'Fireplace forum' tackles education, taxes

SANDPOINT — District 1 legislators focused on tax relief and public education during Saturday's "Fireplace Forum," highlighting the impacts of a $50 million private school rebate program and $253 million in income tax cuts from the 2025 legislative session. 

Rep. Mark Sauter, R-Sandpoint, and Sen. Jim Woodward, R-Sagle, told the roughly 75 attendees that these decisions affected funding for infrastructure, emergency preparation and traditional conservative fiscal policies.

Public education was a hot topic of conversation with several comments asking about the impact of House Bill 93, which created a $50 million tax rebate system for private school and homeschool students. Anybody at 300% of the federal poverty level or below will be eligible on a first-come basis. 

The impact of House Bill 93 may not be known for several years, Sauter and Woodward said, either in terms of its impact on public education or to the state budget. It could be that additional money may be needed to fund the program depending on how many families opt to participate.

"The $50 million was not directly pulled from public education, but it's pulled from everywhere else," Sauter said. "It's still money. It still takes money away from roads, public safety, you name it."

The financial impact is just one factor, the District 1A legislator said. 

"There's another consequence of this and that is the number of kids that may switch over and go to a private school because of the formula we have now for how we pay for education," Sauter added. "There may be less dollars available for the schools because of their enrollment."

The decision to pass additional tax relief had ripple effects on other legislation and on the session itself. While the original idea called for $50 million in income tax relief and $50 million in property tax relief, the actual legislation approved $253 million in income tax relief.

"That's a quarter of a billion dollars that is not available for roads and other infrastructure," Woodward said.

To make room in the budget, that meant changes. Instead of saving money for the upcoming wildfire season, no money was put aside. Instead of putting money aside for "rainy day" funds in the event of an economic downturn, that didn't happen.

"And we didn't do that because we had already made these other commitments where we'd reduce the amount of money we had to work with," Woodward said. "So you can see that cutting taxes does have an impact as to what we can do. And so we moved away from some of our traditional Idaho conservative actions we take, and that was because we forced ourselves into that tax cut."

Both Woodward and Sauter said the sheer number of bills presented during the session is increasing, making it difficult to wade through them.

As a citizen legislature, state representatives and senators spend three months of the year in session at the state capital in Boise.

In North Idaho, there are 15 legislators split between the Idaho House of Representatives and the Idaho Senate. Unlike the past, the region's legislators aren't always united. And while two-thirds of the state's legislators are Republican, the District 1 legislators said differences between more mainstream members of the party and more conservative members can pose challenges.

"I think just the point there to emphasize is what it does for the Republican leadership," Woodward said. "Sometimes they're walking on eggshells because they're trying to work with two different groups, and that's a challenge, that divided caucus."

Both Sauter and Woodward noted the presence of lobbyists, who come to the sessions with prepared bills, some from "bill farms" outside the region to problems that may or may not exist in the states. An example was a bill from the activism organization Young Americans for Liberty which sought to eliminate the state's sales tax on food.

Under its current method where taxpayers are given a credit on their income tax return, Idaho's visitors pay the tax with funds going to offset their impact on state programs and resources, the pair said.

The legislators encouraged district residents to contact them on issues and voice their opinion on what they want to see happen or legislation they feel is necessary — or not.

"The most important lobby interest group there is, is you," Sauter said. "It's the folks in the room. For me, I like to call home."

Sauter said he will reach out to various groups or individuals, such as the district's school superintendents or local law enforcement, to get a sense of how proposed legislation will impact Bonner and Boundary counties.

"For instance, we had a bill that talked about license plates on the front of cars," he told the 75 or so people gathered for the Saturday town hall. "That sounds pretty innocuous and maybe not a big deal, but both of our sheriffs took the time to text me about that and said it was really important to them."

Their input helped him decide how to vote on the bill, the representative said.

Votes are not based on what lobbyists may want or support from various lobbying groups in hopes of scoring a better grade or score.

"Idaho has become somewhat of a petri dish for political experiments," Woodward said. "We need to make sure that we maintain control of our decisions here in the state of Idaho."

Some legislators have taken a different approach, such as members of the "Gang of Eight," who have committed to following guidance from groups such as Make Liberty Win.

"If you have the privilege of serving on the Finance Committee, where you get to help make those decisions, you need to actively participate and not just go there and be the 'no' person," Woodward said.

The pair also brought up "bill farms," which pull legislation from other areas or craft it as part of a lobbying effort and attempt to implement it in multiple states. While good ideas can come from outside the state, the key is determining whether the issue it attempts to address is an "Idaho problem" or not, Woodward and Sauter said.

The 2025 legislative session saw one legislator bring 50 bills to committee, another brought more than 70. If every legislator brought similar numbers, the Legislature would be tackling more than 6,000 pieces of legislation every year and could have to switch to a full-time legislative body.

Possible solutions discussed ranged from limiting the number of bills each legislator can introduce to requiring greater transparency of who is writing the bills and where they are coming from.

"There's some bills that are home-grown and other bills that come from 2,000 or 3,000 miles away," Sauter said.

While a free flow of ideas between the states is a good thing, Woodward said the Legislature needs to make sure the problems addressed are Idaho problems and that voters have full transparency on legislators' actions. 

Other topics discussed are Idaho's new flag law, which limits what types of flags governmental entities can display. The issue is affecting many entities, including Bonners Ferry, the northernmost border town to Canada, which has flown both the American and Canadian flags for decades.

"That's not something that someone (in Idaho) generated, Woodward said. "Idaho solutions for Idaho problems — that's my guiding principle. And that's not what we're seeing in a lot of these. It's just some people think that by the more bills they pass, the more they're doing. But if there's not a problem and we don't need to necessarily pass legislation, we can pass a budget and go home."