Update: Critics decried a partisan ACHD election bill. Little signs it anyway

Update (April 10, 2026): Gov. Brad Little signed Senate Bill 1356 into law on April 10, 2026. The law will take effect in July, with the first election under the new rules slated for 2028.

Below is the original story, published April 4, 2026, under the headline, “‘Nothing like it’: Critics decry partisan ACHD election bill sped to Little’s desk.”

The Ada County Highway District is a gubernatorial signature away from unwillingly adopting a countywide, partisan vote after the Legislature passed an 11th-hour bill to overhaul how the district’s board is elected.

Senate Bill 1356 would require candidates to live in designated areas but campaign across all of Ada County. And it would mean declaring a party affiliation and participating in spring primaries before a general election.

For the half century since county voters created the district, each ACHD board member has been elected to represent the subdistrict where the member lives — by constituents in that district — through a nonpartisan election.

Proponents say that the change would demand that commissioners to take a “holistic view” of the whole highway district, rather than focusing on the zone where they live, according to Rep. John Vander Woude, R-Nampa.

“Countywide transportation is countywide,” he said while introducing the bill on the House floor Wednesday. “Maybe they better take a look at how traffic flows across all of the county.”

But the substantial overhaul left ACHD Commissioner Alexis Pickering with two questions for lawmakers as they rushed to pass the bill in one of the waning acts of the 2026 session.

“Why this bill?” she asked the House State Affairs Committee on Wednesday night. “Why is the Legislature mad at ACHD?”

Pickering didn’t get an answer, but the sentiment was clear — as was the Legislature’s interest in politicizing the nonpartisan board. Lawmakers sprinted a tweaked version of an election reform bill drafted by Meridian Republicans Sen. Lori Den Hartog and Rep. Joe Palmer to the governor’s desk in a single day, leaving ACHD commissioners — and some legislators — whiplashed by the pace.

The speed meant that Vander Woude stepped in for Palmer to introduce the bill on the House floor Wednesday night with about an hour’s notice, he said, “so I have a really good grasp of what it says.”

Vander Woude chuckled as he spoke. But earlier in committee, Rep. Monica Church, D-Boise, suggested that unfamiliarity alone was reason enough to stall the bill without a vote.

“We have not had proper time to look this over, nor has the bill’s sponsor,” she said.

Church continued her opposition on the House floor.

“No other election works like this,” she told her colleagues. “It would be like us, representing our district, being elected by the entire state, because we make rules for the entire state.

“There is nothing like it.”

Commissioners or “full-time fundraisers”?

Serving a county of some 572,000, each ACHD commissioners would have to campaign to around 10 times as many people as a typical state legislator. Pickering said her district — one of five on the board — is about double the size of a statehouse district as it is.

The scale of the election would turn commissioners “into full-time fundraisers, opening the races to moneyed interests and politicizing projects to the detriment of Ada County residents and the region,” said ACHD Board Chair Miranda Gold, testifying on behalf of the entire board.

“A candidate living in Kuna would need to campaign in Star, and a commissioner could be elected by 80% of voters who do not live in that district,” Gold said.

The change would mirror the way county commissioners are elected throughout the state, which Den Hartog and Palmer described in the bill’s statement of purpose as “well-understood and ensures that countywide commissioners are elected on the broadest possible basis.”

But it wouldn’t affect the way highway district commissioners are elected in other counties. Those races would remain nonpartisan.

The legislation changes the rules only for countywide highway districts in counties that exceed 200,000 people. Idaho has two counties with populations that large: Ada and Canyon. Ada is the only county in Idaho that operates under a single highway district, created by frustrated voters in 1971 to replace the rural highway districts and city street departments still used in Canyon and other counties. According to ACHD, it’s the only countywide district in the entire country.

In debate, Church emphasized that ACHD commissioners are part-time employees and highly specialized in what they do.

“This is the only election we would be doing this for,” she said. “What kind of person exists who wants to campaign at that scale every two years to represent a smaller faction of those people for less than $30,000?”

ACHD spokesperson Rachel Bjornestad said the board would not comment further until Little either signed or vetoed the bill.

How ACHD’s commissioners are chosen

Right now, ACHD’s five commissioners are all locally elected to four-year terms.

That means you don’t see an “R” or “D” next to their names on the ballot — not that they aren’t registered with a party.

Gold ran for the state Senate as a Democrat in 2016. Commissioner Kent Goldthorpe is a Republican, according to a profile that was recently removed from the state GOP website. And Commissioner Patricia Nilsson ran for the Ada County Board of Commissioners as a Democrat in 2022. Commissioners Alexis Pickering and Dave McKinney haven’t run for office in a partisan race or otherwise publicized their party affiliations.

If the system changes, they’ll have to compete in spring primaries to earn a party’s nomination for the ballot.

The Legislature requires large cities to elect council members by district, Gold reminded the State Affairs Committee.

“This has been shown as the will of this body for cities,” she said. “Why should highway districts who build the roads in those cities be treated different?”

If signed by Little, the new election system would start in 2028.