Tax relief on hold

BOISE – Grocery tax relief legislation died Wednesday, but lawmakers overrode Gov. Butch Otter’s veto of legislation banning smoking in Idaho bowling alleys.

The House voted to override the governor’s veto on both bills. But the Senate declined to hold an override vote on the grocery tax relief plan and instead killed that bill by unanimous consent.

“We took the governor at his word – he would like to have another year” to work with the Legislature on a compromise plan, said Senate Majority Leader Bart Davis, R-Idaho Falls. “That is my understanding of his invitation. The Senate accepted that invitation.”

Senate Minority Leader Clint Stennett, D-Ketchum, said Senate Democrats agreed to raise no objection to sending the grocery tax bill back to committee to die. “The governor has indicated that he will work with us to get a better bill next year,” Stennett said. “We want to get a bill that takes the tax off of food. That’s still in play as long as we don’t pass this bill.”

House Bill 81a sought to increase Idaho’s grocery tax credit to help make up for the increased taxes Idahoans have been paying on food since lawmakers raised the sales tax from 5 percent to 6 percent last fall. Idaho is one of a minority of states that fully applies its sales tax to groceries.

Otter’s spokesman, Mark Warbis, said the governor is “committed” to working with lawmakers on grocery tax relief for next year.

“He’s hopeful and believes working together they can come up with legislation that can be considered and approved early on in the 2008 session,” Warbis said.

On bowling alley smoking, the House voted 57-13 to override the governor’s veto – far above the two-thirds, or 47 votes, required to overturn the governor. The Senate voted 29-6. As a result, smoking will be banned in all Idaho bowling alleys as of July 1.

“If this veto stands, many people, especially children and young people, will suffer illness and injury and some will die prematurely and unnecessarily as a result of secondhand smoke,” Rep. Bob Ring, R-Caldwell, a retired physician, told the House.

Sen. Brent Hill, R-Rexburg, urged senators to override the governor.

“For us to walk away and assume his veto is somehow better than our collective wisdom would be a great disservice to the people we represent,” Hill said.

In his veto message on the bowling bill, Otter mentioned how some lawmakers had accused him of “social engineering” in his grocery tax relief plan because he wanted to target all the relief to low-income residents. Many lawmakers interpreted the bowling veto as a swipe at Hill, the Senate tax chairman and co-sponsor of the bowling bill, for Hill’s outspoken opposition to that targeting in the grocery tax bill.

“It was more of a personal issue than a policy issue,” said Rep. George Sayler, D-Coeur d’Alene, who supported the override. Sayler said he received a “really cute petition from a fifth-grader, with signatures scrawled in pencil, to get rid of the smoking. I thought I should send that to the governor.”

After the vote, Hill said he’d received hundreds of e-mails urging an override, and so had other senators. The lesson, he said, is “to be involved, let your legislators know how you feel.”

Rep. Fred Wood, R-Burley, said the issue was separation of powers and the integrity of the legislative branch of government. Both houses of the Legislature voted by more than a two-thirds majority to pass the bill.

“(If) we allow somebody to veto that and get away with it, why are we even coming to town?” Wood asked. “That has to be the overriding principle.”

The House vote was closer on the grocery tax override – 48-22, just above the required 47 votes to meet the two-thirds threshold.

Rep. Dell Raybould, R-Rexburg, said, “I’m not one that wants to go against the governor of this state or my party, but I do believe this is the right thing to do.”

Senators disagreed, however, and after their vote, House Speaker Lawerence Denney, R-Midvale, said, “I think they’re probably right – grocery tax is probably dead for this year.”

Lawmakers hope to adjourn their session today but still must vote in both houses on a controversial highway bonding plan and several other bills.