Ada County Highway District censures commissioner for ‘inappropriate, inflammatory’ posts
The Ada County Highway District Commission unanimously voted to censure Commissioner Kent Goldthorpe for Facebook posts and comments he made on March 28 haranguing Idaho lawmakers over two transportation bills he disagreed with.
According to the resolution, Goldthorpe’s posts included “inflammatory and derogatory statements about fellow public officials” and also “included mocking and demeaning languages towards individual legislators and employed racially charged language inappropriate in public discourse.”
Goldthorpe sat in the audience during Tuesday’s special meeting called to consider censuring him. Goldthorpe said he would not comment.
According to Steve Price, ACHD’s general counsel, the resolution was brought after the district received comments from lawmakers in the Idaho House on March 31, a few days after the Idaho Statesman published a story with Goldthorpe’s comments.
ACHD provided the Statesman with a copy of a letter from Rep. Joe Palmer, R-Meridian, who proposed the bills. According to the letter, Goldthorpe characterized the relationship between legislators as a master/servant role with statements including “Oh, thank you master (House Speaker Mike) Moyle … yessum … and I can shine your shoes, Master (Rep. Jason) Monks.”
“These statements are at best offensive and conduct unbecoming of an elected official, at worst, they are racist,” Palmer wrote. “Regardless of how the statements are characterized, it warrants strong action from ACHD against Mr. Goldthorpe.”
Palmer wrote that Goldthorpe also cut and pasted the official vote tally of one of the bills but replaced Palmer as the floor sponsor with Palmer’s daughter-in-law.
“It comes as no surprise that public figures are used to these types of despicable and misleading actions from the public,” he wrote. “It is surprising that this is coming from an elected official.”
The Facebook posts had been taken down by Monday afternoon.
The bills Palmer sponsored would force highway districts to prioritize vehicle traffic and ban them from narrowing streets to under 50 feet wide — which is sometimes done to add sidewalks, bike lanes or safety measures. Any elected official, officer or person who aids in violating the law could be found guilty of a misdemeanor, a fine of up to $1,000 and/or up to 90 days in prison.
Goldthorpe said in a Facebook post on March 28 that he would be first in line for the charges and blasted lawmakers for trying to take away local control of roads.
“Even the now hypocrites who always tout their supposed belief in local government, voted for it,” Goldthorpe said in a post reviewed by the Idaho Statesman. “They voted to make the construction of sidewalks for your kids to get safely to school, A CRIME.”
Goldthorpe also gave interviews where he inaccurately conveyed information and failed to identify the opinions as his own, which reflected poorly on the reputation of the commission and the district, according to the resolution.
The resolution declared that Goldthorpe was “formally and publicly censured for conduct unbecoming of an elected official, specifically for providing public comments without clarification that the opinions were his own, and including inappropriate, inflammatory and racially insensitive language, in direct violation of the commission protocols, code of ethics and the personnel policy.”
Commission president: ‘We have standards’
Commission President Miranda Gold said Goldthorpe is a passionate public servant, but his passion can sometimes cross the line and complicate situations.
“I hope this serves as a reminder that that passion can be maintained while also observing our policies and procedures,” Gold said. “I think it’s important we have standards, and that we hold ourselves and each other to those high standards.”
“Commissioner Goldthorpe’s passion is one of his strengths and what makes him such a wonderful commissioner,” said Commissioner Alexis Pickering, who held back tears during the special meeting. “But this was a time when that passion has caused harm to the district and the relationships with others.”
Pickering said Goldthorpe was a friend, a tenured commissioner and someone who she deeply respected, and voted with the majority to approve the resolution with “tremendous mixed feelings.”
The motion was posted with less than 48 hours notice, but the commissioners felt that they needed to act “due to the seriousness of the matter,” said Commissioner Patricia Nilsson.
Frustration simmers between ACHD, Legislature
The bills are the latest in a series of attempts from the Republican-dominated Legislature to exert control over the highway district since supporters of improving public, bike and pedestrian transportation infrastructure became the majority on the commission in 2022.
In 2023, Palmer proposed a bill that would turn the commission into a partisan board. That bill failed. The following year, Rep. Josh Tanner, R-Eagle, proposed a bill that would substitute ACHD’s nonpartisan, five-person board with a partisan, seven-person board with district boundaries redrawn by the Republican-controlled Ada County Commission. That bill also failed.
In February, Palmer presented a similar bill that would add two commissioners to ACHD, one of whom would be appointed by the governor and one by the ACHD Commission. That bill has stalled in committee.
Less than a week later, Palmer introduced the two bills that would force ACHD to prioritize vehicles and bar road narrowing, which Goldthorpe commented on. Both of those bills passed the Senate and House with overwhelming Republican support, though the House sent one of his bills back to the Senate for amendments.
On Tuesday, before the ACHD Commission voted to censure Goldthorpe, Moyle, a Star Republican, also introduced draft legislation that would turn highway district elections into partisan, countywide races. The ACHD election process “would match the process by which county commissioners are elected,” according to the bill’s statement of purpose.
Debate on the bill turned heated between Rep. Ilana Rubel, D-Boise, and Moyle as she questioned his motives. She said that it didn’t make sense that he was trying to introduce a bill that would turn county highway districts into countywide elections after Gov. Little signed into law a bill requiring cities of over 100,000 residents to vote by districts in 2020. Moyle voted in favor of that legislation.
“The only overlapping rationale that I am able to find from this is that, apparently we are to pick whatever mechanism will get the most Republicans elected,” Rubel said. “I don’t believe that it is the appropriate use of the super-majority power at the state level to ensure that the super majority prevails in every localized election.”
Moyle said cities are smaller than counties, and that commissioners for the highway district should represent the entire county.
“A countywide highway district is the whole county, not the whole city,” he said.
Posts show history of inflammatory comments
In response to a public records request, ACHD released dozens of pages of comments and posts that Goldthorpe made on Facebook dating back to January. Those interactions, which Goldthorpe posted on his personal account and on transportation-focused Facebook groups, showed dozens of instances where he railed against lawmakers and proposed bills this legislative session.
Goldthorpe has long been a member of the Republican Party and was former Republican precinct committeeman and former district chair for Districts 21 and 22, according to the Idaho GOP.
But he has at times differed from the car-centric approach the Republican Party favors over multimodal transportation — which tends to be favored by those more on the left.
That difference was on full display over his posts. He said that Republican lawmakers approving the transportation bills was “proof positive of the irony/hypocricy that exists in the minds and hearts of Republican legislators towards the value of your lives, the lives of your kids and, especially, how utterly and completely without value your life has if you should choose to ride a bicycle. But, don’t worry if you haven’t been born yet. In Idaho, that one’s covered.”
Goldthorpe posted that the bills weren’t representative of conservative values but were intended to get more votes at the expense of safety for children, seniors and people who ride bikes.
“These folks just don’t give a damn for the life or safety of a whole bunch of folks that just happen to be alive,” he wrote.
Goldthorpe said only three lawmakers had reached out to him, one of whom had asked questions but voted in favor of the bills because he was worried that his bills would suffer “if he didn’t ‘comply’ to Palmer, Moyle and Monks.”
He wrote that lawmakers were targeting ACHD and that “yes, our politicians are that petty and vindictive,” that they are “running scared for next year’s primaries,” and that Palmer is a “poor, lying baby.”
When the bills first passed out of committee, Goldthorpe posted a comment that “Joe Palmer stood up there and told (at best) half-truths every time his mouth moved.”
“Is a newly passed law that panders to unintelligent, lazy legislators going to always be best for the public?” Goldthorpe said. “Ask your closest neighbor the day after their child is killed on a road with no sidewalks?”
He also blasted former schoolteacher Sen. Janie Ward-Engelking, D-Boise, for voting in favor of the bills, saying that “even some Democrats don’t give a damn anymore.”
“God willing, I’ll be the first one locked up” over the new penalties, Goldthorpe said. “It is truly amazing that a bunch of civilians, finding themselves in a position of power, now consider themselves more capable than professional engineers, planners, etc of determining the configuration of our roads in Ada County.”
This story was originally published April 1, 2025 at 4:40 PM.
