Dixon,Woodward speak at town hall

BONNERS FERRY — State Legislators Sage Dixon and Jim Woodward conducted a town hall event on Saturday, Feb. 6 at the Providence Bible Presbyterian Church to discuss legislation they’re working on and answering concerns from constituents.

The town hall began with the Pledge of Allegiance and a prayer by the Presbyterian Pastor. Dixon and Woodward quickly went directly to legislation business to discuss their work in Boise.

Dixon detailed the cutoff date to submit bill drafts as Friday, Feb. 5. Any potential bills must be submitted by the deadline to be available for reading by Idaho’s standing committees.

“They asked us to stop having bills drafted last Friday, yesterday because of the workload that goes onto the bill drafters,” Dixon said, “so everybody is getting their ideas in, and that took up a lot of my week because I got 10 or eleven ideas of my own.”

As Dixon began to discuss House Bill 1, he discussed the concerns with the emergency powers of Gov. Brad Little, stating that emergency powers were outlined for emergencies such as natural disasters that have limited time, where the pandemic lasted longer, and the legislatures want to put some limitations on the governor.

House Bill 1 states, “The legislation also limits the length of emergency disaster declarations to a maximum of 30 days unless extended by a legislative concurrent resolution.”

Dixon did not believe the governor extended his power beyond what he is granted based on the statutes but there needed to be some realignment of emergency powers.

“For the most part, were all in statute, but there seemed to be a glaring issue with how elected representatives of people interacted in something that spread across the state,” Dixon said.

The lawmakers quickly discussed potential tax relief propositions such as a grocery sales tax or broad income tax relief.

“We should see something coming out relatively soon that will be a reduction in taxes,” Dixon said.

There was a discussion about snowmobile tag fees to help with road and trail grooming. The fees are a user tax, but the snowmobile groups have advocated for the tax to relieve the burden of damaged trails.

“A lot of the members of the committee aren’t happy with that [fee increases] because an increased fee is looked at as an increased tax,” Dixon stated.

Woodward spoke on the state’s budget and breaking projections of surplus funds that weren’t anticipated. He began to discuss that plans with the surplus should be used based on governors’ proposals and taking a balanced budget approach.

“Put some money away, make some capital investments, and also provide some tax relief,” Woodward said, “the form that might take is some transportation projects around the state, broadband which were working with Sen. Crabtree.”

Woodward brought up road maintenance that fuel tax, registration fees and title fees help fund road maintenance but typically, general funds don’t go into road maintenance.

Woodward commented, “I think a fuel tax is a fair tax” because heavier vehicles that do more damage to roads also consume more fuel.

According to Woodward, there is a proposal to increase the fuel tax by 4 cents, but currently is at 32 cents, but if adjusted from 1976, the fuel tax would be 45 cents.

“We have fallen behind because it’s always hard to raise taxes,” Woodward said, “maybe if we’re reducing some taxes, maybe it’s acceptable,”

The public expressed concerns that out-of-state residents who recreate in Idaho tear up the roads and don’t contribute taxes to fixing road maintenance issues.

Proudly discussing his father’s work as a civil engineer and his related degree, Woodward enthusiastically spoke that he is working on some new construction codes.

There was much discussion about the grocery tax credit, and Woodward said he would advocate for an increase in that credit, instead of eliminating the grocery sales tax because many people from other states purchase food in Idaho from tourism, and that would deplete revenue if the sales tax were eliminated.

A comment made to Woodward stated, “I’d rather see it go away, do I get interest on my money you’re gonna hold for a year?”

Another comment by a resident identified as Linda stated, “Gov. Little sold some of his land to the Chinese to do mining, and that is dirtying the water system.”

Woodward quickly shut down the comment as entirely false and explained water codes and working to correct Idaho’sdrinking water primacy.

There were a lot of concerns about supplemental levies having odd voting days.

“We’re trying to condense that [voting days] like I just said to May and November,” Dixon said.

In closing discussions, Woodward and Dixon stated that there would be a protocol to make sure bills get passed or an override process if the governor vetoes a bill.