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: Power struggles between the legislative and executive branches are nothing new, but this year, those fights are starting to have real impacts on the state's operations.

Is this a normal push and pull, or are we in new territory?

I'm Melissa Davlin.

Idaho Reports starts now.

Hello and welcome to Idaho Reports.

This week, Kevin Richert of Idaho Education News and Dr Jaclyn Kettler of Boise State University's School of Public Service, join me to discuss upcoming elections, a lawsuit over a canceled sale of Idaho Transportation Department property.

Ongoing power struggles between the legislative and executive branches, and more.

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

The Idahoans for Open Primaries initiative submitted its final signatures to Idaho County Clerks this week, meeting its May 1st deadline.

The group estimated it had gathered more than 92,000 signatures from Idaho's 44 counties and 20 legislative districts, meeting the state requirement for getting an initiative on the ballot.

The county clerks must verify the signatures, and then the group will submit them to the Secretary of State's office for final approval.

If approved, the initiative will appear on the November general election ballot and would require a simple majority to pass.

The initiative would create an instant runoff election, known as ranked choice voting.

On Thursday, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare unveiled a new foster care assessment and care facility in Payette.

The 16 bed facility will provide temporary housing and care for foster children, including sibling groups, and gives the department more flexibility when it comes to initial foster placements.

Stacy Corbett: Idaho is kind of in a little bit of a crisis right now.

We have not as many foster homes as that we need through the state.

And so oftentimes there's, children of all ages that are without foster placement, which is our primary focus, of course.

But at the end of the day, they need to have a place where they're loved and cared for.

And so rather than having them stay in what we were calling the short term rentals, which were rental houses, we felt like it would be a more appropriate setting to have them in an environment where we could have them together with appropriate care and nurturance, and offer also provide them some enrichment activities as well.

Davlin: Late last week, the Department of Health and Welfare officially requested the Attorney General's office to weigh in on whether it still has the authority to implement certain Medicaid programs.

After the legislature passed a bill to require legislative approval of Medicaid waivers and state plan amendments.

Governor Brad Little signed the bill, but warned that vague language in the legislation put into jeopardy payments for ongoing services and existing programs that had pending amendments to their waivers.

He asked the legislature to clarify the new law, but lawmakers and their legal counsel didn't think it was necessary.

In a letter to the attorney general's office, interim Health and Welfare director Dean Cameron outlined a number of programs that the new law could affect, including extended postpartum coverage for women on Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program, and behavioral health.

We have more on our website.

IdahoReports.org Governor Little held a press conference on Thursday morning to discuss how he thinks the 2024 legislative session went.

He kicked off his remarks by outlining his successes for the session.

Brad Little: Since 2019, we put $1 billion into water quality and water quantity.

We put $20 million additional into parks, so that the kids in Idaho that want to stay here, will know we'll continue to have capacity in our parks.

What we're doing with state police, what we're doing with lab capacity to where we can test products for fentanyl.

One thing that we didn't get done, and I will be talking to the superintendent and the state board, and legislative leadership is more money for counselors to help behavioral health in schools.

Davlin: Joining me to discuss the governor's take is Kevin Richert of Idaho Education News, and Dr Jaclyn Kettler of Boise State University School of Public Service.

Kevin, if you go based on his wish list alone, this was a pretty successful legislative session for Governor Little.

Kevin Richert: Right.

And as he tallied it, most of the big initiatives that he wanted, he got.

He got a school facilities bill.

He got a lot more out of that bill.

But he did get historic investment in school facilities.

Launch got funded for, you know, for the first year.

Education fared pretty well.

I mean, the one setback that he mentioned, and it's not an insignificant one, is the, funding for counselors, because if you talk to anybody in education right now, mental health issues are a big concern.

And this would have helped address that at the local level.

Davlin: A big concern in higher education and K through 12 both, especially after Covid and remote learning, certainly.

we don't always see such a successful legislative session for governors in Idaho or elsewhere in the country.

Jaclyn Kettler: Yeah, I think I mean, to be able to kind of stand and be like, look, here's where all the the big things that I really emphasized in my state of the state address, I've laid out as key parts of my agenda and to be able to the end of the session and say, look, we had a pretty good run.

And that really helps give some momentum for moving forward as well.

And so I think that that's always governors enjoy being able to have that sort of conclusion to a session.

Davlin: From your perspective, do you think that you know, Governor Little has gotten better working with the legislature?

This was his, I think, sixth legislative session as governor, since he was first elected in 2018, or is there something else at play here with that dynamic?

Kettler: I think a few things could be going on.

I do think that the more you interact, the more experience you get, you learn how to work with the other, you know, with the legislature, for example, in those ways, but also like as if you know that the public is concerned about ethics, particularly education, things like that, that also gives that momentum, to have for the the governor to push on some of these issues.

Richert: And it also ties in this year to the primaries and the governor also endorsing at least seven incumbent legislators that we know of, heading into the May 21st primary.

And he talked about that on Thursday to the idea of trying to build a partnership with legislators who have been allies on some of his key initiatives and basically saying, if these legislators have my back, I want to make sure that they know that that I have their back as well.

Davlin: Those endorsements that he's been involved in, at least that I've seen, have been pretty positive, not so much attacking from Little, so much as supporting the lawmakers and the encumbents that he supports.

Right.

Richert: I think he's trying to, you know, emphasize the qualities of the candidates that he's endorsing.

But make no mistake, when you look at the list of the incumbents that he's endorsed, all of them are facing primary challenges to the right.

All of them are facing potentially difficult primary challenges.

So there's no accident to who he's endorsing and where he's putting his political capital.

Davlin: And we'll have much more on the primary elections coming up later in the show.

But back to the legislative session.

It's notable that one of Governor Little's big successes on transportation funding came with a big asterisk.

Late last week, the would be buyers of the Idaho Transportation Department's former campus in Boise filed a lawsuit with the Idaho Supreme Court.

During the legislative session, the Budget Committee wrote language into ITD's appropriation to block the sale of that campus, triggering the lawsuit that seeks to toss out that language.

Though Governor Little supported the sale, he ultimately signed the budget bill that blocked it.

On Thursday, he explained why.

Little: A veto given the, might have jeopardized two of the big things I talked about in my state of the state, which was, local roads and bridges and, and safety enhancements.

So it was a calculated risk.

I think, in my transmittal letters, I pointed out, my fundamental issues with the fact that, reputational risk, going backwards and in fact, we, the legislature was all a part of the Chinden campus and moving to the Chinden campus.

And, I was like everybody else, I would've like had the, had it be more money.

But that's when you're when you say you're going to sell something and everybody gets together in a good faith effort decides, so that's why I got to the point that I said, I'll, I'll, I'll send them a little note and I'll let it become law without my signature.

Davlin: Kevin, we've seen fights over intent language before, but I can't recall something necessarily as big as this, stopping a purchase worth more than $50 million.

Richert: It really is a big test of intent language in budget bills.

I mean, we have seen this battle before.

I mean, I'm old enough to remember a lot of things, but one of the things I'm old enough to remember is 2013, we had an education budget die on the Senate floor over a fight over intent language.

So we've seen this movie before, but on this bill, on this spending bill and on this, you know, sale of the, the ITD campus, this is a big test for how far will the legislature go?

Will the budget committee go in intent language?

And if you listen to the governor's clip there, you can tell he had to swallow quite a bit on this.

He is obviously not thrilled with how this turned out.

Davlin: You know, and during that 2013 public education battle.

I was on the floor too for them voting that down.

The Senate viewed it as opposite as what they were doing this year.

They thought that the budget committee went too far.

And I can't even remember what the intent language was, I just know that they thought they were putting the cart before the horse, as they said, now they passed the bill, sent it to the governor.

Jackie, is this the same old fight over legislative power versus executive, or is are we in kind of a new era now?

Kettler: I think that's a good question because we've definitely seen that, seen the legislature continuing over the last few years, really kind of pushing in different ways.

We've had some constitutional amendments kind of establishing formally more power, as well as pushing, using intent language, other sorts of measures to try to perhaps expand their power relative to the executive branch.

Over time, we had seen executive branches become more powerful in US states.

So maybe what we're seeing now is kind of a swing in the opposite direction, with legislatures trying to push and grab some more of that power.

Davlin: Are we seeing other state legislatures do this too?

Kettler: Through different mechanisms, but similar sorts of battles are happening.

Richert: And maybe what we're seeing different this time, as opposed to 2013, in the education budgets, in the past, this fight over intent language has been kind of intramural fight within the legislature, a battle between the Budget Committee and the germane policy committees.

This time it's a battle between the legislature and the executive branch.

And ITD is a state agency attempting to sell a property.

Davlin: And I can certainly think of other intent language issues that have popped up in recent years, including, you know, grants for, to make up for Covid learning losses and making sure that those didn't go to preschool, that still had to do directly with funding however, this money is meant for K through 12 schools and not for preschool, for example.

Richert: Right.

And you know, it will be interesting to see, is this a precedent?

Is this the kind of battle that we're going to see between the legislature and the executive branch, between the Budget Committee and the executive branch in years to come?

Davlin: The other thing that Governor Little brought up that has been brought up elsewhere, too, is the reputational risk to the state.

The you know, are private industries going to want to do business with the state of Idaho, knowing the legislature might come in and say, just kidding, never mind.

Richert: And I thought we saw a lot of that during this legislative session.

The governor didn't talk about it.

And a lot of that gets placed on the shoulders of Mike Moyle, the speaker of the House.

But there is a lot of sentiment within this legislature about trying to have more say over these kind of transactions.

There was a bill that became law that will require public notification and legislative notification of any transaction exceeding $25 million.

I wasn't a Mike Moyle bill, that was co-sponsored by John Gannon, a Democrat.

And, Chris Algood, a Republican from from Caldwell, who's retiring from the legislature, passed unanimously.

So there's a lot of sentiment within the legislature about having more of a say over these kind of deals.

Davlin: Another area where the legislature wanted to exercise its authority was oversight into the University of Phoenix purchase.

On Thursday, Governor Little was asked about his support for University of Idaho's planned acquisition of Phoenix and where that deal is now.

Little: Our institutions have tried to put a platform together.

It's pretty clunky compared to theirs, and this is a platform that is quite renowned.

So I, I will continue to work with the state board and legislative leaders on what do we do to make higher education more affordable and accessible, particularly to rural Idaho.

Joe Parris: Do you think that deal is dead?

Little: It's probably got a pretty good I.V.

Davlin: It's probably got a pretty good I.V.

Kevin, you've been covering this more closely than anyone else in the state.

Would you agree with Governor Little's assessment there?

Yeah.

Richert: I don't know how to read that medical diagnosis.

He can you can take it a couple of different ways.

This deal is in some severe jeopardy.

And it has been really ever since the the Senate voted down, a bill that would have kind of restructured the deal and maybe, you know, taken up, addressed some of the legislature's, concerns over it.

I don't really know where it stands.

I don't think anybody really knows right now where it stands.

Scott Green, the president of the University of Idaho, says that they're still pursuing a deal, its still on the table.

Everybody's still talking about this.

There is this May 31st opt out date that we've talked about that would allow either party to walk away from a deal at that point, if there is no deal, there's not going to be a deal by May 31st.

That seems pretty clear.

What also seems clear, at least according to Green, is that all parties continue to want to talk about this beyond May 31st.

I don't know where this is going to turn out.

Davlin: You know, one of the things that Governor Little brought up in in an entirely different part of the press conference, it was in response to a question about quagga mussels, was he wanted his the leaders of his executive agencies to be emboldened to make decisions, you know, decisive actions, you know, whether it's talking about quagga mussels or University of Phoenix, when you have the legislature passing bills about, you know, $25 million transactions or, or, stopping an ITD purchase if you're the head of an executive agency, are you listening to the governor or are you keeping a close eye on that legislature and what they're about to do?

Kettler: Yeah, there's always this tension, right, about control of agencies and the bureaucracy.

And so it is really interesting to have the governor saying, yes, I want like bold, strong leadership and take decisive actions while the legislature's like, hold on.

Like we want to be involved.

We want to know and or, you know, we need to be part of this conversation.

So that could put agency heads in kind of a tense spot on some issues.

Davlin: You know, we touched on reputational risk as it, as it related to ITD.

But University of Phoenix too I mean this is a deal that we've been talking about now in public for almost a year at this point.

If it tanks, where does that leave University of Idaho and the state?

Richert: And where does it leave the state Board of Education, which is, Governor Little's education policy making body, which was ultimately the group that approved this purchase back almost a year ago, a year ago this month.

So it really does call into question the decision making power of not just the universities, but also at the state board.

Davlin: I think there was also a question about reputation, though.

If the University of Idaho did succeed in acquiring the University of Phoenix with some of the, you know, pending settlements, that the University of Phoenix faced.

Richert: Right.

And one of the many criticisms or concerns that were raised during the legislative session was, you know, what is exactly the University of Idaho buying into and how much baggage, not just reputational baggage, but also maybe financial baggage comes with the University of Phoenix in terms of, you know, if the federal government writes off more student loans, as they have in the past, who's on the hook for that and to what degree with the university and the state be on the hook for that?

Davlin: In other higher education news, one of the session nail biters in Governor Little's office was whether Launch would get funded.

The program barely passed the House last year and has been one of Governor Little's main initiatives in his second term.

Launch provides, Launch provides $8,000 grants to Idaho high school seniors to pursue higher education or training for in-demand careers and despite popularity among high school seniors, it continues to have skeptics in the legislature.

Little: Probably my identified hostage, was the Launch program that we actually, started a year ago last fall.

Last year we put, the statutory language in place, and this year we passed the appropriation to put it into the budget so it's ongoing.

It has opened up a whole new class of students in Idaho that are going to have that opportunity.

And I saw that, on steroids yesterday at K Tech in Coeur d'Alene.

The excitement of those kids.

Davlin: So we know that it passed the finish line in the legislature, and now we're about to see how it's going to be implemented.

Richert: Right.

And what I've been doing since the session is I've had a chance to talk to some counselors.

I'm going to talk to some students, hopefully here in the next couple of weeks, and report more about what's happening with Launch as we head to that finish line.

As high school seniors continue to wrap up their senior year and graduate and head into Launch.

Had a chance to talk to a counselor at Frank Church High School, which is the alternative high school here in Boise.

And she talked about how she's seeing a big increase in students in that school who are planning to continue their education.

And she feels like Launch is a big factor in it.

It seems to bear out a lot of what you heard the governor talk about in that clip, the idea that Launch is going to reach a different cohort of students, not the students who were hardwired to go to a four year school from the beginning, but instead students who might go to a two year school or a four year school or career or technical program and continue their education in some flavor, in some fashion where they might not have otherwise.

Davlin: And just to emphasize, we've talked about this before, about how affordability for higher ed, whether it's four year or career technical, is such a barrier for so many students.

Kettler: For sure.

I mean, having funding and also that support to actually pursue, you know, additional programs, additional education is really key.

And we're a state where the go on rate is fairly low.

And so it's something that's been a big goal at least since I've been in Idaho.

And so this is another way to try to help increase that and ensure a educated workforce.

Davlin: On Thursday, Governor Little also weighed in on other policy measures in his school facilities bill, including parameters on school districts that want to transition to Four-Day school weeks.

Little: Oklahoma, they just, said, nope, we're all going back to five day a week.

I don't want to do that in Idaho.

I remember when there were the first few districts, that went to four days a week.

But when we started going to 4 day a week, it's when starting teacher pay was like $28,000.

It's different now, the way we compensate teachers, and if you just use it as a add on benefit, to teachers, I don't think, I think you should do it for the students.

I think it's our constitutional obligation.

And that, not we want those kids educated.

They can do it in four days a week.

But how do you how do you address that?

And, of course, to me, if you're a kindergarten or first grade and you're in a rural district and you got a you're just too many hours, it's just to every professional teacher I talked to says, that's just not fair to those little kids to have those really long days.

Davlin: Kevin, about ten years ago, Idaho Ed News and Idaho Reports partnered on a big project on four day school weeks.

And that's about when a lot of these local districts transitioning from 5 to 4 days a week to save money.

Richert: And even then, as we had, headed out into the field to talk to trustees, to talk to teachers, to talk to parents, you could tell this is a very emotional local issue, and an issue where, you know, families, households, communities really felt like this was a decision that they wanted to make and wanted to stick with.

You know, I get what the governor is saying about the long days for kindergartners and first graders in a four day district.

I don't think anybody would dispute that, that, you know, we're talking about long days, especially.

Those kids have to also spend time on the bus.

But, you know, school administrators and school trustees will tell you that they are still having a really difficult time recruiting teachers and retaining teachers, even with the pay raises.

So I think when you see a district like Nampa going to a four day calendar, now, a lot of it is designed to try to, you know, provide an inducement to keep teachers in Nampa in the classrooms as opposed to leaving for higher pay by going to Boise or West Ada.

It's a you know, there are no easy solutions here for these school districts.

And, you know, this is not an easy decision for any district that goes to the four day route.

Davlin: There's also an interesting conversation here about local control when it comes to the state legislature saying, you know what local school districts, we let you make this decision before, but in the future you're going to have to run it through us.

Kettler: We had some really interesting debates about local control for school districts this session, because we also had the arming teachers and staff bill.

That and a lot of discussion about local districts, school district decision making there.

And so I think this is kind of a routine discussion that we're having on what what decisions should be made, at what level Davlin: Twas ever thus.

Always Richert: I would never I would never have predicted when we got House Bill 521 with all of the components in it, that the most emotional topic of all would not be putting money into school facilities, would not be taxes, would not be eliminating a school election date.

It was the four day schools.

And you had trustees and administrators from these four day districts come to the state House and say, we want to maintain this.

We want to keep this.

Our community likes this.

They're accustomed to it.

And if you make us change, there's going to be a lot of, they're going to be, you know, a lot of pushback, at the local level.

I mean, this is a very emotional issue, as we saw, you know, eight years ago when we went out and reported on this.

Davlin: I remember one interview that left someone in tears because he really struggled with the decision for his district.

Richert: Right.

And that was ultimately that was the Preston school districts Seth Ogilvy and I went down there, to talk to some folks.

And I remember that interview, but I also remember that at the end, you know, Preston talked to its community, and the community decided to stick with the four day calendar, and they're still on it.

Davlin: Yeah.

Well, this all comes as we're gearing up for legislative and county primary elections coming up on May 21st.

Some of those races are contentious and expensive.

On Thursday, Governor Little shared his thoughts on the rising price tag for some of those races.

Little: I may be old, and yearn for the good old days< but but that's and you think it gives you pause, but then you see what's happened in other states, and you go, thank God we live here in Idaho.

You know, I, I have confidence in the voters of Idaho that, when they when they see all the facts and look at what's out there, that they will, react accordingly in the right way.

Davlin: Again, we've talked about this before.

Some of these races are bonkers expensive.

Kettler: We are seeing candidates raise $100,000.

We'll see the expenditures in district one Senate race, it looks like, I'm sure, over $200,000.

We're seeing outside groups spending a lot of money.

I think it's just going to continue to increase.

Davlin: Let's talk about legislative Senate district.

A rematch between current Senator Scott Herndon and former Senator Jim Woodward.

Richert: The last time we talked about the Herndon Woodward race on this, on this set, I rendered Butch Otter speechless when we talked about the money.

That's a proud moment for me.

But we're at $227,000 between those two candidates as of yesterday.

And the the number is only going to go up.

That's how much they have raised.

And it's easy, easy to point to district one and say that's an outlier.

It really isn't necessarily an outlier.

It's just the most expensive race right now.

But when I crunch the numbers, I count at least now more than 15 legislative candidates around the state or legislators around the state who have raised at least $50,000 this cycle.

So you know the price of admission is definitely going up in these legislative races and that doesn't even count the third party expenditures that we're seeing.

That's also, pretty considerable.

Davlin: Independent expenditures, for those of who aren't familiar, they don't have the same limits on spending.

You know, they have their own reporting mechanisms that are important for transparency, to know who is weighing in on these races, but they don't have the thousand dollar individual contribution and we can see tens of thousands of dollars poured into some of these independent expenditures.

Richert: That's a project I’m going to be working on the next few days is kind of digging into some of those numbers.

They are they're pretty startling.

Kettler: And one, one thing we know about independent expenditures is they're often spent on negative advertising.

And so that's the other thing that they can really change the tenor of races depending on how they approach the materials they're spending money on.

Richert: I was reading a report, I was reading one of the finance reports, on Friday, and it's a group that has spent almost $50,000 in negative campaigning against Brian Lenny, Senator in Nampa.

They're spending about $7,000 in positive campaigning in support of Jeff Agenbroad, the former senator who's running against Lenny.

So that gives you kind of a sense of how that money is being spent.

Davlin: And at the end of the day, I often just hear complaining about people who get so many mailers and they get so tired of it.

Richert: Yes, it’s too much of it.

Davlin: We have about a minute left.

Kevin, can you update us on the title nine lawsuit that Idaho signed on to?

First of all, for those who aren't familiar, give us a reminder of what title nine is.

Richert: Title nine is the 1972 federal law that forbids any form of discrimination in schools based on sex.

It often gets talked about in terms of college athletics, it's a whole lot more than that.

What the Biden administration wants to do is extend those protections, to gender identity and sexual orientation.

Multiple lawsuits have been filed by red states.

Idaho signed on to one of them earlier this week.

The rules would go into effect in August, but now you have legal challenges.

You know, this is pretty predictable what you would expect to see six months before a presidential election.

Davlin: Absolutely.

Well, you have so much more reporting on primary elections and more to come.

We know at IdahoEdNews.com Kevin Richert, Idaho Ed News and Jaclyn Kettler, Boise State University School of Public Service, thank you so much for joining us.

And thank you for watching.

We also have more on our website IdahoReports.org You can check it out there.

We'll see you right back here next week.

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.