2017 session's quiet little power struggle

Idaho legislators couldn’t wait to get out of Boise. Can’t blame them, but you can wish they’d done a judicial refresher before blasting off.

Lawrence Wasden, a Republican, is Idaho’s attorney general. Legislators know that, but do they know what an attorney general’s job is?

Here’s a workable definition from the National Association of Attorneys General:

“As the chief legal officer of the states, commonwealths and territories of the United States, the attorneys general serve as counselors to their legislatures and state agencies and also as the ‘People’s Lawyer’ for all citizens.”

The definition goes on to describe typical duties including: issue formal opinions to state agencies; act as public advocates in areas such as child support enforcement, consumer protections, antitrust and utility regulation; propose legislation; enforce federal and state environmental laws; represent the state and state agencies before the state and federal courts; handle criminal appeals and serious statewide criminal prosecutions; institute civil suits on behalf of the state; represent the public’s interests in charitable trust and solicitations; and operate victim compensation programs.

Stand up and fight for some legislators’ ideological beliefs? Issue formal opinions that defy the state constitution or other clearly laid-out laws? Invite lawsuits where the state not only has no legal standing, but most certainly will unnecessarily cost taxpayers tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars? Nope. None of that is in any of the attorney general definitions we explored, yet that apparently is what some fellow Republican lawmakers demand of Wasden.

The troubling dynamic of legislators insisting on legal advice that coincides with their beliefs or their political ambitions, rather than the law — Indian gaming, anyone? same-sex marriage? — surfaced again. It bubbled up when the House narrowly approved the attorney general’s budget, 40-30 — a clear and disturbing message from 30 legislators upset with the state’s top legal official. The issue that apparently riled them up involved a Planned Parenthood settlement where the law clearly outlined the direction the state must take. From Kootenai County, Don Cheatham, Ron Mendive, Eric Redman and Vito Barbieri voted against the AG’s budget. Reps. Luke Malek and Paul Amador both voted for the AG budget.

Barbieri made headlines late in the session by authoring a bill that would exempt legislators’ work email from public access, counter to the state’s existing public record laws. Fortunately, the bill went nowhere. The Press filed a public record request for Barbieri’s email from this session, and one of them, to a constituent, shed a little light on why he wanted legislators’ communication hidden from the public’s eye:

“…the judicial branch has usurped much of the policy-making authority of the legislature as well as the enforcement authority of the executive branch, and ask, is there a check, or a balance for that matter, remaining on the judicial branch?”

So Barbieri and others apparently want to provide that check. They don’t simply want the public left out in the dark; they want Attorney General Wasden out there with all the rest of us.

Wasden, meanwhile, just wants to do his job — the job he’s sworn to do as a constitutional officer, even when he might not personally or ideologically agree with it.

There’s no greater threat to Idaho than those who would wreck the vital balance of power. Voters, take note.