Legislation to end a special retirement perk for Idaho state lawmakers who take high-paying state jobs late in their careers had died without a hearing in a Senate committee. “It’s not scheduled for a hearing,” said Senate State Affairs Chairman Curt McKenzie, R-Nampa. “There’s nothing that I see on the horizon that’s going to change that.”

Under the special perk, for the small number of lawmakers who make such career moves at the end of long legislative careers, the years of legislative services are counted as if they were all years of full-time work at the higher pay level, causing pensions to jump by many times.

Former House Tax Chairman Dennis Lake, R-Blackfoot, pushed legislation to remove the perk back in 2012, but House Speaker Lawerence Denney, then House speaker, unilaterally killed the bill; he’s now the new Idaho Secretary of State. Since then, the perk has continued to apply to other longtime lawmakers who’ve left for higher-paying state jobs, including new state Tax Commissioner Eliot Werk, who served seven terms in the Senate before Gov. Butch Otter named him to the Tax Commission this year. HB 100 wouldn’t have applied to anyone who changed jobs prior to July 1, 2015; just to those longtime lawmakers who made the move after that date.

Lake, who made a visit to the Statehouse earlier this session to try to get the bill moving, said, “There’s nothing wrong with the bill – the bill is a good bill. There’s certain people in the Senate who don’t want it to be heard, because they know it’ll pass if it is heard.” You can read my full story here at spokesman.com.