The Idaho Legislature has been considering S1159, a bill that would virtually kill the constitutional right of Idaho citizens to propose ballot initiatives. The bill has been criticized roundly by Reclaim Idaho (the group who led the fight to put Medicaid Expansion on the ballot last year), by four former Idaho attorneys general (three Republicans and a Democrat), by a three-term Republican former Idaho Secretary of State, by the Conservation Voters for Idaho, by the Idaho chapter of the ACLU, by Democratic and some Republican legislators, and by over 100 citizens who showed up in person to testify in hearings on the bill (and who vastly outnumbered testimonies against the bill).
How do the Idaho legislators respond to the public criticism of this bill? By conferring today in private to make a “trailer bill” without a hearing and without advance notice. Betsy Russell reported:
Without even the absolute minimum notice of a House committee meeting -- an announcement on the floor of the House -- the House Ways & Means Committee convened while the House was at ease and wasn't supposed to come back to reconvene until 2:30 p.m., and introduced a new bill that says it's sponsored by Rep. Sage Dixon, R-Ponderay, to be a "trailer bill" amending SB 1159, changing the time period for gathering signatures from 180 days to 270 days, and changing the number of legislative districts from which 10 percent of registered voters' signatures would have to be gathered to qualify an initiative or referendum for the Idaho ballot from 32 of 35 districts, to two-thirds of districts, or 23.34 districts. Presumably 24 districts would be required. The "trailer bill" also includes an emergency clause.
The meeting was so hastily called that the only Democratic member of the committee who attended was House Minority Leader Mat Erpelding, D-Boise, who voted against introducing the bill and sending it to the full House's 2nd Reading Calendar. The motion passed, 4-1, with only the Republican members of the panel supporting it.[…]
Rep. John Gannon, D-Boise, an attorney, said, "We didn't recess -- the floor's still in session, so how can you have a committee meeting?" That in itself is a violation of the rules, he said. [...]
Rep. Robert Anderst, R-Nampa, the committee chairman, said, "We noticed it -- the secretary posted it" on the Legislature's website. But that was during a lunch break in which Moyle had earlier advised all members of the House, and the public, that no further business would occur until the House reconvened at 2:30 p.m.
So the Republicans on Idaho’s House Ways and Means Committee called a meeting that was against their own rules, failed to notify the Democrats on the committee, and held the meeting without a hearing and hidden from the public, whom they’d told to go to lunch.
Ironically, the bill’s supporters have asserted that S1159 is for the public’s benefit. From Idaho Public Radio:
Bill co-sponsor Representative Sage Dixon (R-Ponderay) said S 1159 isn’t an attempt to silence citizens of Idaho.
“It is an attempt to make sure that if there’s a law that’s going to be affecting every citizen in Idaho, the majority of citizens will have a voice in saying what that law is,” Dixon said in his closing remarks.
The argument seemed disingenuous when it was first put forward back on Tuesday. But hastily convening a committee meeting against House rules — when they have told the public they were “at ease” for lunch — and using that meeting to craft new legislation is not a way to convince the public that this is a process meant to address public concerns. It does the opposite — it reinforces the perception that these legislators are trying to kill citizens’ protected lawmaking power.
Why did GOP leadership choose to do this in the cloak of darkness? Likely because the public would not have approved. Even though they slightly changed the distribution requirements and the length of time allotted for petition gathering, the requirements are still incredibly restrictive and would make Idaho the most difficult state in the country, by far, to qualify voter initiatives. The amendments do nothing to change the basic problems pointed out by the experts and members of the public who have testified about S1159.
For example, S1159 would give the citizens in the four least populous districts power to block initiatives, in violation of the one person, one vote principle. This trailer bill, by my calculation using population data from the 2010 Census, would still give a minority of Idahoans in the 11 least populous districts — 26% of the state, as of 2010 — veto power over proposed legislation. Kathy Griesmeyer of the ACLU summed up the constitutionality problem succinctly:
[A] 2018 case out of Colorado is a cautionary tale. There, a federal court struck down a similar law because it noted a significant variation in the number of registered voters in each state senate district.
The court held that a system which treated districts the same when the number of potential petition signers in each district varied violated the Equal Protection Clause. SB 1159’s geographic-distribution requirement suffers from this same problem. The number of qualified electors in Idaho’s legislative districts varies by as much as 23,000 voters — a variation of almost 40 percent.
Earlier this week, Emeritus Professor Gary Moncrief of Boise State wrote a guest opinion in the Idaho Press in which he warned the Idaho Legislature not to abuse their power by voting for S1159. (The whole thing is worth a read.)
The danger is that legislative supermajorities may overestimate or misjudge their mandate [...]. When that happens, the public must have a reasonable recourse of action. Let’s be clear what the initiative process represents: it is an opportunity for Idaho citizens to have a say in setting the public agenda when the legislative supermajority ignores or misinterprets public preferences. Any effort to restrict that opportunity is an effort to silence the voices of the people.
Today’s secret meeting demonstrates the lengths some Idaho legislators will go to make sure the people cannot have a voice in the public agenda.
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It is imperative that S1159, and this hastily-conceived trailer bill, be defeated in the legislature. If the legislature continues to force through these bills, we at Reclaim Idaho are calling for the governor to use his veto. If you’re in Idaho, sign the petition here. We have volunteers filling the statehouse every day to defend our initiative rights and to protect the Medicaid Expansion law from unnecessary, costly, and illegal restrictions; come along if you’re around and look out for Reclaim Idaho folks. This weekend, we will have a cross-state “VETO TOUR” to talk with citizens about S1159 — find out more at our Facebook page. Finally, you can donate $5 or more to help the cause. Thanks as always for your support.