The Senate Transportation Committee has scheduled HB 311, the big tax bill that the House passed yesterday, for a hearing at 1 p.m. today in room ww53. Idaho Public TV reporter Melissa Davlin reports that she ran into a grinning Sen. Jeff Siddoway, R-Terreton, in a Statehouse hallway this morning and asked his thoughts on that bill going to the transportation committee, rather than the Senate Local Government & Taxation Committee, which he chairs. “That’s fine,” he told Davlin. “Everything will happen like it should.”

Siddoway confirmed that assigning the bill to Transportation was a move to bypass him, as he would have declined to hold a hearing on the bill – keeping to his pledge from the start of this year’s session not to hear any tax-cut bills until Idaho has restored education funding, including raising starting teacher pay to $40,000 a year. The $125 million, five-year teacher pay bill that’s passed both houses would raise starting teacher pay to $37,000 a year in five years.

HB 311 includes a 7-cent increase in the gas tax, lowering top income tax rates from 7.4 percent to 6.7 percent, and eliminating the sales tax on food while repealing the grocery tax credit. Siddoway hinted at big changes in store for the bill, saying, “It went to the transportation committee, so it’ll probably look like a transportation bill.” You can read Davlin’s full post here at the Idaho Reports blog.