GOVERNOR LITTLE PROCESSES FINAL LEGISLATION

Six bills rejected this year, no chance for veto override

BOISE — Governor Brad Little has acted on all of the bills delivered to his desk from the 2020 legislative session. During the session, the governor has five days—not counting Sundays—to act on bills. He can either sign them into law, veto them, or allow them to become law without his signature. The end of the session extends that deadline to ten days.

Little gave himself a March 31 deadline based on the Senate adjournment Thursday, March 19, despite the House waiting an extra day to adjourn Friday morning. He vetoed six bills this year and signed all the rest.

While in session, the Legislature is able to overturn a veto with a two-thirds vote. Some House members expressed a desire to stay in session for five days to preserve that option, with the final House vote coming in at 28 Republicans in favor of staying and 20 Republicans and 12 Democrats in favor of leaving for the year.

One of the more significant bills to receive the governor’s veto was the Idaho Wrongful Conviction Act, which sought to compensate those wrongfully convicted of a felony $60,000 per year of imprisonment, or $75,000 for those imprisoned on death row.

In his veto letter, Little said that the bill had an admirable objective, but established a flawed “adversarial legal proceeding” for claimants.

The bill authorized civil action against the state for a claimant to receive compensation, which “will involve missing or lost evidence, dead or otherwise unavailable witnesses, constitutional victims’ rights issues, and appellate review by the Idaho Supreme Court,” Little wrote.

He recommended that the decision to award compensation first go to an existing board, such as the Commission of Pardons and Parole, then proceed to court if the claim is denied. In the letter, he offered to work with the sponsors on a future wrongful compensation bill.

The wrongful conviction act also included provisions allowing for a tuition waiver at a public Idaho university and up to eight years of state-funded medical insurance.

“The total sum of a claimant’s compensation should be enough that the successful claimant can purchase insurance and an education,” Little wrote. “This is a better approach than adding unfunded mandates to other parts of state government.”

An additional bill that received a veto would have diverted additional sales tax revenue from the general fund toward transportation. Sales taxes collected on in-store purchases pass through a lengthy distribution formula, which sends specific amounts to accounts like the permanent building fund, then shares a portion with city and county governments, and then deposits the remainder in the state general fund.

One percent of that remainder is currently directed toward a transportation expansion and congestion mitigation fund, used by the Idaho Transportation Department to finance traffic projects. The bill would have increased that transportation revenue from one percent to two percent.

The bill sponsor Rep. Joe Palmer, R-Meridian, estimated that would be an increase of about $18 million per year. After amendments in the Senate, the bill would have also split that revenue 60-40 between the existing traffic mitigation fund and a new grant program for maintenance and replacement of bridges.

Little cited the transportation bill’s impact to the general fund in his letter, referencing financial uncertainty for the state in the face of COVID-19 response and the related economic slowdown.

Legislators spent plenty of time this year discussing property taxes, which are assessed at the county level based on a property’s market value. That assessment can be appealed to the county commissioners, who review property market values as a board of equalization.

The governor vetoed a bill from Rep. Mike Moyle, R-Star, which would have allowed property owners to use a sale receipt from the last year in their appeal to establish a residential property’s market value. County assessors argued that the bill took away their discretion as elected officials, while Little wrote that the policy “has the potential to result in unintended tax shifts as well as a lack of uniformity in the process of property tax assessment” in his veto letter.

The governor also vetoed a bill that would have incorporated regulations into state code for dentists utilizing telehealth services, also known as teledentistry. In that letter, Little pointed to existing law that authorizes professional licensing boards to regulate telehealth practices by administrative rule. He said that putting these safeguards in rule rather than statute allows government the flexibility to adjust and update them in the face of public health events like the current coronavirus pandemic.

“There are components of [the bill] that may enhance the safety of teledentistry services, and I will direct the Board of Dentistry to consider the necessity of such safeguards as they re-promulgate their administrative rules,” Little wrote.

Another regulations bill, this one relating to pesticide application, was also vetoed by the governor. Sought by the cropduster industry, the proposed changes saw some controversy due to an incident in Parma last year when a field was sprayed and farmworkers in the next field were sickened and hospitalized.

Little expressed support for the intent of the pesticide bill but took issue with its requirement for negotiated rulemaking, which would preclude his ability to put forward temporary rules.

“For the second straight year, the Legislature has chosen not to reauthorize fee rules, and as a result, my administration has had to republish rules as temporary to ensure they remain in full force and effect,” Little wrote in that veto letter.

Last year, the Legislature declined to authorize the state’s lengthy code of administrative rules due to disagreements between the House and Senate over the approval process. This led to all of the administrative rules expiring last year, and Little’s office authorizing pending rules in the meantime.

Legislative committees spent weeks at the beginning of this year’s session reviewing every single chapter of those re-promulgated rules. There were negotiations between the two chambers on a rules compromise, but those were ultimately unfruitful and—once again—the Legislature adjourned without authorizing the administrative code.

The Idaho Press-Tribune reported that in the last week of the session, lawyers told some House members that pending rules—the entire code, in this case—automatically go into effect at the end of the session without legislative approval.

The final bill left on the governor’s desk was House Bill 340a from Coeur d’Alene lawmakers Rep. Ron Mendive and Sen. Mary Souza. That bill would have designated the Good Samaritan Rehabilitation facility as a pilot program to treat minors over the age of 13 without a children’s residential license from the state.

In his veto letter Little indicated that the legislation did not ensure adequate protections for adolescents seeking addiction treatment, nor did it set an end date for the proposed pilot.

The facility is run by Rep. Tim Remington, a Coeur d’Alene pastor who was appointed to the Legislature by Little after former-Rep. John Green was convicted of tax fraud in Texas.

Remington was appointed after the bill was first introduced, and he abstained from debating and voting on the bill when it was before the House. He drew some criticism last week for holding in-person church services despite Governor Little’s COVID-19 stay-home order. The church has since announced it will suspend public services and will offer services online.

###