Cigarette tax stays at 57 cents

BOISE – Over protests that the Legislature was breaking a promise and compromising its integrity, the House passed legislation Tuesday to keep Idaho’s cigarette tax at 57 cents a pack for the next two years.

Without the bill, the tax would drop back down to 28 cents a pack on July 1. The current national average is 84 cents a pack, and Idaho’s current 57 cents is the lowest cigarette tax among neighboring states.

The bill passed on a 45-25 vote, with three Panhandle lawmakers joining the dissenters. They were Reps. Eric Anderson, R-Priest Lake; Phil Hart, R-Athol; and Dick Harwood, R-St. Maries.

“I promised on the campaign trail that I would do what the previous Legislature promised,” Anderson told the House. “It’s a conflict … promising on the one hand and lying on the other.”

Rep. Ken Andrus, R-Lava Hot Springs, said, “Yes we need the money … but I don’t have a lot of faith in our success if we compromise our honor and integrity.”

Two years ago, in a last-minute compromise at the end of the longest legislative session in history, lawmakers voted to raise the cigarette tax just for two years. That vote came as they also agreed to raise Idaho’s sales tax from 5 percent to 6 percent for two years. The sales tax increase is being allowed to expire as scheduled on July 1.

Rep. Lenore Barrett, R-Challis, said, “If you can justify keeping this tax on cigarettes, you can also justify keeping the sales tax.”

But other lawmakers disagreed. Rep. Mike Mitchell, D-Lewiston, said, “We didn’t know two years ago when we did that what we would face as far as the drought. There’s a lot of things that change in two years’ time.” The real issue, he said, is, “What does the state need now?”

Rep. George Sayler, D-Coeur d’Alene, said his primary campaign promise was to “seek proper funding for education. I believe that was the primary reason that I won.”

Sayler said that’s why he supported the increased cigarette tax two years ago, and he’d have supported making it permanent from the start. “I believe we need the funding, it cuts down smoking and it reduces health care costs,” Sayler said.

Rep. Jim Clark, R-Hayden Lake, the sponsor of HB 386, noted that the bill only extends the tax for two more years. “Our promise is still alive,” he said.

He also noted that the tax would allow Idaho to meet cash-flow obligations for a multimillion-dollar southern Idaho water settlement and also fund North Idaho water projects. “The emergency, obviously, is water,” he said.

Some representatives said they opposed the bill because it didn’t also try to impose Idaho’s cigarette tax on Indian reservation sales. “If you have a tribal situation in your district, you know that when the tax increases in the state of Idaho, it drives more business onto the tribes,” Rep. Ken Roberts, R-Donnelly, told the House.

But Clark said, “Trying to tax the tribes – you can’t do it constitutionally. Even a nonlawyer would knock that down.”

The bill now moves to the Senate, where plans are in the works to amend it – possibly to make it permanent, and possibly to make other changes.