Idaho has a part-time legislature. Right? Wrong. Not after a recent vote in the Idaho House State Affairs committee.
Before them was Senate Joint Resolution 104, already passed with the two-thirds required in the Idaho Senate. It flew through that chamber as a critical “conforming amendment” restoring a link inadvertently broken between Idaho’s Constitution, Article III, sections 8 and 23.
Idaho’s original 1889 Constitution contained five provisions to keep the state’s legislature made of part-time citizens and not career politicians. Those five are:
(1) A sixty-day limit on a biennial (every other year) regular session starting in January,
(2) A legislative salary cap,
(3) A cap on “per diem,” the funds provided to cover expenses like food and lodging while in session in Boise,
(4) An overall cap on the legislative branch budget, and
(5) A twenty-day limit on any “extra” session convened by the Governor for emergencies.
As legislative work increased, the 60-day limit on biennial sessions was removed in 1954.
By 1968 the Constitution was again amended converting Idaho from a biennial to an annual legislature. Restoring the sixty-day cap was considered, but ended up not in the amendment placed before the citizens.
Funding the legislature had proven problematic every year since statehood. As inflation made a “stay in Boise” more expensive, fixed dollar caps enshrined in the Constitution needed to be amended. Half of the time those amendments failed when brought before the public.
Finally, in 1976, all three provisions, capping salary, per diem and overall legislative budget, were removed and replaced with a Citizens’ Committee on Legislative Compensation. That Committee meets in even-numbered years to decide what legislators will be paid.
Therefore, by 2022, the last constitutional requirement assuring Idaho a “citizen legislature” was the 20-day limit on “extra” sessions. Such sessions were previously called only by the Governor. An amendment was placed on the ballot allowing the legislature to convene itself.
Legislators supporting the amendment declared, multiple times, that it “would not cost Idaho its citizen legislature.” The amendment itself says “while remaining a part-time, citizen legislature.”
Idaho’s rules for amending the Constitution require full disclosure of any effect or change an amendment produces. The 2022 ballot language says nothing about eliminating the 20-day limit. In fact, the “pro” argument in the state’s own voter pamphlet says that the new special session will be limited “just as a special session called by the Governor is limited.”
But due to “broken reference” (the legislature’s new power to convene itself isn’t described using words that connect it to the 20-day limit), the last Constitutional barrier to a full-time legislature is now gone. Amendment sponsors say the broken reference was an oversight.
The Idaho Senate recognized this and in January moved to restore the link. But last Monday, in House State Affairs, Representative Heather Scott killed the conforming amendment, arguing “Why would we limit ourselves?”
The answer is simple, Rep. Scott. It isn’t your limit. It’s the people’s Constitution where that limits you. Article III of the Constitution binds the Legislature, not the Governor. To remove a 20-day limit that the Article imposes on you, you are required to inform the voters. Instead, all information provided said exactly the opposite.
There can hardly be an abuse of power more “in-your-face” than for legislators to swindle for themselves a power that the people’s Constitution had expressly forbid.
With the praiseworthy exception of Lava Hot Springs’ Kevin Andrus, the entire House State Affairs committee should be ashamed.
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