‘You vote for your district’

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

District 1 Idaho lawmakers Jim Woodward and Mark Sauter hosted an end-of-session wrap-up and town hall May 3 at the Sandpoint Community Hall.

Dubbed the Idaho Fireplace Forum, due to the event being held before the hearth at the community hall, Sen. Woodward, R-Sagle, and Rep. Sauter, R-Sandpoint, invited residents to hear a presentation on Statehouse politics, a rundown of significant bills and preview of upcoming legislation, as well as take questions from the audience.

Both Woodward and Sauter spoke at length about the ideological divisions within the Idaho Republican Caucus, as well as the influence of out-of-state money and organizations, and the challenges they pose to passing budgets.

Woodward said the dynamic between lawmakers who are “further to the right on the political spectrum” and “traditional Idaho Republican legislators” leads to the party leadership sometimes “walking on eggshells, because they’re trying to work with two different groups.”

Rep. Mark Sauter, left; and Sen. Jim Woodward, right at a town hall on March 15 in Sandpoint. Photo by Ben Olson

Specifically, the so-called Gang of 8 — composed mostly of lawmakers from the Magic Valley and Treasure Valley in southern Idaho — has aligned with the Texas-based Make Liberty Win organization, vowing to oppose any budget bill that contained growth of 1.2% or greater in the past Legislature.

“Is that realistic?” asked Woodward, who serves on the powerful budget-setting Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee.

“That’s what we do here in Idaho, right? We pass a balanced budget every year. But if you’ve committed that you’re not going to vote for any budget greater than 1.2% and you vote ‘no’ on every budget in committee and you don’t take any budgets to the floor, how are you picking up your share of the load?” Woodward said, later adding, “Two key components of our success here in Idaho is a balanced budget and citizen Legislature, where we go home and work again and live under the laws that we helped to write. If you go there and just say ‘no,’ you’re not working toward a balanced budget.”

Budget-setting obstructionism in the past 2025 session resulted in reduced state investments in transportation and infrastructure, while higher-than-anticipated income tax cuts have made an approximate $400 million dent in revenue.

Coming into the session, Woodward said lawmakers were looking at $100 million in tax relief, split evenly between income and property taxes. However, the final budget bill contained $253 million in income tax cuts and $100 million for property taxes — “Those numbers are a lot bigger than what the original budget proposal was,” Woodward said.

Meanwhile, those big cuts “forced us into other decisions,” he added, such as putting no money into the wildfire fund, failing to contribute $15 million into workforce housing, forgoing a $50 million allocation to the public education stabilization fund and declining to contribute a proposed $59 million into the general fund rainy day account.

“You can see that cutting taxes does have an impact as to what we can do,” Woodward said. “We moved away from some of our traditional Idaho conservative actions we take, and that was because we forced ourselves into that with that income tax cut.”

Sauter said efforts to increase the homeowners’ exemption “ran aground” in the session, because “this year there wasn’t an appetite for it.” That’s despite constituent feedback that property taxes were among the biggest issues of concern.

Sauter and Woodward chalked up the emphasis on income tax cuts rather than property tax relief to the direct influence of out-of-state groups, as well as the proliferation of bills imported to the Statehouse from so-called bill mills. According to the Idaho Capital Sun, more legislation was introduced in the 2025 Legislature than in the past 30 years.

“Idaho has become somewhat of a petri dish for a political experiment and we need to make sure that we maintain control of our decisions here in Idaho,” Woodward said, pointing to the bill currently making headlines that would ban certain flags from flying on government-owned property.

“That’s an example of a bill that’s coming from a bill mill,” he said. “‘Idaho solutions for Idaho problems,’ that’s my guiding principle and that’s not what we’re seeing in a lot of these. Some people think that the more bills they pass, the more they’re doing; but, if there’s not a problem, then we don’t need to necessarily pass legislation. We can pass a budget and go home. Government is overhead, right?”

Sauter said he started asking bill sponsors in committee who wrote a specific piece of legislation, and, “You get some interesting answers. … Some are homegrown, some come from 2,000, 3,000 miles away.”

Sauter also said that pressure to vote in conformance with certain lobby groups or political action committees is often coming “not from people that are at home.”

“I’m in the habit of asking people ‘what area of the state do you live in,’ and oftentimes they’ll avoid saying that; sometimes they will, and for me that’s usually the gamechanger — it’s like, OK, I’m not going to spend a lot of time with someone from Pocatello when there’s someone from Sandpoint I need to talk to,” Sauter said, later adding, “That’s the most influential lobby group — it’s home. … I like to say that you vote for your district, but some people don’t see it that way.”

Asked whether  the private school voucher law — House Bill 93 — would lead to increasing tax allocations beyond the $50 million already approved, Sauter responded, “Yes, yes and yes. In the states that I studied — Arizona, Indiana and others — yes, it’s increased considerably and increased considerably quickly.

“Before we walked out of the Capitol this session there was already talk about, ‘How can we increase the amount of money that’s set aside for H.B. 93 next year?’” he added. “I anticipate we will hear all about it [next session].”

Woodward pointed out that the Legislature has a constitutional obligation to adequately support and maintain its public education system, and multiple Supreme Court opinions have held that the state has failed that obligation.

“Some of this, again, is outside influence,” he said, referring to H.B. 93. “…  There are contracts to be had as a result of this tax credit, and that’s where the money starts to flow.”

Sauter and Woodward also touched on a few issues they’ll be working on over the summer, including the Albeni Falls Dam gate replacement project and the closure of the Springy Point Campground and reduced services at other recreation sites managed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, stemming from a federal hiring freeze.

On the Albeni Falls gate project, Sauter said, “we’ll keep poking the bear,” while Woodward expressed frustration that, “I just don’t think there’s a sense of urgency” on getting the new gates fabricated and installed. 

From an initial timeline of 20 years for full replacement, “We’re now down to six, which is only one more year than it took to build the entire dam, but we’ll keep working on them,” Woodward said.

“We’ve got to continue to push on this,” Sauter said. “The timeline for repairs is just not acceptable, nor is it understandable.”

Asked whether the state could step in on the Springy Point closure and other service reductions at Corps sites, Sauter said that’s “TBD — to be determined. It’s a work in progress.”

Woodward said he’s leading the Legislative Council on River Governance over the summer, which will have a meeting in Sandpoint in October that will address river issues throughout the Northwest, but include a focus on “what we have going on here,” he said. In addition, Woodward will lead a Land Use and Housing Study Committee looking at models for affordable housing, which will also have a meeting in Sandpoint.

Finally, both Woodward and Sauter said they’ll continue to pursue legislation introduced at the end of the 2025 session to add an exemption to Idaho’s near-total abortion ban allowing for medical intervention to protect the health — not just the life — of the mother.

Citing a number of judicial decisions that have supported health-of-the-mother exemptions, Sauter said, “What Jim and I are trying to do is we’re saying, ‘Great, memorialize it. Put it down, Write it down so doctors can have some comfort in doing what they’ve been educated, trained and they have the experience to do.’ …

“District 1 has had enough impacts [from the abortion law] that I felt very comfortable just saying, ‘This is hurting our district and it needs to be straightened out,’” he added to applause from the audience.

“We want to make sure we can keep those doctors here and of course we want to be able to take care of women who are in a situation that’s unfortunate,” Woodward said.

Dist. 1B Rep. Cornel Rasor, R-Sagle, did not attend the forum.

Listen to a recording of the full Idaho Fireplace Forum at krfy.org.