Local Reps. Mickelsen, Wheeler talk Legislature at virtual townhall

Rep. Stephanie Mickelsen, R-Idaho Falls, and Rep. Josh Wheeler, R-Ammon, spoke at a Stand Up for Idaho town hall Wednesday.

The representatives joined via video conference and talked briefly on how the legislative session is going and then answered questions from audience members about specific bills and issues.

Topics included Medicaid, vaccine mandates, warning labels on agricultural products, a U.S. constitutional convention and the difficult experience of being a legislator.

According to its website, Stand Up for Idaho is a “nonpartisan, nondenominational nonprofit” organization to “advocate for the common good, well-being, and civic betterment for Idaho citizens, and for the rights and liberties guaranteed (to) Idaho citizens.”

Wheeler

Wheeler said he currently serves on legislative committees for health and welfare, business, and local government.

“We are going to see hundreds of millions of dollars in tax relief thanks to the efforts of this Legislature,” Wheeler said.

“I’m also encouraged that we were able to pass some legislation that I think will end up as indirect property tax relief,” Wheeler said. “It basically is a fund to push a little additional money towards school facility funds in our rural school districts.”

Wheeler said he personally has worked on several “strategic deregulation” items this session. He said he was able to pass one bill which consolidates the master and journeyman electrical license.

“We had electricians who had gone all the way through all the effort, education, years of experience to be master electricians and they were also still being required to pay for and maintain a journeyman license,” Wheeler said.

Wheeler said he also worked on some legislation to streamline the inspection process for buildings, requiring cities or counties to provide inspections within 48 hours or the citizen can go to a third party for inspection.

“Normally our cities and counties are pretty good about this kind of stuff, but we had some instances where inspections were taking between four to six months,” Wheeler said.

Wheeler said a lot of legislation also came through the Health and Welfare Committee, including House Bill 345 which was signed into law by Gov. Brad Little Wednesday. As reported by the Idaho Capital Sun, the law sets work requirements for “able-bodied” Idahoans on Medicaid and gives Idahoans eligible for Medicaid expansion access to tax credits to buy insurance on the state’s health care exchange.

“That is going to really modernize our Medicaid system and look at moving to a managed care system, which should help us potentially rein in costs,” Wheeler said. “And as we get the contracts and everything structured correctly, I think it’s going to end with better outcomes for our patients, our citizens and also be a net benefit for our hospitals and our providers. But that's going to take some work.”

Wheeler said in the interim between sessions he will be on the Medicaid task force, which will make recommendations for contracts.

Doug Toomer, who founded Stand Up for Idaho, asked Wheeler about an Article V convention — a part of the U.S. Constitution allowing states to convene and amend the Constitution.

As reported by the Idaho Capital Sun, the Idaho House voted against two resolutions regarding the constitutional convention earlier in March, House Concurrent Resolution 9 and House Concurrent Resolution 10. Respectively, the bills outlined a process for the Idaho Legislature to select and remove Idaho’s delegates and call for a constitutional convention.

Wheeler voted for both resolutions. Toomer asked Wheeler what his rationale for this was.

“I heard from a lot of constituents on that issue, Doug, and people are very passionate about that on both sides,” Wheeler said.

“I, in the end, felt it was more risky for us to not do something — you know, we see the way our national Congress is kind of on a runaway track with spending, we see that there seems to be nothing that will convince them to rein in national debt,” Wheeler said.

Audience members asked Wheeler why he voted against several other bills including House Bill 135 proposing to restrict publicly funded aid for unauthorized immigrants and Senate Bill 1023 expanding a ban on “medical mandates” by private business and state and local governments.

Wheeler said he opposed the bills as he felt they were too broad or unclear in definitions. He worried HB 135 could have a “high possibility of American children, infants, unborn children even, not receiving food, prenatal care and post-natal care.” He worried SB 1023 would interfere with the rights of businesses to refuse service.

Toomer also asked Wheeler why he supported House Bill 303, which clarifies when a U.S. manufacturer or seller of agricultural product “meets its common law duty to warn consumers or the public,” according to the bill’s statement of purpose. Toomer said he worried the law gave pesticide companies immunity.

“It’s important that we, wherever we’re able to, protect our domestic ability to manufacture those type of products because it otherwise almost becomes a national security issue where our agricultural industry has to end up getting these products from China or other, let's just call inimical countries,” Wheeler said.

“There’s been such an uptick in what appears to be frivolous or malevolent lawsuits against those types of products,” Wheeler said.

Mickelsen

Mickelsen said the biggest issues she’s been working on are mobile driver's license, transparency bills for legislators and state officials, special taxing district problems, and power companies “socializing” the cost of big power users.

“We’ve been trying to work furiously to get something done before we end session,” Mickelsen said.

She said companies such as Micron, Meta, and Google are interested in building more facilities in Idaho.

“At some point, I think we need to have a conversation about how much growth do we want to have and how much should be subsidized by either the Idaho taxpayers or Idaho ratepayers,” Mickelsen said.

Audience members asked Mickelsen why she voted against House Joint Resolution 1. As reported by Idaho Education News, this resolution would repeal a provision in the Idaho Constitution which currently allows the state to require public school attendance between ages 6 and 18, unless they are in alternate education such as private school or home-school.

HJR1 would replace it with a new provision guaranteeing the right to privately educate children “without government regulation,” according to Idaho Education News.

“I think that it’s fine for parents to have choice and do whatever they want,” Mickelsen said. “But I do have a little bit of a problem because one of the things that I think has made our country phenomenal has been this education component that we educate all children.”

An audience member also asked Mickelsen about SB 1023, as she voted against it as Wheeler had.

“(The bill) basically said your private property rights, your reputational rights as a business or anything, mean nothing and the individual person has the supreme right here,” Mickelsen said.

The audience member then asked whether Mickelsen if she would support legislation “that will protect us from being mandated to have a vaccine in lieu of losing our job.”

“Absolutely,” Mickelsen said. “If you don’t want to be vaccinated, I think you have every right to it. But I do think if you came to work looking sick, it would be fair for the employer to say go home until you’re over the measles or whatever it is because I don’t want the entire crew sick.”

“I think we’ve sometimes lost the balance ... individuals have a right and if they choose not to get vaccinated, they get to suffer the consequences of whatever that is,” Mickelsen said.

The same audience member later asked if legislation could be put in place to stop chemtrails, which is a conspiracy theory concerning airplane vapor trails or contrails.

Toomer also asked Mickelsen about HB 303 as he previously asked Wheeler — clarifying when agricultural business “meets its common law duty to warn consumers or the public” — which Toomer was concerned gave businesses immunity.

“They had all these lawsuits and the EPA and several other very trusted organizations have over the years done multiple studies,” Mickelsen said. “There’s just a lot of misinformation out there.”

“They’re starting to lay off people and they might shut down that mine,” Mickelsen said. “It’s very critical, not only for the economy of Idaho, but for crops across this country.”

Responding to other questions, Mickelsen also spoke on the ballot initiative process in Idaho and the general experience of being a legislator.

“I hadn’t understood it until I was on this side of the fence — but one of the things you start to learn — it doesn’t matter what initiative is passed by the people, the Legislature can get rid of it the second they don’t like it,” Mickelsen said.

“Short of having (the) Legislature run a constitutional amendment change, the Legislature can change anything,” Mickelsen said.

“The experience that we have over here is unlike any experience I’ve had in my entire life,” “I can’t tell you — it’s probably the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do because you’re trying to do the right thing. You’re trying to take care of the people in your communities and sometimes that isn’t so black and white.”

“Sometimes you’ve got to give some of these people a little bit of grace and little bit of understanding that they really try their hardest,” Mickelsen said. “You may not agree with them, but they’re doing the best they can for the district that they represent.”