Statesman recommends rehiring Jeff Agenbroad to the Idaho Senate for another term
Correction: This editorial has been updated to correct Agenbroad’s legislative district. Agenbroad represents District 13.
Idaho Sen. Jeff Agenbroad, R-Nampa, has represented his district well in his four years in the Senate.
A banker by trade and training, Agenbroad has sat on the powerful budget-setting Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee all four years in office.
That position has given him a broad base of knowledge and insight on a host of important issues, such as public education, the state’s tax revenues, transportation funding and the corrections system.
On that last issue, Agenbroad also sits on the Criminal Justice Reinvestment Oversight Committee.
Agenbroad faces a challenge from Democrat Melissa Sue Robinson, who has run for several offices in the past, including Nampa mayor and City Council. Robinson did not respond to the Statesman’s invitations to interview her. The Statesman will not endorse a candidate who does not interview with the editorial board.
When she filed for candidacy in March, Robinson, a transgender woman, said her platform includes better education and transportation issues, but her main issue would be to “Add the Words” in Idaho and push to prevent anti-LGBT legislation.
We appreciate Agenbroad’s vow to remain open-minded about the issues and his willingness to consider other ideas.
In the 2019 session, Agenbroad voted against legislation that would have made it much more difficult to get a voter-led initiative on the ballot. He told the editorial board that he thought it went way too far, but he still favors some requirements that make the voter-led process more rigorous.
We will continue to push Agenbroad to look for increased funding for public education. The need for more funding is evidenced by the widespread reliance on supplemental levies passed by voters in dozens of districts in Idaho. We continue to hear superintendents say funding is inadequate. We hear businesses in Idaho say we need to improve our education system to meet the needs of the 21st century. We believe a better education system will be an economic driver for Idaho. We bristle to hear Agenbroad say that being 51st in the nation in per pupil funding is “a kind of badge of honor” because we “get a heck of a bang for our buck.”
He repeats what we’ve heard too often from Republican legislators that we “shouldn’t just throw money at the problem,” but we challenge Agenbroad to try it and see what happens. He might be surprised at the results. We are not convinced that moving up from 51st in the nation to, say, 45th or, heaven forbid, 40th in the nation would qualify as “throwing money at the problem.”
Still, we appreciate Agenbroad’s desire to make sure funding is spent wisely, that we revamp our funding formula and that the State Board of Education is aligned with the state superintendent of public instruction when it comes to policy and funding priorities.
On property tax relief, Agenbroad said he’s open to raising the homeowners exemption and tying it to some sort of index. He said he’s also open to allowing school districts to collect impact fees, which would reduce the burden on districts’ reliance on having to pass bonds to build new buildings resulting from growth. With that, he’s also open to changing the current requirement for a supermajority to pass those bonds.
We liked Agenbroad’s suggestion that increasing the grocery tax credit in Idaho might be a better solution than eliminating the state’s sales tax on groceries altogether, arguing that a credit is controllable and adjustable and it provides specific relief to Idaho residents.
As far as the Department of Correction budget, Agenbroad said, “I don’t want to just build a warehouse” for those convicted of a crime. He’s interested in alternatives to sentencing, including mandatory minimum sentences, and he recognizes that Idaho’s recidivism rate is a problem that needs to be fixed. Again, we’d like to see more action on these initiatives after so much talk about them.
We recommend that voters in Nampa’s District 13 rehire Agenbroad for another term with the goal of executing on solutions to some of these problems facing Idaho.
This story was originally published October 6, 2020 at 4:00 AM.
BEHIND THE STORY
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Members of Idaho Statesman editorial board interview political candidates, as well as advocates and opponents of ballot measures. The editorial board is composed of journalists and community members. Members of the Statesman editorial board are: Statesman editor Chadd Cripe, opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, newsroom editors Dana Oland and Jim Keyser and community members John Hess, Debbie McCormick and Julie Yamamoto.
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