No, the Idaho Constitution does not forbid funding community colleges | Opinion

A remarkable argument surfaced on the Idaho Senate floor recently. Sen. Glenneda Zuiderveld, R-Twin Falls, declared that for decades, the Legislature has been “going against our oath of office” by funding colleges and universities, because only the University of Idaho is explicitly named in the Idaho Constitution.

By that reasoning, Boise State, Idaho State, Lewis-Clark, and every community college in the state — including the College of Southern Idaho right in her own backyard — are constitutionally suspect expenditures. Idahoans deserve to hear plainly what this argument is: creative, convenient and wrong.

Let’s begin with what the Idaho Constitution actually says. Article IX charges the Legislature with establishing “a general, uniform and thorough system of public, free common schools.” It places general supervision of state educational institutions under the State Board of Education.

The document is not a narrow, exhaustive catalog of every permissible government activity. It is a framework. The men who wrote it in 1889 were not drafting a grocery list of every institution the state would ever be allowed to fund.

As Sen. Dave Lent, R-Idaho Falls, chairman of the Senate Education Committee, correctly noted, the Idaho Constitution was written at a time when higher education “was not even close to what it is today.” In 1889, most people didn’t travel more than 50 miles from home, and electricity was scarce.

To freeze constitutional interpretation at that moment — to insist that because community colleges did not exist in 1889 icannot be funded today — is not constitutional fidelity. It is constitutional theater.

Here is the test that exposes this argument for what it is: selectively applied and fundamentally flawed. Name one thing Idaho state government does today that is explicitly listed in the Constitution.

The Idaho Department of Transportation? Not in there.

The Idaho State Police? Not mentioned.

The Department of Fish and Game? Absent.

The Division of Motor Vehicles, the Department of Agriculture, the Idaho National Guard’s armories, the state’s prison system, economic development grants, the Idaho Lottery — none of these are enumerated as required state functions.

If this logic holds, the Legislature has been violating its oath of office on virtually every appropriations bill it has ever passed.

Constitutions establish principles and structures. Legislatures fill in the enormous space those principles create. That is not a loophole — it is how constitutional government works.

The Idaho Supreme Court has recognized that the Constitution “sets a floor” for supporting public education, not a “ceiling” that limits it. A floor, not a ceiling. The Legislature is empowered to do more for education, not forbidden from it.

The College of Southern Idaho employs hundreds of people in the Magic Valley, trains nurses, welders and dental hygienists, and gives students a pathway to affordable higher education without leaving the region.

To suggest that funding it is unconstitutional requires ignoring more than a century of legislative practice, the structure of the document itself and the basic purpose of state government.

Rep. Steve Miller, R-Fairfield, put it plainly: “I think community colleges are the best dollars we spend on education.” He’s right. And funding them is not a constitutional crisis — it is the Legislature doing its job.

The Idaho Constitution is a serious document. It deserves serious interpretation — not a selective reading used to justify cutting the institutions that educate Idaho’s workforce.

Idahoans should be skeptical of any lawmaker who wraps a budget ax in constitutional language while driving past a state police barracks, a highway rest stop, and a Fish and Game office on the way to the Capitol.

Chenele Dixon is executive director of Idaho Solutions.