Idaho Republican legislator’s plan to kill school levies takes away voice of the voter

A proposal by a state legislator to phase out the use of supplemental levies by school districts represents yet another example of how some Republican legislators want to shut voters up.

The state Legislature and Gov. Brad Little are already coming off a costly lawsuit over a law that restricted citizen ballot initiatives. The Idaho Supreme Court shot down that law, ruling it was unconstitutional and a prime example of “tyranny of the minority.”

Now, according to the Idaho Capital Sun, state Sen. Jim Rice, R-Caldwell, wants to try again to limit voters’ voices by “phasing out” the use of supplemental levies, which school districts ask voters to pass because they’re not receiving enough money from the state to run their schools.

In all, 88 of Idaho’s 115 school districts are operating on $217 million in supplemental levies, which require a simple majority vote to pass.

Some Republican legislators have expressed the sentiment that school districts trick their voters into passing these levies in low-turnout elections.

Meanwhile, Idaho is 51st in the nation — dead last — in per-student public education expenditures, according to the most recent report from the National Education Association.

School districts are crying poor because they are indeed poor. They’re being starved by the state, and the only place to turn is to local voters and their property taxes.

To his credit, Rice, who is co-chair of the state legislative study committee on property taxes, is suggesting that the state set aside a half-cent of the state sales tax for school districts to increase funding.

Let’s not forget that the state Legislature in 2006 increased the sales tax by 1 cent to fund education and get it off the property tax rolls.

The Republicans in the state Legislature this year passed $400 million in tax cuts and rebates — money that instead could have gone to increasing school funding and, in theory, reduced the need for supplemental levies.

Really, the solution to skyrocketing property taxes in Idaho is very simple, and anyone who tries to complicate it is just flimflamming you.

The Idaho Legislature could do three very simple things to relieve residential property taxes:

• Increase the homeowners exemption and index it. The value of today’s homeowners exemption, if the house price index were continuously used to index the exemption, would be $174,229, according to the Idaho State Tax Commission. The Legislature this year raised it to $125,000 (after unfairly capping it at $100,000 for years), but that clearly was not enough.
• Increase public education funding. Instead of prioritizing tax cuts (which benefited mostly the wealthy, while people making less than $66,000 received $30-$92 in benefit), if the Legislature had increased K-12 education funding by $400 million, we might be able to eliminate most if not all of the supplemental levies we have on the books.
• Add two words — “school districts” — to the existing state law that allows certain government entities to collect impact fees. This would reduce or even eliminate the need for school bonds, which are borne by property taxes. Building new schools that are necessitated by new people moving into Idaho fits the very definition of why we have impact fees.

As it is, property taxes are still below 1% in many places. A property in Star, for example, assessed at $488,400 has taxes of $3,020, or 0.6%. Even a property in Boise assessed at $485,700 was taxed $4,579, or just 0.9%.

State legislators could easily implement those simple measures and alleviate the problem. In addition, Rice could go ahead and still set aside a half-cent from the sales tax for public education to help even more.

But banning supplemental levies to silence the voice of voters trying to increase funding for their local school districts shows that some Republican legislators are looking at the wrong problem and coming up with the wrong solutions.

Voters approving supplemental levies isn’t the problem. Underfunding education is the problem.

Scott McIntosh

Opinion Contributor,

Idaho Statesman

208-377-6202

Scott McIntosh is the Idaho Statesman opinion editor. A graduate of Syracuse University, he joined the Statesman in August 2019. He previously was editor of the Idaho Press and the Argus Observer and was the owner and editor of the Kuna Melba News. He has been honored for his editorials and columns as well as his education, business and local government watchdog reporting by the Idaho Press Club and the National Newspaper Association. Sign up for his weekly newsletter, The Idaho Way. Support my work with a digital subscription