Business Lobbyists Praise Backing From Gop-Dominated Legislature

After plunging dramatically a year ago, the support business got from the nation’s most Republican Legislature rebounded in 1997, according to Idaho’s largest business lobby.

And even though the composite rating the 105 lawmakers received from the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry fell short of the 1995 record level, the association prevailed on all but one of the propositions it based its assessment on.

“There were some tough issues, complex problems that needed answers - worker’s compensation reform, improvements in unclaimed property laws, drug and alcohol testing,” association President Steve Ahrens said. The assessment set the composite rating of both houses at 81.8 percent. That was considerably higher than the 75.3 percent recorded during the 1996 election year session but still well below the record 87.7 percent the business lobby gave the Legislature in 1995.

Before the reapportionment election of 1992 that ended the six-year ascendancy of Democrats in the Legislature, the composite average for business support was below 75 percent.

Ahrens blamed 1996’s slide on business opposition to various tax bills lawmakers backed as they searched for cash to finance local property tax relief. Business feared those shifts could be destabilizing.

Last November, the GOP picked up even more ground in both chambers, leaving Democrats with only five of the 35 Senate seats and 11 of the 70 House seats. That election created the biggest Republican legislative majority since the 1920s.

Separately, the Senate rating was 83.1 percent this winter compared to 78.8 percent a year ago, while the House stood at 81.2 percent compared to 73.5 percent in 1996.

Of the 18 bills the association had on its issues list, its position prevailed on 17 in the Legislature. The only loser involved a controversial proposal requiring compensation of private property owners for government action that impacts their land. The association supported it, and the House passed it. But it died in a Senate committee.

Republican Gov. Phil Batt handed the business lobby another setback when he vetoed, generally for technically reasons, a property tax deferral bill that the association supported for low-income elderly homeowners.

Among the bills backed by the association and lawmakers were an increase in the state minimum wage, drastic change that critics warn will make initiatives more difficult and a tax credit for expenditures to improve riparian habitat on private land. Opposed by business and killed by the Legislature was a shift of school support from property to sales tax.