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Melissa Davlin: With the start of the 2025 legislative session just days away, we now have a good idea of what's at the top of the priority list for both Governor Little and Legislative leaders.

I'm Melissa Devlin.

Idaho reports starts now.

Melissa Davlin: Hello, and welcome to Idaho Reports.

This week, Kevin Richard of Idaho Education News.

And doctor Jacqueline Kettler from Boise State University's School of Public Service.

Join me to discuss what we learned at Friday's Idaho Press Club legislative preview, where Governor Brad Little and legislative leaders gave us a sneak peek of their priorities for the upcoming session.

But first, Idaho Supreme Court Chief Justice Richard Bevan held a press conference Thursday to outline a request to the legislature to raise judicial salaries, citing a need to recruit and retain highly qualified judges.

Richard Bevan: Idaho consistently ranks nationwide near the bottom in judicial pay.

This year, Idaho's district judges ranked 48th in judicial pay among neighboring states.

Only one pays its judges less.

While most pay their judges 10 to 40% more than Idaho.

To address this, we are taking the unusual step of proposing a significant increase in judicial salaries.

Our proposed legislation would set district judges salaries at $201,000 annually, with magistrate judges earning $193,000.

This adjustment would move Idaho closer to the median nationwide for judicial pay, rather than leaving us where we are now near the bottom.

We're also asking that the legislature establish a salary commission to advise the legislature on judicial compensation going forward.

The Commission's recommendation would be subject to review and acceptance by the legislature.

This is the method presently used to set legislative salaries that just occurred here last month.

This commission would hopefully act in an objective, market based way to evaluate judges salaries in a way that would not resort to the political and policy based subjects that have complicated judicial compensation in the past few years.

Davlin: And full disclosure my husband does work for the judiciary, Kevin.

Chief Justice Bevin acknowledged that there was a citizens committee that considered legislative legislative pay last month.

This is coming at a time where there are other requests for pay raises in state government.

Kevin Richert: There are other requests, and this is always a sensitive issue, and you can kind of plug in whatever piece of the public sector you want to look at.

The legislature is looking at pay raises.

There's been pushback from the right within the legislature or about that proposal.

We've heard the same kind of back and forth about teacher pay, about higher education, salaries.

I mean it whenever you start to talk about pay raises and these are some significant raises we're talking about, it's going to be a very sensitive topic.

Jaclyn Kettler: Well, and we've seen the public sector governments trying to recruit and retain talent.

It's been hard.

It's been difficult.

And so this is where we see these proposals come from.

It is does play into an interesting dynamic between the legislative and the judicial branch that we've seen conflicts play out over salary, pay and other states.

So this will definitely be an interesting issue to watch.

Davlin: And the judiciary does try to stay out of a lot of the policy discussions in Idaho, but this is one where they do depend on the legislature for their resources, including their salaries.

Kettler: Right, so they need they need the legislature legislature to approve it.

And so this will be an interesting discussion alongside these other proposals for different raises.

Davlin: One of the surprise hot button issues from last year's legislative session was controversy over over a proposed sale of the Idaho Transportation Department Chinden building in Boise.

The property remains in state hands, but the renovation costs are likely more than double what lawmakers initially expected.

Associate producer Logan Phinney toured the site in December to see the damage for himself.

Logan Finney: It's been almost three years to the day since the New Year's flooding that wrecked all three floors of the historic Idaho Transportation Department headquarters in Boise.

The state quickly rehoused its 450 employees from the 1961 office building, spending $37 million in 2022 to accelerate existing plans for the state to dispose of the property in 2023.

Lawmakers spent another $15 million to relocate historic preservation materials and $2 million to design a new location for its specialized asphalt testing lab, while the state contracted with a real estate broker to sell the 44 acre site.

Margaret Carmel: Commercial real estate prices were through the roof, before Covid, and so this property was expecting to fetch $100 million.

I mean, that that this is a big, important property.

But then after Covid and people are working from home and retail is not as strong, those prices have the market has changed.

And so that's why the state only got 50, $52 million offer on it.

Finney: Lawmakers dramatically canceled the sale at the end of last year's legislative session, and set aside another $32.5 million to rehabilitate the damaged building.

That figure from the Department of Administration was based on the standard estimate template for generic building renovations, and didn't take into account the extensive damage to the building.

Now, it turns out the potential price tag is more than double what lawmakers expected.

Actually, in the neighborhood of 65 to $70 million, the itemized list of issues is laid out in a 200 plus page assessment report.

The state finished in December, which lays out the necessary repairs, upgrades and modifications needed to safely reoccupy the building.

Those issues stack up quickly when dealing with a near abandoned aging structure, replacing the exterior curtain wall, new roofing, new ductwork and Hvac controls, mold remediation, installing a sprinkler system for fire safety instead of relying on asbestos.

Hazardous material abatement while working with that asbestos, as well as lead paint replacing pipes in the hydronic system that failed causing the flood.

The property assessment will be presented this month to the Idaho Transportation Board and will inform its future budget requests at the legislature.

Lawmakers could ultimately decide to renovate the building, redevelop the land for other use by the state or put it back on the auction block.

Though Hawkins Companies, the original bid winning developer, has indicated they're not interested in trying to buy it again.

Davlin: During Friday's legislative preview, House speaker Mike Moyle made it clear he wasn't happy with the state's initial estimate.

Mike Moyle: The members of Jcf saw that we were going to sell a piece of property again, 3 or 4 acres and farm buildings for the same amount.

We were going to replace just one of those 12 buildings with, makes no financial sense at all.

Currently.

we've learned some things that you brought up.

Good, Senator.

One, we learned that the department administration failed on the insurance claim, it showed a much higher.

It's bad, as they say, is.

We've learned the department administration was less than truthful at this on their estimates.

And that's baffles me that the Department of Administration says it's going to cost $700 a foot to fix that building when you can build a new one, I'm told, for five.

And so is legislators.

We have to rely on the information we received from those bureaucrats.

And in my opinion, I disagree with the senator.

They didn't tell us the truth.

Davlin: Jackie, speaking of interplay between the different branches of government, there's a lot of tension here.

It's clear on that.

I initially said, chinden building.

It's the State Street building.

Speaker Moyle is not happy.

Kettler: No.

Clearly not.

And we've seen these dynamics and conflicts between the executive and legislative branch play out the last few years in a variety of ways.

This became a major issue in the 2024 legislative session.

It seems likely that we're going to continue to see a lot of debate and discussion about this this year as they try to figure out budget plans moving forward, and likely a lot of continued conflict between the branches.

Davlin: Certainly something we'll keep an eye on.

We know going into this session that one of the biggest debates we'll see is over public money, going to private education, whether it's in the form of tax credits or something else.

During Friday's legislative preview, lawmakers on both sides made it clear that they're ready for the fight.

Lori Den Hartog: You know, you can frame accountability a couple of different ways.

For me personally, one of the ways that I think about it is, you know, is the parent satisfied with the education that their child is receiving.

You can have a school that is fantastic academically and meets all of the all of the targets and all of the marks, and your kid is getting bullied and you need a different option if that parent chooses to, to remove their child and to send them some somewhere else, either through policies that we've enacted already here in the state with open enrollment.

And we have a lot of great, choice options available already.

It doesn't mean that that student didn't have all of the academic, opportunities that they had there just meant it wasn't the right location and right spot for their Melissa Wintrow: personal obligation.

Our founders said our citizenry needs to be educated for a thriving community, and that's our obligation is public schools.

It is not to create, venues for taxpayer public money to go into a private school or a religious school.

It is for a public school so we can maintain accountability where we can create oversight Steve Berch: within the public school system.

But the bigger issue here are parents making sure they're taking stock of the things they take for granted that go away.

You know, or they're assuming that may not be true.

You may want to choose a private school for your kid, but they don't have to choose you.

Okay.

Your, if if your your your student can be expelled for without reason and without recourse.

If you have a problem with a teacher, a grievance, that private in-state school doesn't have to deal with it.

And they can raise the tuition to match the amount of money you're getting from the state or the amount of the tax credit you might Moyle: come to our schools right now, right?

Every year for the last several years, the support units have gone down.

Support units being classrooms.

Right.

They're going down.

Why?

Because parents are choosing other places to take their children.

They want choice.

They want it.

And there's no reason the state doesn't offer it.

Competitions have really healthy thing, in my opinion, that this will create competition and the parents don't have to utilize it.

If they don't, it's it's not a mandatory anything.

Davlin: Kevin.

Speaker Moyle just said, you know, parents want choice.

And what what I how do you think this debate is going to play out this next legislative session?

Richert: I think you heard a microcosm of the debate just there with those four lawmakers.

And what I was struck by on Friday wasn't just the back and forth between Moyle Den Hartog, Wintrow and Berch, who are diametrically opposed on this issue and are, you know, equally adamant either for or against, private school choice.

I was struck by what we didn't hear from Governor Little when he was asked repeatedly about, private school choice.

He wanted to say about as little as possible about this.

He's tried to stay out of this fray, really, for six years.

He may not have that luxury this year.

There's a good chance that he will be drawn into this discussion and indications that, you know, he he's engaged, at least in the talks about what this is going to look like.

If we if we see legislation that gets through, certainly going to see legislation proposed.

Question is will it get through both houses and reach his desk?

Davlin: And there are a lot of different ways that this legislation could possibly look, you know, whether it's in the form of tax credits or a straight up voucher.

There are a lot of things under that umbrella of school choice.

Kettler: That's correct.

We see a lot of different proposals, and we've seen debate about different proposals in the past.

We've we had some key turnover in positions following last year's elections.

So now I think the key thing will be which proposals start to move forward, which get a lot of traction.

What committees do we see making progress on those.

And that will really set up some of the key debates we have on this issue.

Davlin: We talked about this a lot in the wake of the of last year's primary election.

But, House education chair Juliana meadow lost her primary race.

And that's going to have a lot of implications.

You know, in that House Education Committee, if that's where this bill ends up.

Richert: Right, I mean it's assuming and there's no guarantee if this goes to the House Education Committee, you would think that there is more support in that committee.

Now for a private school choice bill, whatever that bill winds up looking like.

Still remains to be seen what might happen on the Senate side.

I look at the Senate Education Committee again, assuming that the bill goes through Senate education as opposed to some other committee.

That's a harder committee to read.

And there's a lot, lot to watch for as this issue plays out.

How does it play out and where does it play out.

Davlin: And it could play out in a tax committee, because one of the things that speaker Moyle said on Friday morning was he was interested in looking at a tax credit or a tax rebate.

Richert: Right.

And he was pretty adamant that that's the vehicle that he's interested in.

He feels like it's a way that the money goes to actual Idaho residents.

That seems to be his choice.

And we've seen in the past last year, you know, being, you know, the private school tax credit bill went through the roof and tax committee didn't pass that committee, but that's where it went.

So you yeah, we're gonna to watch a lot of committee calendars between now and you know April I guess to see where this thing plays itself out.

Davlin: Your colleague at Idaho Education News, Ryan Suppe, had a really great breakdown of where the private schools are and where the enrollments are.

County by county in Idaho.

And no surprises there.

There weren't a lot of private school enrollees in Idaho.

Smaller counties.

Richert: That's the crux of the debate about how does this affect rural Idaho, because we've seen this debate play out in other states.

You know, the question is, if you have a private school choice law in place, how does that affect parents in smaller communities where there are fewer options?

Yeah, it's a very different situation here in Boise, Meridian, Coeur d'Alene, where, you know, parents do have multiple options.

They're more ready now.

The question is whether they get, you know, taxpayer support to exercise those options.

Very different setting between urban Idaho and rural Idaho.

Davlin: Is that maybe where the conversation about remote learning or homeschool tax credits comes in?

Richert: Yeah, I think those are all pieces of the equation, you know, and to kind of go to one of the stories that that Ryan is working on for us, he's taking a look at how the homeschool community is viewing this whole debate over private school choice.

They're they're an interesting player, potentially in this debate.

Davlin: an interesting player and not a monolith, and not necessarily for tax credit.

Right.

And we'll get into that further.

I don't want to have to scoop my colleague, but Davlin: but just things that I've heard over the years too.

Yeah I'm excited to see that story.

Another hot topic is the future of launch, the program to offer $8,000 to graduating high school seniors to get job training or higher education for in-demand fields.

The program was among Governor Little's top priorities the past two sessions, and on Friday, he shared some success stories.

Brad Little: It's actually changing the attitudes of those kids that I need to work harder in high school.

So I'm prepared, to do the traditional college route.

Those kids were always, kind of all right.

But the ones that word that know that they're going to have to work on their language arts and work work on their math skills if they want to have one of these technical jobs, that is going to be one of the, one of the big dividends of what we've done in the workforce development field, that's going to I think it's going to pay off for a long, long time.

Davlin: Speaker Moyle wasn't a fan of the program in past years, but said he's now more interested in reforming the program as opposed to repealing it.

What are you wanting?

Moyle: I'm okay with the program continuing, but I think it needs some tweaks, right?

Originally it was sold, as you know, jobs that we need right now.

It's now we're spending what a good chunk of the money is going to universities, not to those career ready jobs on the bottom.

And we were talked about earlier.

Originally it was sold.

They were going to put more money into the CT programs in the high schools.

That didn't happen.

We did a one time bump there, but it didn't go on.

I think that launch needs to be brought back to where it was originally sold.

I think it needs to be brought back for those career ready jobs so they can go in 1 or 2 years out the door with the job and performing.

And I think that there will be some legislation this year to try to clean that up and make it clear that that was the original intent, and that's where we want it.

Davlin: Different tune from Speaker Moyle this year on the future of launch.

Richert: Different tune.

But the details really matter here because one person's tweak could be another person's dismantling.

I mean, if he's really if Moyle is really serious about trying to move this money away from supporting scholarships for two and four year college, well, that's where the vast majority of launch students are going right now.

So if you start to if you start to tweak that, if you start to, you know, pull back on that, it could be a very different looking program than it is right now.

So, you know, the details matter on this as well as just about everything else we've talked about this afternoon.

Davlin: Well, in those two and four year schools are where so many students are getting health care training.

And, you know, we, you can see the full press conference on the Idaho Reports YouTube channel.

But Governor Little touched on this.

There are so many students who are signing up to get training in so many different health care fields.

Richert: The toppers, the top profession for launch students this year is nursing.

Not really a surprise, but it really is illustrative of what we're talking about.

And students who want to pursue a career in nursing.

They have to go to a two year or four year in the school to pursue that.

Davlin: Certainly something that we will keep an eye on.

Do you think that, launch the future of launch and what it looks like might be a, bargaining chip to get school choice through Governor Little's little's veto stamp?

Kettler: And that's sometimes how we see policy making work, right?

You find compromises by getting people on board, building coalitions, by changing or revising other sorts of policies.

And also part of the policy making process is revisiting existing policies are they working as expected?

Do we want to make revisions?

And so I think that a lot of this is kind of the normal part of the policy making process.

Davlin: You know, also on education front, there were some questions to both Governor Little and legislative leaders about D-I programs in the state board, voting to do away with those at higher education institutes, diversity, equity and inclusion programs that led to, the abrupt closure over the holiday break of, some programs on, on public university campuses, like the Black Student Center at University of Idaho for one, lawmakers on in the majority seemed supportive of the state board's actions.

Richert: Supportive but they do want to go a step further.

Lori Den Hartog was talking about how she thinks there's going to be legislation to further address this issue and try to address equality.

And she mentioned it not just in terms of equality on campuses, but in terms of equality in the workforce, too.

I mean, you know, that suggested that lawmakers may take a really broad look at this whole issue of Dei, not just what's happening on campuses, matches what's happening with student support centers, and whether they're holistic student support centers like the state board wants, or if they're more specialized student support centers like we have seen over many years, over decades that are popular, quite a number of students.

Davlin: And you touched on that, that that really stood out to me because you look at what the students are saying, you know, and posts that they're making on social media and interviews that they're giving to the media.

There are some really real concerns with BSU UI students who are seeing the closure of these centers.

And at the same time, you hear Senator Den Hartog and Speaker Moyle say that our constituents are really happy that the state board went ahead and did this.

Richert: The state board received about 700 comments leading up to the vote on the Dei resolution, about 80% of those comments.

And it's about the state board's count, not mine.

About 80% of those comments opposed making this change in the AI policy.

So the students who took time to write in in the middle of finals, were pretty overwhelmingly opposed to this change.

Davlin: And as you said, probably not the end of that conversation.

Idaho's abortion law is the subject of multiple lawsuits in both state and federal courts.

On Friday, the governor and lawmakers answered questions about whether the legislature should address physicians concerns about what they say are gray areas in the law over narrow exemptions for the life of the mother, Little: And some of that litigation will survive the change in administration.

It might be handled differently by the DOJ, but that litigation will go forward.

It would be very helpful if we had that all resolved and then we could address some of these issues.

I'm I'm always concerned, you know, as a, as a long, always pro-life person about, basically the reproductive health, long term health of the mother.

And are we addressing that?

And I think the legislature, most of them are interested in that also,.

Davlin: Lawmakers also had thoughts on potential changes to the law.

Moyle: So in those debates, when we were at the Supreme Court this April and we sat before the US Supreme Court, the Biden administration went from health of the mother.

I hangnail.

They came all the way over to emergency, and then the U.S. Supreme Court said, all right, so now what's the difference between life of the mother and an emergency?

And that's what the debate is now, right?

The Ninth Circuit met last month of December about what is the difference is what is the difference between an emergency and the life of the mother.

And until we know where the courts are going to lie on that, it's hard to, you know, proceed with the bill that may not if they may make things worse, we don't know.

Wintrow: We have the ability to make that decision and to and we should.

There are women being airlifted out of our state.

We had six that we had reported.

We've lost about a quarter of our OB GYNs.

We've dug ourselves into the hole of a medical system that we're not going to dig out.

For decades, we've done so much to recruit doctors and residents and ob gyn to our state, and now what we have done the last couple of years has basically just cremated all of that effort.

Davlin: So, Doctor Kettler, to be clear, you know, I always appreciate a little bit of hyperbole, but I don't think any doctors are ordering abortions over hangnails.

As Speaker Moyle alluded to.

But but this really does create a crunch for women, not just pregnant women, but also women who are just seeking general gynecological care.

Kettler: Right, we've we've seen in Idaho since the Dobbs decision in 2022, once the abortion ban, the trigger law went into effect, just this real issue with doctors leaving the state and as or hospitals, you know, no longer offering different sorts of care.

And so women are having problems getting access to health care.

And so this is something that increasingly the fact, you know, more people and I think it's, been a continued push in the last few sessions to address the issue.

And so I think this is another one of those, those policy areas where what types of proposals come forward and are they able, are legislators able to agree on on a potential solution?

Davlin: And we have this philosophical discussion going on about, you know, whether they should wait until the courts decide and give them some clarity before they move forward.

And as you said, as this is playing out in the last two years, women have have already seen the effects of not being able to get ob gyn care.

And, you know, I also know on job posting sites that in every area of the state hospitals are looking for gynecologist to come.

And, and they're having such a hard time recruiting new doctors to the state.

Kettler: Right.

So this has been continued and a continued issue in the last few years.

What we've seen happen in some other states, I've experienced similar issues is they've recently voters have passed constitutional amendments or ballot initiatives to protect abortion rights.

And so I think this is another kind of interesting element to this topic is, you know, will we see and likely we will see a ballot initiative come forward about this issue.

And so that's at least an attempt, right?

An attempt to get one on the ballot.

And so this will be an interesting dynamic along with the court cases legislative activity, what might happen through the ballot initiative process.

Davlin: And, you know, briefly before we go, Kevin, there were so many things that we didn't have time to get to, including concern from Speaker Moyle about out of state elections spending and also, the First Amendment versus, false or misleading claims during campaigns.

Richert: I thought the comments on election and, on election reporting and election finance was really interesting.

I mean, Doctor Cutler and I, we spent a lot of time this spring in both looking at those finance reports and trying to figure out where all the money was coming from.

And why these groups and who these groups were that were supporting or opposing candidates.

Davlin: Just ridiculous amount of money.

Richert: Crazy money, right?

Bonkers money, I think, is nonsense before.

Yeah, I think reasonable minds can certainly agree or discuss what kind of transparency do we want to talk about, what kind of, you know, reporting requirements.

You start to talk about trying to clamp down on what Speaker Moyle called blatant lies in advertising.

That gets into a really slippery slope, who's deciding what is a blatant lie as opposed to a lie by omission or just a little fib.

I mean, that gets to be a really, really complicated issue, Davlin: A constitutional issue, not Richert: Yes.

Yeah, Davlin: Right.

Exactly.

Well, Kevin Richard, Idaho education news doctor Jacqueline Kettler, Boise State University School of Public Service, thank you for joining us.

I'm sure we'll have a lot to talk about as the session goes on before we go.

President Jimmy Carter passed away on Sunday, December 29th at the age of 100.

In 1978, when he was president, Carter famously visited Idaho for a rafting trip on the Middle Fork of the salmon.

This week we caught up with Judy Clapp, one of the river guides on that trip.

Judy Clapp: With a very cold, rainy trip and it was still a great trip.

And the Carters were just wonderful.

Normal people.

I mean, Amy was about ten years old at the time, and I remember, giving her a ride in my kayak and her dad, you know, calling her to be sure to rinse her the sand off her feet before she got my kayak.

And Rosalynn was really concerned about whether or not I was cold, you know, because we're just in wetsuits, kayaking through whitewater.

And, you know, they were doing a lot of fishing and just having a really good family trip.

Davlin: Thanks so much for watching.

Governor Brad Little will give his state of the state address on Monday, January 6th at 1 p.m. Mountain Time, noon Pacific.

We'll have live coverage and analysis on Idaho Public television.

We'll see you then.

Public television is made possible through the generous support of the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Betty's family legacy of building the great state of Idaho by the Friends of Idaho Public Television and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.