Pisani: Getting the actual people Narrator: Presentation of Idaho Reports on Idaho Public Television is made possible through the generous support of the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the great state of Idaho.

By the Friends of Idaho Public Television and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Logan Finney: lawmakers have made a concerted effort over the last several years to return budget surpluses and provide tax relief to Idahoans.

But just how much revenue can the legislature cut before it affects the state's ability to fund vital services?

Filling in for Melissa Davlin, I'm Logan Finney.

Idaho Reports starts now.

Hello and welcome to Idaho Reports.

This week, Christine Pisani of the Idaho Council on Developmental Disabilities discusses concerns about the trajectory of Medicaid and the state's direct care workforce.

Then I dig into tax policy and funding priorities with House Majority Leader Jason Monks and House Minority Leader Ilana Rubel.

But first, let's get you caught up on the week.

On Thursday, the House passed a bill that would make Idaho's primary method of execution the firing squad rather than the current method of lethal injection.

Idaho has carried out three lethal injection executions since 1976.

The Idaho Department of Correction also called off the unsuccessful execution of Thomas Creech last year, after staff could not establish an IV line to administer the injection.

Bruce Skaug: This bill is not about whether Idaho should utilize the death penalty or not.

That is already the law.

In my view, the firing squad is a more humane way to execute those on death row because it is quick, it is certain.

It brings justice for the victims and their families in a more expeditious manner.

There will be fewer appellate issues on the courts with the firing squad than with intravenous injection, which is our current primary method, and fewer failed attempts at carrying out the death penalty when it must be carried out.

Lamont Anderson: Gerald Pizuto’s death sentence, and his conviction was affirmed by the Ninth Circuit on February 6th of 2002.

For the last over two decades, we have been litigating nothing but the method of execution.

With his complaint being that lethal injection, specifically pentobarbital, will cause an adverse effect on him based upon the medications he's receiving and his current health status.

Bullets aren't going to interact with medication.

We're not going to have that problem.

Finney: Idaho currently has nine people on death row.

House members approved the bill 58 to 11, with only two Republicans voting against.

It moves on to the Senate.

The Senate State Affairs Committee advanced a constitutional amendment in a 5 to 3 vote Friday that would require signatures from every legislative district for an initiative to reach the ballot, rather than the current majority of districts.

In 2021, the Idaho Supreme Court determined raising the bar in statute to all 35 districts would have made the initiative process unconstitutionally difficult.

The legislation would have to reach a two thirds majority in both chambers and earn voters approval to change the state constitution.

On Wednesday, hundreds of protesters gathered at the statehouse in Boise to show their anger at some actions of the new Trump administration, including Elon Musk's role in the federal government's affairs and a lack of pushback from Idaho's Republican congressional delegation.

Trump and Elon Hey Hey, Ho Ho!

Hey Hey, Ho Ho!

Finney: Last week, producer Ruth Brown spoke with the chairman of the House Health and Welfare Committee about possibly eliminating or restructuring Medicaid expansion, which provides health insurance to around 90,000 Idahoans.

This week, she sat down with Christine Pisani of the Idaho Council on Developmental Disabilities to talk about possible changes at the federal and state levels to the program that have members of the disabilities community concerned about coverage, as well as the U.S. Department of Justice finding that the state disproportionately institutionalizes people with disabilities who could otherwise live in community care settings.

Christine Pisani: The Department of Justice, came out with its findings and essentially found that...people with disabilities were being segregated unnecessarily in nursing home settings, when they could be being served in our Medicaid funded home and community based services.

The issue with this is that this is not a new issue.

This is an issue that, was brought to light in 2023 through the Office of Performance Evaluations report on the sustainability of the direct support workforce in home and community based services, which basically said that, Medicaid rates are not kept at pace for our service providers to keep, to both recruit and keep our direct support workers.

This has meant that our service providers throughout the state have not been able to keep enough staff.

They've had to turn people away.

And what that means is for people with disabilities and seniors is that they are turning people away to nursing home placements that are costing, public dollars in the amount of 880...$85,800 a year per person.

And people with disabilities and seniors could be served at a fraction of a cost if they were served in home and community based services, home and community based services.

But the investments have to be made in our home and community based services in order for that to happen.

So those recommendations and the Office of Performance Evaluation report were made in 2023, and the disability community is still very concerned at watching the continual decline of people with disabilities and seniors ending up homeless, ending up, having to move out of state, because there is no placement here.

So they're moving from their home community that they've always known and their family to a state, that they don't know anyone.

Also, family members are having to either quit work or take reduced hours in order to provide those additional caregiving responsibilities for a senior for their parent, aging parent or for, their adult children with disabilities or children with disabilities.

And so this is, causing a lot of pressure on families and we're not sure when, this will get resolved.

Brown: Let's talk Medicaid.

How confident are you that Medicaid expansion will be in place?

Will it continue to stay in place?

And what are your what are your concerns around it?

Pisani: So I have a couple of concerns to talk about.

And one is at the federal level.

And so right now Congress is considering a proposal to move to, a different Medicaid structure.

And there are two different things that they're considering.

One is a per capita cap, which means that the that the funding for state Medicaid programs would move to a fixed amount per person in the Medicaid program.

This does not account for varying medical costs - crisis, a pandemic, health care, rising health care costs.

And in Idaho, because we have a medical shortage, for specialty services, we have a lot of people who have chronic health conditions and just specialty needs where they have to travel out of state, so it doesn't account for any of those costs.

Once we get that budget, based on a per capita cap, that's the budget we have.

So what ends up happening is that the state is then on the hook for that additional expense, which will be difficult for Idaho to absorb.

Brown: There are there's legislation happening in state as well.

What are some of your concerns around that?

I guess you work with the disabilities community.

I mean, how does it bring concern from them?

Pisani: A lot of concern about the discussion of, repealing Medicaid expansion, which has to do with our caregivers, our families, who have taken reduced hours at work, who are not working because they are caring for that adult family member or their children.

Because we don't have the direct care workforce to do that.

And, those people rely on Medicaid expansion.

The biggest benefit to people with serious mental illness, which is the majority of people who, access Medicaid expansion here in Idaho, are people with serious mental illness.

1 in 3 adults, have serious mental illness here in our state.

Before we had Medicaid expansion, they had no access to prevention.

They had no access to medication.

And oftentimes they just became sicker and sicker.

And this would also go for people with chronic health conditions until they were just so sick that sometimes by the time that happened and the county indigent fund or the catastrophic health care fund could pick up any type of help, we were looking at end of life issues for so many people.

So there was no prevention before Medicaid expansion.

Brown: So much of this comes back to the direct care, workforce shortage.

What can the state do?

What would you like to see happen to improve that?

Pisani: Well, one other thing to consider is that 25% of our direct care workers in home and community based services benefit from Medicaid expansion.

So because of their low rate.

Yeah.

So, we would like to see, at least on an every other year basis, half of those service providers within our home and community based services get a cost study.

That cost study goes to the legislature.

And those rate increases are provided on a bi-annual basis so that our service providers can keep up with, paying people what they're worth, but also investing in, really quality training for the direct support workers who do really complex work.

They have to be on their feet, thinking all the time, problem solving quickly and they're, they're dealing with all kinds of things, from medical conditions, to, certain strategies around supporting people who may have complex behavioral challenges.

So it's not a job that you can just walk in and do it.

There really needs to be some skilled, workforce to be able to, what I like to think of as make a person day the best day possible, which I think is the role of our direct support workers for people with disabilities and seniors.

Brown: Do you think, do you think state lawmakers are hearing the concerns from individuals with disabilities who are crying out?

Pisani: I think there's been a lot of coverage, but for whatever reason, it doesn't seem to be getting through to our legislature about the need to invest in our home and community based services and figure out a way to really make sure that those rate increases that they do provide, they have been providing.

It's just that we have a lot of different providers within our home and community based service system.

So it sometimes can be confusing that, hey, I gave a rate increase last year to that.

Why aren't we done talking about this?

But there are a number of different providers within our service system.

So I think there also needs to be a way to ensure that those rate increases, that a certain amount is actually getting to the direct support worker, either through wages or benefits.

And also really, really the need for quality training.

Brown: And when you say those are the individuals who are helping the disabled person rather than the provider, that's what you're getting at.

Pisani: Correct.

Brown: Getting doing the work, doing that, supporting people.

Brown: Okay.

Christine, thank you so much for your time.

I appreciate it.

Pisani: Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Finney: On Monday, the House passed a bill to reduce state income taxes to the tune of about $253 million, with Republican leadership hailing it as the largest income tax cut in state history.

I sat down with House Minority Leader Ilana Rubel on Thursday and asked for her thoughts.

Rubel: I am deeply concerned about this.

I feel it is not fiscally conservative.

I feel it is fiscally reckless.

When the governor walked into the building on the first day of session and he is a very fiscally conservative guy, he proposed $100 million in tax cuts this year.

The legislature now has a package put forth for $400 million in tax cuts.

So four times what was proposed in the governor's budget.

I just don't think we have the money there.

And I don't think we're going to have the money there in upcoming years.

I think this is going to put us in a serious pickle in terms of being able to fund our ongoing needs.

There's a lot of economic uncertainty in the world right now.

Last week we had, you know, the federal spigots cut off.

Idaho depends on $5 billion a year in federal funds.

If that gets cut off, we're going to have to backfill.

We have all kinds of uncertainty regarding trade words and deportation of our agricultural workforce.

There could be all kinds of things happening to us that put us in a position in a year where we are really going to wish we had that $400 million a year coming back, because this is a permanent revenue cut to the state of Idaho.

And I think we're going to be in a position in the very near future where this cut is going to leave us unable to meet basic needs, to pay our police, to pay our public school teachers to repair our roads.

I think fiscal conservatism does not just mean cut, cut, cut.

I think it means making sure you have enough money in the bank to pay your bills.

Finney: Well, the state has made efforts in the last couple of years to refill and even grow the rainy day funds in case of an economic downturn.

The state made pretty considerable efforts to return surplus tax, collections in previous years.

Why do you think this is not the right approach when it seems like the states have enough money on hand?

Rubel: Well, we haven't even said our revenue number for the year.

So, JFAC, the Budget Committee hasn't even figured out what our expected revenue is.

So this feels like we're really jumping the gun to be committing to this huge, permanent revenue cut before we actually know what our revenue is.

We do have money in the rainy day fund, but that's really not intended for ongoing needs.

There's $1 billion in there, which is seems like a lot, but it's actually a pretty small fraction of the state's annual budget.

It is not something that could carry us through year after year of budget shortfalls.

It's not something that would allow us to meet the needs of a growing state and to continue, funding our public schools, funding law enforcement funding that on a long term basis, it's really meant to fix a very short term gap.

If there's a sudden crisis that we overcome in the near term.

So I don't think those those rainy day funds are the answer.

Finney: We've covered the $253 million income tax cut, which has made it through the House now, kind of the next prong in House GOP leadership's proposal is, increasing the grocery tax credit.

What do you make of that proposal?

Rubel: So I support increasing the grocery tax credit, and I support another one that's in the hopper, which is $50 million toward, property tax cuts.

I think those will help ordinary working people.

And funnily enough, those two items add up to the $100 million that the governor proposed.

What is not in that budget is this giant more than $250 million income tax cut.

And that's really where I'm having a lot of heartburn.

That's by far the biggest piece of the pie.

And to me, just as you know, this is going to sound populist or whatever, but it's concerning to me that we are talking about giving five times, more than five times more on this income tax cut, which, by the way, is not what Idahoans have been asking for.

They come to me asking for grocery tax cuts for help on property tax cuts.

But when you do an income tax cut specifically as compared to the other types of cuts, all the money goes to the people at the top.

You look at the impact of who's receiving what under this ginormous $253 million income tax cut.

It's pretty jarring.

You know, your low income people, people in the bottom 20% of earnings are going to get $26.

So what do you do?

There's all this talk about like, oh, they'll be able to solve all the problems with this $26.

That's we get you that's, you know, half a tank of gas.

It's nothing.

But you look at who's getting the real money.

It is the the people in the top 1% are going to be getting over $5,300.

So this income tax cut delivers 206 times more to the people in the top 1% than it does to the low income people who need it.

It is as regressive a form of tax cut as you could ever ask for.

And it is, if we did it in another way, if we did this in grocery tax cut or property tax cut, it would look like that.

Those would get the money much more broadly to the people who actually need it.

So I think it's really unfortunate if we had $400 million this year, which I don't think we do, they have picked the way to dole it out.

That is the least helpful to the working people of Idaho.

It's a giant state feast, for the very wealthiest people in the state, with just crumbs from the table for the people who actually need it.

Rubel: One more tax type I want to make sure that we get to is property taxes.

House speaker Mike Moyle has indicated he wants that $50 million to go into, the pathway that the state has set up in previous years where the state is giving money to the local governments to offset what they would be collecting in taxes, whether that's for homeowners or, specifically for school bonds and levies.

Do you think adding this potential 50 million in property tax relief into that formula is the right way to do it?

Rubel: Well, no, I don't like that formula at all.

That formula was kind of rigged to have winners and losers, and they were very careful in how they set the formula to make sure that Boise schools didn't really benefit from that.

They, they carved out the independent school districts who pre-date the state of Idaho to make sure they get a small fraction of what other districts get.

So, it's really not an equitable formula.

It's certainly not something where the money is ever going to make it to the actual schools.

It will help some property taxpayers, but I don't think it's as equitable a formula as I would like to see.

But I would like to see some money going into property tax relief.

I just don't think that formula is the best way to allocate it.

Rubel: Okay, one final topic for you, the proposed private school tax credit, that has is making its way through the process.

Your caucus has been very opposed to that.

If this program or something like it, there's a slightly different version in the Senate, what would be the most palatable form of a private school choice bill for you?

Rubel: I have no palatable form of...I mean, of a private school, you know, funding bill, a taxpayer expense.

You know, this is again, I find myself and the Democrats as being the last fiscal conservatives in the room, oddly.

But every state that has done this has had it be a complete budget buster.

Every state has started out like Idaho did with.... Oh, don't worry, nothing to see here.

It's just a little $50 million bill.

Which, you know, Arizona thought it was a $60 million bill.

Turned out to be $800, and I think $30 million per year.

Now, it's forced them to have to defund everything they've had to defund their roads, their water infrastructure projects, their community colleges.

That's happened in every state that's done it.

Indiana, Florida, you name it.

And I know they want to say Idaho's the special butterfly that won't have any budget problems from this.

But it always leads to huge budget overruns and we can't afford it.

We have public school buildings that have holes in the roof.

We have, you know, which we're constitutionally obligated to fund, unlike private and religious schools.

So there's no form of siphoning of public dollars into unaccountable private and religious schools that I could get behind, and certainly not given the other budget priorities that I think we need to put first.

Finney: All right, House Minority Leader and Illana Rubel thanks for your time this week.

Rubel: Thank you.

Finney: The House on Friday debated a bill that would allow parents who educate their children outside of the public school system to write off private school expenses on their state taxes.

After two hours of debate, representatives passed that bill 42 to 28, and it heads to the Senate.

Finney: Fuhriman: I think it's fantastic, that a parent can homeschool the child and still send their child to band or send them to, you know, sports, football or dance or whatever it might be, and that they have the ability to do that.

But that is a drain on public resources.

And if that child is receiving this credit and going to a private school, but then also enrolling in those activities, how does that not put a strain on our public school system?

Wendy Horman: I would just like to point out that this bill does not send one dime to a private school.

This bill sends money to families to make choices for their children, where they believe they will experience the best learning environment.

If I thought for one minute that this bill would harm public schools or children, I would not be standing here with it.

Finney: Joining me to discuss that bill is House Majority Leader Jason Monks.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Jason Monks: Thanks for having me, I appreciate it.

Finney: I'm sure you're very happy to have that bill off the floor.

You've been a pretty big supporter of it.

Monks: Yeah.

Yeah, we've been working on that bill, for years, actually, a lot of years.

I mean, you heard from Representative Vander Woude, he's been here for, I think he said 17 years and he's been working on it himself.

And I know Representative Horman’s been working on it for a dozen years as well.

It's, something we worked on for a long time.

I've been integral in that for the last several years as well.

Finney: As we listened to the debate over the last several years, like you've referenced, a lot of folks will argue that we already have a lot of school choices within a lot of choices within the public school system.

Why is it so important for the states to expand that umbrella of school choice to also cover private options outside of the public system?

Monks: You know, everybody says we've got great choice and we do.

Idaho does a fantastic job of choice, but it's still all under one umbrella.

It still falls underneath the department of Ed.

It's still government education, and sometimes it just doesn't work for everybody.

I've got family that it's not worked for.

I got family that it worked great for.

We've got great teachers, great schools, but it doesn't work for everybody.

And we're trying to provide an option for people that it doesn't work for.

And this bill will allow us to do that.

And we're giving parents some more control over where their kids can go to school.

The other thing, too, not every not every rural district has options.

You go to some of these small towns and they have no other option.

It is one school there and that's it.

The beauty of this bill is it reimburses expenses.

And so if parents have expenses, they want to try a micro pod, with a few other families, they can do that.

And this this bill will allow them those choices.

So I think it's important that it's we always look at it in this lens of, of rural, urban and, you know, it will only work for urban.

Actually, this works beautifully for the rural districts as well.

Finney: Another criticism that we've heard is folks characterizing this program as wealth redistribution.

They say that folks are getting other people's tax money back.

This is structured as a refundable credit that's reimbursing parents for their expenses.

But if those parents don't have any tax liability that they would owe to the state and they are getting money back to cover those expenses, is that not the government paying for, what these parents are taking advantage of?

Monks: You know, we pay roughly $10,000 per kid to be educated within the public school system.

If we take a fraction of that and give it to parents to another option, it actually saves the state money.

But I find it a little disingenuous from a lot of the people that are complaining about redistribution of wealth.

Were the biggest advocates for the launch program, which was nothing more than redistribution of wealth using their criteria.

Some of the same advocates wanted to increase the deduction for income for child care that we passed a couple of years ago.

The farmers that get so much, so much benefits, from not paying any taxes on their combines or anything else that they're purchasing.

And yeah, I found it a little disingenuous that they're complaining about redistribution of wealth when they're the benefits or beneficiaries of a lot of a lot of, redistribution back from the city, and from the state, I guess, not from the city.

Finney: We'll move on to another issue, which is a bill the House has passed as well.

This is the, what you guys are calling the largest income tax cut in state history, $253 million.

Tell me about that bill and why that amount is the right amount.

We've heard some concerns.

The governor said we had room for 100 million, you guys.

Speaker Moyle specifically says we want to do four times that.

Tell me why.

Monks: Well, we always want to cut more taxes.

We'd love to cut it even further than that.

I think this is a responsible cut right now.

It is an ongoing cut, which is great.

Which means next year the total will be $500 million.

In 4 years, it's $1 billion in savings for the state.

One of the things that I think is frustrating, when we hear that we don't have the money to do that, it's, well we have all the money that we need to do our programs.

As evidenced by the fact that we have surpluses every year.

We need to give this money back to the individuals, back to the people who are paying these taxes.

I would much rather have the money in their hands than in the government's hands.

We will spend it and that's not a that's not a dig on the folks in our Appropriations Committee.

That's their job, though.

They will spend every penny that is that is in the coffers.

I would rather give it back to the people and let them spend it.

And I think we always look at it this in a static, static environment.

We say, well, it's $250 million that we don't have now we're going to get this amount back.

And more economies that have great tax policy thrive and generate more revenue.

And that's what we forget.

And oftentimes every time taxes have been cut significantly, you've seen growth.

We'll get more money back on the back end of this from a state will have more money for education, more money for transportation.

If we have lower taxes.

Finney: One of the, one of those revenue streams that's been growing has been sales tax collections, specifically online sales tax collections are pushed into a property tax relief system.

You guys are planning to invest more in some property tax relief, right?

And to be clear, the state doesn't collect property taxes.

But you guys do send some local some local governments back some money to cover what they are collecting.

Monks: Correct.

We've, you've been trained well, I guess by us, we always.

I know he's he's good at that.

We send a lot of money back to the the locals in the local taxing districts from sales tax.

I thinks it's about 12% of all sales tax collected goes back to the locals.

And, you know, we're not the ones setting these budgets, but yet the property taxes are rising and the people want us to do something about it.

And so we figured that there's several ways that we can do it.

We can pay off the, you know, the, I guess the local levies from the levies.

Well, we can do it that way.

And that's the best way, I think, to do it, because we do have a constitutional responsibility to fund education.

And about a third of your taxes locally go to bonds and levies for schools.

So if we're going to invest anywhere with state dollars in the locals, I would rather it go to that particular process.

And so the more money we put into our formula that we generated in House Bill 292, the more we get property tax relief and at the same time, when we're paying off those property taxes, we're generating some revenue streams for local school districts to be able to do some facility maintenance as well.

So the more money we put in there, the more money that comes out of the bottom and allows them to be able to build the schools and fix the roofs and whatever problems they need, they can do that.

Finney: The, the state, the formula for distributions for sales taxes is a it's lengthy.

It's about six pages.

I've read it many times.

The money at the end goes through that formula.

Why is that the place to be doing it, rather than send that revenue to the local governments at the head of the formula, rather than.

My question is, rather than paying off bonds and levies, would the local governments not have to do those bonds and levies if they were getting more from the state?

Monks: Well.

You know, that's a that's a fair question.

And remember, there's two sides of that with the property tax.

Some of that is going to the cities, to the counties, to the fire, the fire districts.

That's a whole nother side of the equation.

The school administration or the school district, they don't get those sales tax directly.

They get property tax moneys.

So they also get distributions from our general fund.

But it's not through that sales tax distribution formula necessarily.

That goes to cities, goes to, you know, library districts, goes to counties and all that.

And so yeah, we've been putting more money into that side of the equation constantly.

Even last year, I think when we had a, reduction and we had.

Finney: We are going to have to leave it there, but we'll keep an eye on these bills as they as they move forward.

Representative Jason Monks, thank you so much for your time.

Monks: Thank you much.

Narrator: Presentation of Idaho Reports on Idaho Public Television is made possible through the generous support of the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the great state of Idaho.

By the Friends of Idaho Public Television and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.