Idaho’s rules do not bar legislative corruption. They should be changed to stop it

For a long time, Idaho has been one of the few states in the nation that do not take legislative corruption seriously. Lawmakers should change that this session by amending House and Senate rules to require recusal in cases of conflict of interest.

In a majority of states, it is illegal, unconstitutional or a violation of legislative rules for a lawmaker to vote on a bill that will have a financial impact on them, their businesses or their financial holdings. But in Idaho, lawmakers simply have to declare their conflict.

That is, Idaho’s legislative rules explicitly authorize legislative corruption, so long as it is transparent. Once a lawmaker announces their conflict, “the member is presumed to act in good faith and in the public interest,” as House rules state. That is a bad assumption.

There are recent and glaring examples of conflicts of interest that undermine public confidence that the Legislature is working in the interests of the general public.

The recent example of Rep. Bryan Zollinger, R-Idaho Falls, was particularly egregious. Zollinger works as the attorney representing Medical Recovery Services, an East Idaho medical debt collector that has long received criticism and been accused of abusive medical debt collection practices. In 2020, the Idaho Patient Act was drafted and introduced, largely to address the practices of MRS.

Zollinger’s conflict of interest in this case was striking and obviously should have excluded him from voting on the bill. But, following Idaho’s legislative rules, he debated and voted against the bill. It beggars belief that he did so in the public interest, rather than his own.

That’s hardly the only instance where members of the public have reason to suspect that business in the Legislature is being done with a particular eye toward the business interests of individual lawmakers.

As Betsy Russell of the Idaho Press reported during the regular 2021 session, House State Affairs Committee Chairman Brent Crane killed a bill that allowed county clerks to begin the process of tabulating absentee ballots received before Election Day, which makes it easier to promptly announce the results. Crane, whose family owns a company involved in alarms and video surveillance, objected to the fact that some counties had used YouTube to stream the process of counting ballots for transparency’s sake.

In another case, Crane’s conflict of interest was even more acute. His company had lost a large alarm contract with the Boise School District after there were a set of fire department inspections. In 2021, he introduced legislation arising from exactly that situation that would exempt alarm system upgrades from certain inspections, as Russell reported.

The public should not be in constant doubt about whether lawmakers are pursuing the public interest or their own.

There would be some complications involved in creating a rule that would end legislative corruption in Idaho, but they are not insurmountable.

A common objection, for example, relies on the fact that a huge number of Idaho lawmakers are involved in agriculture. Would every farmer have to abstain from every vote involving agricultural policy?

No. The general standard for conflict of interest rules is that a bill under consideration would affect a lawmaker substantially or significantly more than a member of the general public.

In many states, lawmakers make a declaration of a conflict of interest in writing well before their committee or chamber deals with a piece of legislation where they might have a conflict. This could be given to their committee chair or the presiding officer of their chamber, who, with the aid of legal counsel, can determine whether a lawmaker should be excluded from voting.

Lawmakers should examine the rules in states that require recusal in response to a conflict of interest and draft their own. It would go a long way toward ensuring that lawmakers are doing the people’s business in the people’s house, not their own.