland High School, you know, a pretty serious fire.

They're kind of coping with getting students moved in.

You know, so a bond issue to address high school, high school capacity in Pocatello.

Shelley has a bond issue that's about a $70 million ask.

Nampa has a supplemental levy about $30 million.

Okay.

And I think I said November 8th.

I believe it's November 7th, the Tuesday.

Please, please do not go to the polls.

You show up on November 8th you’re gonna be out of luck.

Very sad.

Right?

Exactly.

You know, bonds and levees.

We have about 90 seconds left.

Have have you seen trends in recent years with Idaho voters either rejecting or accepting them differently than they have in the past?

You know, it's going to be interesting.

Bond issues are always tougher to get through because you need a two thirds supermajority to get them passed.

Supplemental levies, simple, simple majority is all you need.

So most of the time those pass.

What's going to be interesting for me to watch on November 7th and beyond, you're going to see a lot more of these bonds and levies in November and May.

Higher turnout elections.

Because if you recall back in the ‘23 legislative session, lawmakers got rid of the March school election date.

And that was the most commonly used election date for bonds and supplemental levies.

So a very different ballgame for school districts.

It'll be interesting to see how that affects the success rate, if it affects it at all.

As far as what will actually be on the ballot, are there any really, really big ticket ones that you are that you're going to be keeping a close eye on.

Again, Shelley.

Really small, relatively small school district in Bingham County.

They're asking for about $70 million.

That's a lot of money.

For that community too, absolutely.

All right, Kevin Richert, Idaho Education News.

Ruth Brown, Idaho Reports.

Thank you both for joining us.

And thank you for watching.

This is our first show of our 52nd season.

We will be back every Friday through May, bringing you the latest in public policy news from Idaho.

Thanks so much for watching and we'll see you 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 Bettis family legacy of building the great state of Idaho.

By the Friends of Idaho Public Television and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.