Let Idaho legislators call special session? No way, says Idaho’s largest business lobby
Idaho’s largest business lobbying group is coming out strongly against a constitutional amendment that would give Idaho legislators the power to call themselves back into session.
If passed by voters on Nov. 8, it would lead to bigger, more expensive and less predictable state government, according to the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry.
“I think the pragmatic folks of Idaho will reject it because they know that they don’t want a full-time legislature,” IACI’s president, Alex LaBeau, told me in a phone interview. “They know that they don’t want the (Idaho) Legislature involved in executive decision making — that’s why they elected a governor — and they want to keep the Constitution intact. It’s expensive to do it the alternative way, and it’s just not a conservative approach.”
IACI is a business lobbying organization representing about 300 Idaho employers in a wide range of fields, including agriculture and food service, technology, accounting firms and banks, utilities, manufacturing and construction.
Currently, only the governor can call the Legislature into a special, or extraordinary, session. The amendment, SJR102, if passed by a simple majority of voters, would allow legislators to call themselves into a special session if they achieve at least 60% agreement.
“It really, we think, oversteps the bounds of what the Legislature should be doing, in that they should be the policy-making body,” LaBeau said. “But when it comes to the actual executive function of the delivering of services from the state or making executive decisions, that should be exclusively within the governor’s office.”
Idaho’s part-time citizen Legislature typically meets from January to March or April and then adjourns for the year (or is at least supposed to). Idaho is one of 12 states that doesn’t allow the Legislature to call itself back into session, relying instead on the governor to call for a special gathering.
As a cautionary tale, LaBeau pointed to the state of Utah, which recently gave its Legislature the ability to call itself back into session. The Utah Legislature did just that six times last year, LaBeau said.
And the result of one of the special sessions was to write a letter to Congress telling it the Utah lawmakers didn’t like something.
“I think there’s a lot of reasons why we would be not interested in that,” LaBeau said. “It’s not a stable form of government at that point, and it’s a very quick path to a full-time legislature.”
As well, it adds expense. It costs about $30,000 per day when the legislators are back in session. Further, if legislators return to Boise often enough, that could lead to full-time staff members, another added expense.
Doesn’t sound like smaller government.
“We don’t think that the public needs this, we don’t think that the Legislature needs this,” LaBeau said, “and we think it oversteps their bounds of the policy-making body.”
LaBeau said the process works just fine as it is now.
Look at the most recent special session on Sept. 1 to pass a tax cut, rebate and education funding package that won wide bipartisan support.
“The constitutional process that we have in the state of Idaho is working, and there’s no need to break it,” LaBeau said.
In addition to just the added cost and expansion of state government, LaBeau said having the Legislature call itself back into session for whatever reason promises to prove disruptive, when legislation can change anytime after policy already has been set in the regular session.
“When you have a legislature that keeps calling itself back for whatever the issue du jour is, I don’t think that that is something that the people want,” he said.
Special sessions or extraordinary sessions should be just that — special or extraordinary.
“The conservative argument would be to take a very deliberate and thoughtful approach to legislating,” LaBeau said. “I think that this is introducing a tremendous amount of chaos in the governing process of the state, and it introduces instability. That’s not a conservative principle.”
