Idaho Legislature seeks to claw power back from governor. Here’s what sparked it
In an Idaho House committee meeting Thursday, lawmakers proposed a bill to block the governor from declaring a “disaster emergency” — which would unlock resources for Idaho cities during a crisis — unless he first convened a special session of the Legislature.
The effort was unsuccessful, with the bill failing in a tie vote. But its proponents made their intent clear.
“This is about being co-equal branches of the government,” bill sponsor Rep. Elaine Price, R-Coeur d’Alene, said. “We’ve worked hard these last three years … to shore that up.”
It was one of several times in recent legislative sessions that lawmakers have introduced and pushed forward bills blocking what they see as executive overreach, especially during emergencies. In 2021, the Legislature introduced eight bills to limit emergency powers owned exclusively by the governor, the Idaho Statesman previously reported.
The next year, voters approved a constitutional amendment to give the Legislature the power to call itself back for a special session, the Statesman reported. (Before that, only the governor could do that.) This session, lawmakers pushed through a bill to block any future mask mandates. (In 2021, Republican Gov. Brad Little overturned an executive order banning these mandates, issued in his absence by his then-lieutenant governor.)
There is a “serious and heavy responsibility for the Legislature to try and claw itself back to an equal branch,” Rep. Vito Barbieri, R-Dalton Gardens, told the House committee at last week’s committee hearing.
Nationwide, legislators seek to regain power after COVID-19
Idaho lawmakers’ pursuit stands in contrast to shifts at the federal level, where Republican President Donald Trump has sought to dramatically increase the power of the country’s executive branch.
He’s issued a raft of executive orders, allowed his so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” to slash agency budgets already appropriated by Congress and has ignored some court orders, like one revoking a broad federal funding freeze, The New York Times reported. Some legal scholars have argued that the administration’s approach is driving a constitutional crisis that threatens the country’s “checks and balances” approach to governing. Trump has countered that he aims to streamline a bloated and wasteful federal bureaucracy.
But Idaho’s Legislature is not alone in seeking to reclaim power from the executive branch, said Jaclyn Kettler, a Boise State University political science professor who focuses on state politics. Over the last decade, executive branches nationwide have gradually expanded in capacity and size, leading to resentment and frustration from legislators.
COVID-19, she said, brought this angst to a head.
“Because a lot of state legislatures were not in session any longer by the time states were trying to determine their COVID policies, governors and executive branches made a whole lot of decisions, including financial ones,” she told the Statesman in a phone interview. “That really angered state legislators — not necessarily always just what the decision was, but they were frustrated that they were not involved in the decision-making.”
Some Idaho lawmakers, Kettler said, “regularly express concern about an imbalance of power,” voicing frustration with the number of workers in the executive branch who are not elected, and therefore “not accountable in the same way.”
In some cases, she added, lawmakers may view themselves as “outsiders” to government who are stepping in to reduce its size or scope.
Little, into his second term, has appeared at odds with GOP-led efforts this legislative session, including proposals to slash Idahoans’ taxes. Little’s office did not respond to a Statesman request for comment.
But in his January State of the State address, Little said he hoped to see a $100 million reduction of the state’s general fund. Lawmakers, however, have pushed through bills that would add up to nearly five times that amount. Little has signed some of those bills, but not without voicing his concerns.
“If I would have thought we could do $450, I would have proposed $450,” Little told reporters at a February press conference, referring to the hundreds of millions more that lawmakers aim to return to taxpayers.
