Full plate in Boise

BOISE – Buy food at the grocery store in Idaho, and you’ll pay the full 6 percent sales tax – a tax the Legislature just raised in August as part of a property tax relief plan.

Many lawmakers feel bad about increasing the sales tax without addressing that issue, and they’re not the only ones. Idaho’s new governor has called for a big increase in the state’s small grocery tax credit to offset the impact on the state’s neediest residents. Its former governor, now lieutenant governor, has floated a plan to eliminate the sales tax on food over the next six years. And legislators are all over the map, with one influential senator, new Senate Tax Chairman Brent Hill, R-Rexburg, calling for simply taking the sales tax back down to 5 percent.

“I think this will be a fascinating discussion,” said Senate President Pro-Tem Bob Geddes, R-Soda Springs. “I’m not sure it’s a Democratic idea or a Republican idea. I think it’s an idea that the citizens of Idaho support having some movement on.”

The grocery tax is just one of an array of pressing issues lawmakers will take on in the session that convenes Monday – with a new governor setting the agenda, new state agency heads awaiting confirmation, five new committee chairs in each house, and a new, more conservative majority leadership in the House.

In addition to all that change, lawmakers will face something else entirely new: a deadline. Normally, legislative sessions go until the work is finished. This year, the session must end in time for the capitol to be vacated April 1 for the start of a long-planned renovation project. That means lawmakers must conclude business by the third week of March.

“I don’t think that’s an unreasonable deadline,” said new House Speaker Lawerence Denney.

That may mean some big issues – like how to pay for a growing backlog of road construction needs, and coping with overflowing prisons – get pushed off to the next year.

“I think this will be a session where we can’t afford to take on too many big issues,” said Geddes.

But some are right at the top of the agenda: Taxes on groceries, expanding community college services around the state, carrying out a highway bonding plan, addressing math and science requirements for high school students, a nursing shortage, a budget surplus, and problems with state programs to fight substance abuse. .

The pressure is on new Gov. Butch Otter to make his mark, coming on the heels of the action-packed seven-month governorship of Jim Risch, who is Otter’s predecessor in office and now his lieutenant governor.

“People want governors who will stand for something and do something,” said Northwest Nazarene University political scientist Steve Shaw.

Here’s a look at some of the issues:

Taxes

Idaho’s current grocery tax credit is $20 per person per year, or $35 for those 65 or older. That clearly doesn’t cover all the sales tax paid on groceries. Proposals range from doubling the credit to raising it fivefold, and from phasing out the sales tax on food to eliminating it now.

Rep. George Eskridge, R-Dover, favors raising the credit to $100 – to approximate what Idahoans pay in sales tax on food while – still letting tourists pay.

Denney said that for his district, which borders Oregon which has no such tax, “We’d love to see the sales tax gone off groceries, but there are also reasonable arguments for the grocery tax credit. I think both those ideas will be put out there and debated.”

That’s not the only tax issue: Some legislators, including many from North Idaho, still want more property tax reform. Proposals range from freezing values for longtime homeowners to changing how tax values are set.

Other significant tax issues include a move to trim sales tax exemptions; a proposal to give businesses a big property tax break; and a continued push for more local-option taxing authority, which is favored by local governments and legislators who want some option besides the property tax for funding services. Otter has expressed interest in the local-option idea.

Education

The top education issue in this year’s session may be community colleges, with Otter having made expanding community college services a centerpiece of his campaign. Idaho now has two community colleges – North Idaho College in Coeur d’Alene and the College of Southern Idaho in Twin Falls. The biggest metropolitan area in the state – Boise – has none.

But an interim legislative committee recommended only minor changes in Idaho’s community college laws, leaving in place the requirement that to form a new community college, local voters would have to approve some local property tax funding. A key question is whether to make that easier to do by lowering the two-thirds “supermajority” required to form a community college district to 60 percent.

Senate Education Chairman John Goedde, R-Coeur d’Alene, noted that when NIC was formed, the law required only a simple majority of 50 percent plus one.

Other key education issues this year include possible new math and science requirements for high school students; expanding nursing education as the state faces a nursing shortage; and funding for public schools, the single largest piece of the state budget. New GOP state schools Supt. Tom Luna, who campaigned on promises to increase both funding and accountability, will propose his first school budget.

Roads

Lawmakers face some decisions on carrying out plans for major highway improvements funded by GARVEE bonds, or Grant Anticipation Revenue Vehicles. That’s a mechanism Congress created to allow states to borrow against future federal highway allocations; former Gov. Dirk Kempthorne pushed the GARVEE bonding plan through to target big projects around the state, including major upgrades to U.S. Highway 95 in North Idaho.

Beyond that, a state study shows a growing backlog in funding for highway maintenance, but lawmakers have been unenthusiastic about the idea of higher gas taxes or car registration fees this year.

Other issues

Lawmakers will wrestle with natural resource issues ranging from water management to a new state energy plan to elk farms. Many want to outlaw so-called “shooter bull” operations, where out-of-state hunters pay big money to shoot farm-raised elk – particularly after more than 100 such elk escaped from an eastern Idaho operation this year, raising fears about possible contamination of wild elk herds.

There’ll be bills to create a special license plate to benefit the mining industry; expand state-funded substance abuse treatment programs; and revive efforts to get at least minimal day-care regulations passed.

Whatever happens, it should happen speedily. “If we’re only going to be there until March 20, that’s not really that long,” said House Minority Leader Wendy Jaquet, D-Ketchum.

Rep. Jim Clark, R-Hayden Lake, the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said, “Everyone’s going to try to get out of there on time.”