Under Idaho bill advancing to House, lawmakers couldn’t hold local office simultaneously

Idahoans elected to state or federal offices – including the Idaho Legislature – would be banned from simultaneously serving in elected city, school or highway district positions, under a bill state lawmakers advanced to the House on Friday.

House Bill 362, by Rep. Barbara Ehardt, R-Idaho Falls, would automatically vacate local elected offices that officials hold when they swear into elected federal, statewide or legislative offices.

Ehardt’s bill is a modified version of a similar bill she brought last year, House Bill 497. That bill narrowly passed the House, by one vote, but did not advance in the Senate.

The Idaho House State Affairs Committee advanced the bill to the House floor Friday.

“This change will ensure that whoever, whatever office we’re serving in, we’re giving our attention to that office. We are serving … the office in which we’re elected, and we are doing the best for that group of citizens – without any weighted or divided attentions,” Ehardt told the committee.

Several state legislators have served in local offices while in the Idaho Legislature, which is a part-time Legislature that typically only meets during the first few months of the year.

But the new bill offers several exceptions to the automatic vacancy trigger for officials from small communities, such as for elected positions in the following:

• Cities with a population of less than 1,000 people.
• School districts with less than 500 students enrolled.
• Highway districts “located primarily” in a county with a population less than 10,000 people.

The House State Affairs Committee’s two Democrats – Reps. Brooke Green, D-Boise, and Todd Achilles, D-Boise – voted against advancing the bill.

Achilles argued the bill violates multiple constitutional protections and will be challenged in court. If the bill passed, he said the Legislature would lose “the perspectives of local communities.”

“And by restricting this to certain cities or school districts or highway district based on their size, this creates an unequal application of the law, which violates the Equal Protection Clause – by treating similarly situated office holders differently based on this arbitrary definition of what is a small or a large community,” Achilles said.

If passed into law, the bill would take effect July 1, 2026.