LEGISLATIVE UPDATE | WEEK SIX
FEBRUARY 10 - 14, 2025
Week six is in the books. While the challenges of a hectic week make it difficult to summarize, here’s our best shot. Let’s start by saying it was a big week for tax policy. The House’s child tax credit/private school bill, HB 93, passed out of the Senate Local Government and Tax Committee and is destined for robust debate on the Senate floor. The same is true for HB 40, which supporters are calling the most significant income tax cut in state history. On Friday, on a 61-6-3 vote, the House approved HB 231, which calls for an increase in the annual credit for taxes paid on groceries. Also of note this week, the Senate introduced a joint resolution urging state and federal agencies to think about new water storage options, including supporting cloud seeding and rebuilding the Teton Dam, which breached in 1976, claimed 11 lives, and caused major damage to the downstream communities of Sugar City, Rexburg, and Wilford.
Yes, the print deadline for non-privileged bills arrived at Monday's close of business. That doesn’t mean we won’t see intriguing new policy ideas in the coming weeks. In fact, the House Ways & Means Committee met twice mid-week and greenlighted 14 new bills. This committee also started meeting earlier this session than in past sessions, and last month injected more than a dozen new bills into the pipeline. Why is this worth mentioning? It illustrates the control House Speaker Mike Moyle exerts over daily operations. Under his new process, any bill to be considered by Ways & Means must get prior approval from the Speaker, the bill’s sponsor, and chairman of the germane committee.
Getting beyond the print deadline also means legislators will focus more on debating proposed legislation and be more patient as public interest and participation stretch committee hearings. Two hearings this week required overflow seating as citizens and interested parties testified on tax credits for private schools and HB 138, the bill we flagged last week that places guardrails on the Medicaid Expansion program. The House Health and Welfare Committee – amid opposition from physicians, patients and advocates – voted 8-7 on Wednesday to send the bill to the floor. At the same time, we are still a bit surprised by the lack of public comment from friends and foes of tax cuts during a Senate hearing Thursday. Not a single person testified on the income tax cut bill, which advanced out of committee on a party-line vote. It’s just rare for any tax cut bill to escape public scrutiny like that.
In JFAC this morning, members got down to budget setting and adding line items for “enhancement budgets,” a critical step as they scramble to balance the budget and manage agency line-item spending requests. It also marks the start of clearing the budget setting logjam created during the prolonged disagreement over state employee pay raises. Expect the committee’s work on spending to intensify during February’s final weeks.
Now, some thoughts from the observation deck. Activity on the House floor is picking up as the body continues to efficiently navigate its bill calendar. Not so much on the other side of the Rotunda as a long list of bills continue to bloat the Senate calendar. That said, the Senate dipped into the amending order for the first time, signaling that stakeholders are coming together to negotiate fixes or bring clarity to bill language identified as problematic at the committee level. House maintenance budgets were introduced Friday morning and are on reading calendars for debate next week. We’ve also noted a slight shift in the overall Capital vibe. The cheeriness and politeness that defined the first month has given way to the stress and tension that comes with the job’s long hours, intense learning and tough decision making. It’s normal, we think, and ultimately part of the rhythm of every legislative session.
