Idaho State District 26 Democrats Reps. Ned Burns Sen. and Ron Taylor, and Republican Rep. Jack Nelsen met with the Times-News Editorial Board on Dec. 12 to talk about the state’s 2024 legislative session.
With topics of the LAUNCH program, protecting libraries and wanting to help defending local communities, they seemed to be going in with a clear focus.
Defending local governments
Taylor, elected in 2022, said he feels more prepared heading into the legislative session this year after spending his summer preparing to represent District 26 and trying to figure out how to maintain freedoms that Idahoans need.
“As a legislature, we need to trust our local governments to do what they need to do, and give them the latitude to do just that,” Taylor said. “We need to take care of the state; we don’t need to be micromanaging.”
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In agreement with Taylor, Nelsen said it was important for people to remember and read the bottom of a bill instead of the top half because it could change the way they vote.
“I’m a local government guy came up through P&Z, CSI, different things,” Nelsen said. “I have huge respect for our local communities. They’re not an accident.
“Nobody’s going to straighten things out better by themselves than local government. Sometimes it’s a little messy, the old sausage making analogy, but local people have plenty of common sense, they do a nice job.”
Burns said with the amount of issues that are happening, we need to focus on the important things and not focus on issues that are very popular in May.
“I think that we’ve got really big issues that we got to be dealing with. And instead, we’re mired down in, you know, niche social issues and minutia and whether or not Oregon should be a part of Idaho,” Burns said. “We’ve got a lot of water issues that we need to be dealing with. We’ve got crumbling school facilities all across the state that we need to be dealing with, we’ve got an extremely small, sort of unallocated surplus of funds this year, we need to spend that very, very smartly.”
He added that he believes micromanaging local governments can come from fear of loss of control and not wanting to allow decisions being made because they might disagree with them.
The polarity of two parties
With question of how we can fight polarity between two parties, Taylor was the first to answer.
“There’s that perception of, ‘oh, you have an R or D, you’re either righteous or demonic,’ — so I think for me, there’s a disconnect in the fact that people who are hoping to be represented, look at it as you’re a public servant and the people who get elected look at it as, ‘wow, okay, now I can push my agenda.’” Taylor said.
Nelsen added that many times people don’t talk about the issue, they’ll attack somebody instead. The bottom line, for him is figuring out how to address an issue.
“How do we solve problems? I mean it wouldn’t be a decision if there weren’t two sides.
“.. I think a lot of people that are good legislators that I respect, their first thing is not just what’s good about this bill but what’s the bad side.”
Burns said that he thinks it has to do with how we become informed and how that’s changed over the years, specifically remembering how thick the Sunday paper was growing up in Twin Falls.
With social media now a big factor in communities, he’s looking to help make the policies in Idaho and that means working across the aisle with the other political parties.
“If we’re going to create good policy,” Burns said, “we’ve got to work together.”
The LAUNCH Program
“For me, the LAUNCH program is really important. Not as legislation, not as just another education scholarship program to encourage kids to go on, but it’s that respect for the trades,” Nelsen said. “You get to give back again to our community we’re in.
He also said there’s a “clawback” on the LAUNCH scholarships. If a student flunks a class or they change majors, the state will want the money back.
Burns said, adding to Nelsen’s point, two-thirds of student makeup at CSI is female and not enough graduating men are continuing their education after high school.
“Idaho LAUNCH gives an opportunity for young men to also go and learn a very valuable, very necessary, very potentially money-making skill,” Burns said.
The attack on libraries
Earlier in the conversation, Burns said he expects to see more heavy-handed approaches to government this year, being related to what books people are allowed to read and what medical treatments people can get based on their gender.
“I think this is the third year in a row that we will be hearing bills on how we’ve got to protect our kids from pornography and libraries,” Burns said. “There is not one single bit of pornography in any library in this state. Pornography fails the Miller Doctrine. There’s not a single book at the Twin Falls Public Library that will fail Miller.”
He later added that if a kid is going to the library to find any of this information, then you have “won” as a parent.
“..They’re not going to their phone, they’re not going to the library, or they’re not going to the internet, you have absolutely won; you have done everything right”
Taylor said that it bothered him that there is confusion of words “indoctrination” and “education.”
“Our schools and our libraries do not indoctrinate, they educate. They let people have the ability to look at more than one subject to think themselves,” Taylor said. “When you take a child out of that environment, and put them in a room and say, ‘this is what you’re learning, this is what you’re learning,’ and there’s no accountability for that? For me, that’s indoctrination.”
Monica Carrillo-Casas is the Hispanic life and affairs reporter at the Times-News. Carrillo-Casas can be contacted at monica.carrillo-casas@magicvalley.com or at 208-735-3246.
Monica Carrillo-Casas is the Hispanic life and affairs reporter at the Times-News. Carrillo-Casas can be contacted at monica.carrillo-casas@magicvalley.com or at 208-735-3246.