The House State Affairs Committee has voted along party lines to send HB 189, Rep. Jason Monks’ bill to prohibit “interference” by government in elections, to the House’s amending order, after two days of hearings brought up numerous problems with the revised proposal.

Rob Winslow, executive director of the Idaho School Administrators Association, said the bill as written appears to prohibit a school superintendent from speaking at a local Rotary Club about an upcoming school bond issue. Kathy Griesmyer, policy director for the ACLU of Idaho, said the bill would violate constitutional guarantees of free speech for government employees, and would “prohibit any public official from endorsing any candidate. Sheriffs could no longer speak out on the upcoming jail bond. … The farmer who serves as a highway district commissioner could not comment on the need for transportation funding.”

Karen Echeverria, executive director of the Idaho School Boards Association, said the bill could make it illegal for a school board to pass a resolution supporting an upcoming bond or levy, and would prohibit a district from sending out educational materials, such as a Q-and-A, to its patrons about an upcoming measure. “For years our patrons have asked us for more transparency when it comes to bonds and levies,” she told the committee. “They want to know what their tax dollars will be spent on prior to an election. They want specifics. ... Our patrons want information about why they are needed. … This legislation would ask us to do exactly the opposite, to limit our transparency.”

Bond attorneys said the bill conflicts with existing laws that govern challenges to elections, allowing anyone, even someone who’s not an elector, to challenge an election result on the basis that government agencies or officials interfered, with no time limit, even long after the election’s occurred, and get the election result overturned.

Monks said he acknowledges that problem with his bill, and is willing to amend it to add a time limit. “I think that’s something that can definitely be addressed in general orders,” he said. “I think this bill is needed.” He said it would “obviously … not be appropriate for me to use government money and resources for me to be out there campaigning for myself. And that’s what we do with bond and levy elections, we go out there and we campaign.”

Rep. Priscilla Giddings, R-White Bird, asked Idaho Secretary of State Lawerence Denney if he’d be willing to work with those with concerns about the bill to revise it to work better with Idaho’s election laws, and he said yes. “My concern with sending this to general orders is that it doesn’t give the key players that are in this room right now an opportunity to provide their valuable perspectives to make this bill and to make the law better,” Giddings said. She moved to hold the bill in committee for one week, but Rep. Joe Palmer, R-Meridian, spoke against that idea. “If we were to hold this past March 7, that is past our transmittal date,” he said, suggesting it would be too late to pass the bill.

The committee rejected Giddings’ motion on a voice vote, then voted along party lines to send the bill to the full House for amendments.