Tension building over Medicaid expansion, voter initiatives in Legislature’s final weeks
The second week of every March of every Idaho legislative session always has some element of pressure, Idaho House Speaker Scott Bedke said.
But the mood at the Capitol right now? Bedke aptly used one word to sum that up: angst.
“(This is when) the expectations of the members are meeting with hard realities of the legislative session, and this gap between what they want to have happen, and what is happening, are two different things. So some are at various gradations of upsetness,” he said.
Four members of Senate and House leadership, Bedke, R-Oakley; Senate Pro Tem Brent Hill, R-Rexburg; Senate Minority Leader Michelle Stennett, D-Ketchum; and House Minority Leader Mat Erpelding, D-Boise, met with Idaho Press Club reporters over lunch on Tuesday to discuss how the session is going.
During the hour-long interview, during which Bedke and Erpelding civilly sparred over which party has its boot heels dug in the deepest, all four legislative leaders agreed things are a bit tense at the Legislature.
At the top of the list for issues causing that angst? Medicaid, citizen initiatives and legislative committee antics.
Idaho’s Medicaid expansion
The Legislature convened on Jan. 7 with marching orders from Idaho residents: implement the voter initiative to expand Medicaid, which was approved as Proposition 2 by 61 percent of voters in November.
New Gov. Brad Little also sent a not-so-subtle hint to the Legislature to get the job done, telling reporters he would not let the Legislature sine die, or adjourn, without funding Medicaid.
Ten weeks later, as the session starts to wind down, the Legislature has yet to accomplish its task.
“The issues that remain undone at this point include a clear path forward on Prop 2,” Bedke said. “I don’t have the votes to repeal Prop 2. I don’t have the votes to pass something without mandatory work requirements. I don’t have the votes to pass something that has mandatory work requirements.”
But Erpelding said there is a clear path.
“There is a draft of a bill that would get the votes,” he said. “ … A policy bill that has 22 Republican votes and 14 Democratic votes that would pass out of the House and pass the Senate.”
Bedke responded, “I would like to see that bill.”
Erpelding stopped there and would not tell reporters who drafted the bill or what specifically is in it. Bedke reiterated later to the Statesman that he has not seen the bill Erpelding referenced.
Idaho’s voter initiative process
In 2011, when Idaho voters took umbrage with the Legislature for passing the Students Come First laws, aka the “Luna Laws,” they rejected 2012 referendums upholding those laws. The Legislature itself then took umbrage and, in 2013, tightened the initiative/referendum process to make it more difficult to get them on the ballot.
Since 2013, only two initiative attempts have cleared those hurdles and made it on the ballot: Medicaid expansion and historical horse racing. Of those two, only one passed muster with voters and was passed into law — Medicaid.
Then déjà vu hit last week when a late-entry bill was introduced to even further tighten the initiative process, making it the most stringent in the nation.
Erpelding calls it the “Medicaid retribution bill.”
“There is no way that this is not about retribution and about limiting the voters’ right to get an initiative,” Erpelding said.
“It is a deeply flawed bill that is all about retribution,” he continued. “It feels gross to me for lack of a better term. It is deeply disconcerting.”
Hill disagreed that the bill, which originated in the Senate, is payback for Idahoans enacting Medicaid expansion, a can the Legislature has been kicking down the road for more than five years.
“The timing on this was unfortunate,” Hill said. “This is something that has been talked about for the last several years.”
Legislative committee antics
The proposed initiative bill itself caused an uproar, but the way its first committee hearing was handled further compounded the issue.
At about 5 p.m. Friday, an updated Senate State Affairs Committee agenda posted that indicated a hearing on the bill would take place at 8 a.m. Monday. The bill was the last item on the agenda, which had several hearing items before it.
Opponents of the bill scrambled, but more than 100 people showed up for the hearing, some driving more than 400 miles to get there. The overflow crowd forced the committee to move the hearing to a larger room.
By the time the committee finally got to the initiative bill, it was time for committee members to be on the Senate floor. Senate leaders agreed to postpone convening for an hour so the committee could continue hearing testimony on the initiatives bill. When that hour was up, and less than 10 of the dozens of people who wanted to testify had been heard, committee Chairwoman Patti Ann Lodge, R-Huston, started to close the hearing in preparation to vote on the bill. Committee members interjected, saying more people should be heard. The hearing was continued to this Friday.
“If you really want to fix an initiative process,” Erpelding said, “you have everyone at the table and you talk about it. You don’t put it on the agenda at 5 p.m. on Friday, at the end of a long agenda on Monday morning.”
“That is not how you plan for a controversial bill,” he continued. “… You don’t do what you just did on Monday.”
Stennett, who serves on the committee, agreed, saying the bill’s hearing notice “came very late.”
“I found it ironic it was the last item on a very busy agenda,” she said. “It is muzzling the people”
Hill said it was “poor planning” on the committee’s part, but he does not fault Chairwoman Lodge.
“It was not intentional. That is not her style,” he said. Hill explained committees are trying to wrap up and they are under a lot of pressure to get bills heard.
But one bill in particular, that has already passed the full House, is languishing in the Senate. And not because of time constraints, but instead because the committee chairman refuses to give it a hearing.
A bi-partisan bill to remove the word “mandatory” from minimum sentencing requirements for certain drug trafficking crimes passed the House, but Senate Judiciary and Rules Chairman Todd Lakey, R-Nampa, has stated he will not hold a hearing on the bill because it is bad policy.
When asked about whether the mandatory minimums bill would get a Senate committee hearing, Hill responded, “I do not tell my chairmen that they have to hear a bill or they have to hold a bill. That is a decision of the chairman and the committee.”
“When it comes right down, when the rubber hits the road, the committee chair is going to take the political heat for not giving a hearing,” Hill said. “And he is not going to blame his pro tem, and he is not going to blame his committee members. He is the one that is going to take the heat.”
Hill said he is going to talk to Senate chairmen and women on Thursday about the optics of some of their actions.