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>>The legislature has wrapped up its business, and it got plenty done in the last week.

So what does it all mean for Idahoans?

I'm Melissa Davlin.

Idaho Reports starts now.

Hello and welcome to Idaho Reports.

This week, lawmakers wrapped up their remaining work and recessed to allow for any remaining vetoes.

They'll be back next week.

Joining me to discuss the politics of the week and the closing days of the legislative session is Dr. Jaclyn Kettler and Dr. Stephanie Witt from Boise State University's School of Public Service.

And Kevin Richert from Idaho Education News.

And as is always the case, at the end of the legislative session, a lot happened this week, starting off on Monday, when Governor Brad Little vetoed lawmakers property tax compromise bill.

>>The fact is, House Bill 292 is not a simple bill.

House Bill 292 is a hodgepodge of policy items intermingled with property tax.

House Bill 292 presents negative harmful impacts on election dates.

Public defense funding.

Online sales tax collections.

Local government sales tax distributions and funding for transportation.

>>Kevin, you covered this veto on Monday.

How surprised were you?

>>I was surprised and I was surprised, too, at what then unfolded because what we saw and we see it every session, we saw the tensions between the executive branch and the legislative branch.

We saw the tensions between the House and the Senate.

Like I said, we see that at the end of every legislative session.

But I don't think it's ever been as impactful and as dramatic as we saw from Monday through to Wednesday.

>>And we'll have plenty of time to talk about that.

But real quick, I wanted to touch on the original property tax bill that got vetoed.

Stephanie, it seems like we're seeing more of these complex bills from the legislature in recent years.

>>You know, the legislature seems very dedicated to working on the part of the property tax problem that's tied to the budgets of local governments and school districts, rather than trying to attack on the valuations side.

I think most homeowners feel heartburn about the amount of value that their home is being taxed on.

Right.

That's the alarming thing.

But the legislative leadership seems committed to staying focused instead on the property tax portion of city county school district budgets.

Now, this relief bill would provide help to schools, in particular in regard to bonded indebtedness.

So it was a good step.

It's a way to provide property tax relief, but probably not the way that homeowners were hoping for.

>>Absolutely.

And I know that we've seen very complex bills in recent years, like during last year's special session where you had multiple different moving pieces that kind of, if you squint, barely fit under the Constitution of requirement for one topic per bill.

>>Right, I think that's really interesting.

And there may be a few things at play here, right?

One, making sure that you get enough people on board to support the piece of legislation.

Maybe.

Maybe part of it they're not a big legislators aren't a big fan of, but they really want to support tax relief for education funding.

And so you help build your coalition to support legislation by kind of doing this more complex omnibus approach.

But it does raise questions about that single subject requirement.

Sure.

Well, by Wednesday, both the House and Senate had voted to override that veto, making it the first override in Idaho since 2007.

>>It was the result of a concerted effort throughout the session to arrive at a bill that would satisfy the people around the table.

That consensus bill resulted that that consensus bill is House Bill 292.

Again, it was a good bill when we voted on it before.

It's a good bill now.

I urge us to have unity as a body and to stand up for what we passed before and to follow through on the mandate that we received from our voters or excuse me, from our constituents and from the people of Idaho.

I urge us all to vote to overturn this veto and move 292 forward.

Thank you.

>>The two chambers also passed companion legislation to address some of the issues Governor Little had brought up in his veto letter.

Kevin, this is the first override successful in both chambers since 2007, as I mentioned.

This is pretty remarkable.

>>It was pretty remarkable.

And I think what's really remarkable about this and we talked about how this was a complex bill with a bunch of different elements.

I think a big part of what we saw unfold this week and a big part of the drama that unfolded this week was about the March school elections.

That was a clause in House Bill 292.

It eliminates these the March school elections, which are the most common elections for school districts to run supplemental levies and bond issues.

Minutes after the veto, I spoke to Mike Moyle and he was adamant that the March language was really important to him and it was really important as a component of this of this package.

And when you notice after the override, the Governor Little put out a news release claiming victory in spite of the fact that he had a veto or one of his vetoes overridden.

He was claiming victory because the legislature fixed some of the concerns that he addressed in the veto message.

Didn't address the March election date.

He didn't mention it at all in his news release, which I think is telling.

>>And I wanted to get your take on this, both of you.

First of all, why are overrides so rare veto overrides so rare even on popular legislation, Jackie?

>>It's a great question.

I think, you know, directly, you know, combating your governor in that way, that conflict, that tension can be really difficult, especially if you're within the same party in some states where you have a partizan split in that control of the legislature and the governor, you may see some more veto overrides.

But even then, they're tough.

They can be really tough to kind of mount that capital and get everyone on board for undertaking that override.

>>Talking about the legislation itself, do those companion pieces of legislation address the issues that Governor Little raised and also accomplish the goals of the legislature to reduce property taxes?

>>Yes, I think so.

The I think the the problem that that bill had illustrates the complexity of how we fund things.

Right.

And you know that making a priority for a revenue distribution upsets two or three apple carts of how we decided the money will be shared around in programs.

And that was, as I understand it, the concern with transportation bonding and the bond agencies were a little alarmed at the change of priorities for funding.

So I think I think it points to the complexity and I don't know the ins and outs of how the bill was crafted, but we have a lot of new legislators and a lot of new JFAC members.

And I wonder if maybe someone just didn't realize if you pull on this thread, you're going to unravel the whole arm, you know.

>>Or they realized it, but they didn't quite realize where all those threads were attached.

And that was the sense I got when looking into it, too.

Well, the property tax bills weren't the only news this week.

On Thursday, the House voted down a proposal to put a ballot change or to put on the ballot a change to the Constitution that would require 6% of voters from all 35 legislative districts to sign on to future voter initiatives.

The current requirement in code is 6% of voters in 18 districts.

>>I worked for an agency that hired people to gather petitions and they targeted three counties.

Guess which three counties they targeted?

They targeted Ada Canyon and Kootenai Counties, and they paid people $16 an hour to go out and get those initiatives signed.

And that's why we have and that's why we have Medicaid expansion.

Simple as that.

>>For my own district, it's been overwhelming that we red light this.

The people that have contacted me have all said it really takes away their freedoms.

>>If you travel south from the northern border, you travel two thirds of the state before you get through District seven.

That means the rest of the districts, 28 of them, are in the south part of the state.

I would say that this gives a voice to all of the state.

>>We are at the outer bounds and we don't need to make it harder.

We're not California.

People aren't walking into their ballot and seeing 25 ballot initiatives on there.

>>I think a constitutional amendment should be perfect, as perfect as we can make it.

And I think the wording of this proposed amendment is flawed.

And I and I believe that we can get it right and we have time before the next general election to get it right.

>>Though the majority of the House voted for the proposal, it failed to meet the two thirds requirement.

Kevin.

The legislature hasn't been a fan of voter initiatives for quite some time.

>>No, and I don't think that vote on Thursday reflects a change of heart within the legislature when it comes to initiatives.

And Representative Clow’s point is really well-taken here.

This constitutional amendment isn't going to appear on the ballot before November of 24 anyway.

So whether it passed in 2023, or if a new version comes along in 2024 and passes both houses, it's really doesn't really matter.

>>So.

That leads to my next question.

I'm assuming that we are going to see this again next year, maybe a little bit more finely tuned.

>>I would expect that I'm I'm not sure how needful it is.

I would point out that we've had very few initiatives under the existing rules, which would be quite lax in comparison to what they're hoping to do.

So I in this case, I have to agree that we're not seeing a flood of initiatives anyway.

And I think the question is do initiative signature gathering does that.

Are we talking about the will of the people or the will the districts?

And those are two different things.

>>Well, Kevin, something else that got voted down this week was a gubernatorial appointment in the Senate.

Another another action.

We don't see that often from the legislature.

>>Right.

A couple of hours after overriding the governor's veto on property taxes, the Senate voted down one of Governor Little's gubernatorial appointments.

This is Karen Echeverria, a longtime school boards association director.

She was appointed to the Idaho Public Charter School Commission.

Now, this is a fairly obscure state agency, but a pretty important one as well.

The vote wasn't all that close.

They voted to reject her nomination 24 to 11.

So pretty resounding defeat on this.

And I think it speaks to a bigger issue in the charter school sector.

There's a lot of tension between the within the legislature right now about the role of this charter commission.

It authorizes most of the charter schools in the state.

Most of the 72 charters in the state operate under the umbrella of the charter commission.

So there's a lot of questions right now about what is the role of this charter commission as an authorizer of charter schools across the state.

Are they an advocate for charter schools or are they a regulatory agency?

And it's kind of a dual role.

It's a difficult role to kind of pin down.

And I think what you saw with voting day in Karen Echeverria’s nomination is reflective of that.

>>Touching on what we were talking about earlier, Dr. Kettler, it's not rare or sorry, it's not common.

It's very rare that we see the Senate reject a gubernatorial appointment.

And I'm assuming it's for that same reason.

>>Yeah, exactly.

I mean, Kevin, you mentioned earlier, right.

We have seen some tensions that kind of some power struggles between the branches.

Even then, it's really rare to see see a confirmation fail in this way.

I think going to some of the policy debates that that's been being had about education and some of those disagreements as well between the executive and the legislative branch perhaps playing a role as well in this particular case.

>>To the rarity of this all.

I mean, earlier this session, the Senate reappointed Alan Reed to the same charter school commission.

It was a formality.

It was a voice vote.

There was no debate.

There was no dissent that was visible.

Karen Echeverria’s nomination, really struck a nerve with a lot of senators.

>>You know, otherwise, it was a pretty calm week for education.

For the most part, those K through 12 budgets with a little bit of debate sailed through.

>>Right.

I think, you know, at the end of the day, all of the K 12 budgets, which, you know, allocate a lot of the money that was earmarked in the special session back in September.

There really wasn't a whole lot of debate about these education budgets.

The votes were fairly comfortable not not terribly surprising.

We've seen that in past years with the K 12 budgets.

We did almost see the state board budget go down on Friday.

>>It was interesting.

>>It was in tell us what happened.

>>Well, this was a state board of Education budget and it included one line item that was a sticking point for some For some legislators, It continues the Empowering Parents Micro Grant program.

That's the program that allows parents to get a grant to pay for a computer or tutoring or whatever needs they they identify.

That was the only debate that came up on the House floor this morning.

The House almost voted this budget down.

House Speaker Mike Moyle held the vote for a few seconds.

At one point, he said to lawmakers, some of you, if you change your vote, we're going to be back in here on Saturday.

Enough lawmakers did change their vote that the budget narrowly passed.

Steve Birch, a Democrat from Boise, then rose to admonish Moyle, you know, and say, you know, I can't believe you said something like that and addressed the body that way and Moyle did back down and say, you know, your criticism is well taken.

Very unusual to see that kind of, you know, suspense surrounding a budget and a budget vote.

>>Just briefly, had Moyle not admonished them, would this budget have gone down?

>>I think there's a good chance we would of been back in on Saturday.

>>Another debate that kept House members on their toes on Friday morning was the final passage of the legislation regarding obscene materials in libraries.

The latest proposal would allow parents and guardians to sue for $2,500 if children are able to check out materials deemed obscene.

If those libraries haven't taken, quote unquote, reasonable steps to prevent minors from accessing those materials.

One issue that came up in both the House and Senate debates whether some passages in the Bible that discussed prostitution, infanticide, rape and incest might be considered obscene under the language of the bill.

At least one lawmaker took exception to the inquiry.

>>Does the Bible glorify evil?

Does the Bible encourage you to break the Ten Commandments via adultery, or expose the price of sin that one pays when they do so?

Does the Bible walk us through explicit sex acts?

But I think it's important if we're going to impugn the most popular book that... >>Mr.

Speaker, I Object.

>>Hmm.

>>Good Gentleman from 26, would you... >>Mr.

Speaker, I did not impugn the Bible, and I take intensive offense to that.

I am saying, Mr. Speaker, that according to the words of this bill, the there are verses in the Bible that could be construed as violating the conditions of this bill.

That is my point.

>>Ultimately, that bill passed both the House and Senate and is on the governor's desk.

Dr. Witt, This isn't a unique issue to Idaho.

Certainly what's obscene, what children should have access to and who should make that decision, whether it's librarians or parents.

>>Yeah, we're seeing bills like this sometimes identical to this across the country.

It's an example, I think, of how we're nationalize or we're taking national level issues and we're seeing them pop up in local governing boards right.

Two things about this, bill.

Make it hard to know how it would go.

Right.

The vagueness of what a reasonable step is that a library should be able to do is difficult.

And, of course, the definition of obscenity, as we saw in the clip, it looks different depending on who who you're asking.

But the thing I think is most outstanding about this, this is another example of this kind of deputizing the world to tell on each other the fact that any anybody can bring forth a claim against a librarian for $2,500, you know, is concerning to me about what's the volume of this going to look like, What's going to happen to normal access to our libraries?

I think it's a it's it it's not a good trend.

We see it We've seen it with abortion laws in other states.

We're seeing it with this library bill where we're kind of turning enforcement over to normal citizens.

>>And we'll certainly have more on that civil enforcement mechanism in coming weeks.

Dr. Kettler, I wanted to get your thoughts.

>>I think one question as well.

We're already seeing challenges in filling open public service roles like state and local government positions and these types of pieces of legislation.

Will it keep people from pursuing jobs in libraries, wanting to work in those in those realms because of a concern that anyone could bring up a complaint against them so that it's another, you know, challenge that we may be seeing.

And we've seen some other discussions from librarians and library leaders of what their reactions might be.

And so a lot of kind of questions, if this is signed by the governor, what might happen?

>>I think that clip really crystallizes a lot of the debate that we heard this week in both the Senate and the House about this bill.

How do we define the materials that would be covered under this legislation?

Because the language materials that are harmful to minors is a very it's a hard it's hard to define.

And critics are saying, well, not just the Bible, you know, where do you draw the line about what is a material that is harmful to minors?

>>Statue of David, for example.

>>Yeah.

>>Well, also earlier this week, the Senate passed a bill banning surgical and hormonal gender affirming care for transgender minors.

>>I don't want it to be known to this floor that I don't care about these children and I don't care about their families.

I think we all have had visits from families and we know that this is difficult and challenging.

>>Parents get to decide what they do, where they send their child to school, whether or not they're vaccinated, whether or not they wear a mask, whether or not they go to the movie, the library.

We get to make those choices.

I guess I'm just having a little bit of problem about the flip flopping we make when the choice is not one we might personally make.

>>That is another bill that is awaiting the governor's action.

Dr. Witt, I wanted to get your take on that last comment in the video clip that so much of the debate over the last few years has really focused on parental rights.

And and there's a difference here for lawmakers.

>>Yeah, I don't see anybody sticking to the principle of no involvement or a lot of involvement.

It depends on the issue.

So a couple of years ago, when we're talking about COVID, we had a lot of people arguing that parents should get to make the decision about whether a child is inoculated and whether or not to wear a mask.

Now.

The sides are flipped and suddenly parental choice about medical issues doesn't count.

The state wants to regulate those decisions.

And so, you know, we're seeing that issue from both sides and I think this is a tough one.

I mean, this is in my personal opinion, this is having the state take a giant regulatory step into our living rooms and doctor's offices and intervening in decisions that parent terribly hard decisions, by the way, that parents are facing about how best to support their own child.

>>And we heard testimony from multiple families where they said, you know, surgery isn't even on the table for minors.

Hormone therapy is different.

And they heard in some cases conflicting testimony about whether hormone therapy was reversible, if a individual changed their mind later.

But but ultimately, what struck me was how emotionally difficult testimony was for for these folks to give in committee.

>>Yeah.

In listening to these families, it sounds like in many cases the parents understand and believe that had there not been this medical option that their child would not be okay and may even have chosen to take their own life.

And that's, of course, the end you don't want in any situation right.

So, yeah, very, very heartfelt testimony.

>>And of course, there were some questions about, you know, whether surgery is appropriate for a minor.

But, you know, ultimately, this is another example of an issue that is not unique to Idaho.

We are seeing legislation like this all across the country.

>>That's exactly right.

I think eight other states have already passed very similar pieces of legislation.

We've seen some heart wrenching testimony and protests and similar sorts of events play out in other states as well.

And it is really interesting to see such similar legislation being considered.

At the same time in a lot of states.

>>Another bill also in the governor's hands, would update protections for the life of the mother under Idaho's criminal abortion ban.

The legislation adjusts the law to provide doctors with a true exemption that allows for life saving care rather than an affirmative defense after the doctor has already been charged with a crime.

>>It is unfortunate in this respect that this does not allow a health exception.

I will say, however, that it is a major improvement in my in my view, my personal view, that you have taken away the affirmative defense and given us a true exemption so that we enjoy the same right of presumption of innocence that everybody else get.

>>That is a very real change in terms of the perspective of physicians providing care in the emergency room for women experiencing miscarriage in not providing hesitation, hey, am I going to am I going to face a felony charge for for this and have to prove that I didn't do anything wrong?

>>Democrats objected to the bill, noting it doesn't protect doctors for health or future fertility of the mother.

Doctor Witt, this is just such a difficult topic that so many states are grappling with right now.

But ultimately, we're already seeing the effects on hospitals and their ability to recruit health care workers to the state.

>>Yeah, well, we saw the situation up north where the hospital in I think in Boundary County has elected not to have >>In Sandpoint.

>>Sorry.

Yeah, yeah.

Not to have ob gyn services there And then this morning I believe the hospital in Emmet has made a similar decision.

So that's going to make access to health care a little a lot harder for people who live in rural communities.

The clarifications are a good start, but, you know, none of us are medical doctors and I suspect the people drafting the bills aren't.

But there are probably hundreds of things that could go wrong in a pregnancy that may require the intervention of the doctors and the need to terminate a pregnancy to secure the health or the future health of the mother.

So this is still we are still talking about very drastic limits on abortion.

And I believe that hospital council, the lawyers, will likely be very cautious about approving procedures.

>>And to be clear, you know, there are a number of complications that could happen.

They are they are rare, but they do happen.

>>They do.

And there are a couple written into this bill.

So what that means is there could be hundreds of other things that happen that aren't specifically approved.

And I don't know, do we have to wait until death is imminent to do treatment?

That is not the way I would want my health care to go.

And I think I think it's a drastic bill still.

>>But, Kevin, I wanted to get your thoughts.

There once were doctors in the legislature and we've seen since seen them lose elections or retire, and now there are no physicians who are serving in the Idaho legislature.

How do you think that affects the tone of these debates?

>>I think it has to have an effect on the debate.

I mean, this is a state and this is a legislature that has always prided itself on being a citizens legislature, being reflective of the population at large.

You know, you have teachers in the legislature on both sides of the aisle, and you see that they're, you know, respected voices within the legislature on education issues.

It doesn't mean that they get everything that they want and then they get every bill that they're pursuing through the legislature.

It does mean that they have a certain level of, you know, gravitas within the legislature on these topics.

So I think you hit on a really important point here, that you don't have a physician in the legislature who can speak to the real world impacts of legislation like this.

>>Dr.

Kettler, we have just about a minute remaining.

But, you know, looking at the totality of the session to me, and I know Kevin and I were talking about this earlier off camera, the tone of this session seemed a little bit different.

It seemed a little bit more personal for a lot of people.

>>Yeah, a lot of focus, especially throughout a good chunk of the session on a lot of these social issues, a lot of the personal kind of stories brought in by legislators, by those testifying.

And I think as well, seeing the impact of so many new legislators has also been such a fascinating element to watch this session, how committees have changed, how chambers have changed, and how that has played out, and what bills have advanced to the floor and sometimes been defeated on the floor.

>>We also saw maybe more public infighting bet within the Republican Party.

We have about 20 seconds left.

>>Well, Jackie pointed this out earlier in the session as we were watching, you know, who voted which way.

And it is a little unusual to see the speaker and the majority leader be on different sides of a bill.

Jackie informs me this is rare, in states across the country.

>>We're going to have to leave it there.

Thank you so much for joining us and thank you for watching.

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.