By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff
Leaders of the Republican Caucus in the Idaho House of Representatives gathered April 10 in a meeting room of the Capitol in Boise to address reporters following the adjournment of the 2024 Legislature, providing their highlights and touching on the successes and failures of the session.
House Majority Leader Jason Monks, R-Meridian, keyed in on efforts by Republicans to combat fentanyl, as well as reducing personal and corporate income tax rates, investing “record amounts” in school facilities, strengthening online protections for children through age verification and ensuring that artificial intelligence cannot be used to represent kids online.
The Idaho State Capitol in Boise at dawn. Courtesy photo.
House Speaker Mike Moyle, R-Star, focused his comments on House Bill 521 — the school facilities funding legislation, which he described as “the centerpiece of this legislative session” and the “bill of the year.”
The bill dedicated $125 million in ongoing sales tax revenue to a School Modernization Facilities Fund for bonding, while increasing funding to the School District Facility Fund by raising the portion of sales tax revenue to the fund from 2.25% to 3.25% — a move that is projected to result in $25 million in Fiscal Year 2025 alone.
In addition, H.B. 521 channels lottery dividends of an estimated $50 million into the fund and reduces income taxes from 5.8% to 5.695% in order to help Idahoans support local bonds and levies geared toward building and maintaining school facilities.
Though Idaho Democrats criticized the bill as “too little, too late,” Moyle said there was more good than bad in the legislation, and it would serve the purpose of helping districts meet their basic facilities needs, rather than building “Taj Mahal” schools, which he described as featuring vaulted ceilings and couches in the lunch rooms.
Monks said that once basic needs are met, districts should then go to their donor base and can “put a bronze statue of a bull in front of your school if you want to.”
Assistant Minority Leader Rep. Sage Dixon, R-Pondery, spoke briefly, highlighting bills related to election integrity, including tightening rules related to “ballot harvesting,” as well as electioneering near polling places and working across the aisle on legislation aimed at regulating “synthetic media” so it can’t be abused during elections.
Questions during the post-session conference touched on a range of other bills, including those prohibiting the use of public funds for gender-affirming care, legally defining sex and gender, and banning requirements that public employees use pronouns other than the ones assigned to individuals at birth.
“I hope they’re upheld in court,” Moyle said, later adding that he thought such bills are “what the citizens of Idaho want and we’re reacting to what the citizens of Idaho want.”
Asked whether that notion applied to the controversial bill signed by Gov. Brad Little on April 10 that opens libraries to lawsuits if they fail to comply with patron complaints over material deemed “obscene” or otherwise “harmful to minors,” Moyle said that “polls are not necessarily reality.”
According to a survey from Boise State University, nearly 70% of Idahoans trust librarians to choose the books that are made available to them.
“Sometimes our perception is different than what’s really out there,” he said, and described the bill as a “reasonable compromise” and “not as aggressive” as a similar bill passed last session but vetoed by Little.
Finally, when asked about the state’s strict abortion ban driving health care providers from Idaho, Moyle said that was a “convenient excuse” and doubted poll results that show more than half of Idahoans think the abortion laws are too strict — especially when it comes to allowing providers to perform abortions out of medical necessity.
“As for the definition of health vs. the life of the mother, I don’t know how you crack that nut because the two sides are so far apart,” he said.
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