Committee OKs amendment for special sessions
Rep. Vito Barbieri (right) of Dalton Gardens helmed Tuesday's House State Affairs meeting, where he voted with reservations to send a constitutional amendment forward that would enable the Idaho Legislature to call itself into special session. (Courtesy of Idaho Public Television)
The Idaho Legislature took a step closer Monday toward writing itself a new check against the state executive branch’s exercise of power.
The House State Affairs Committee voted to send to the House floor for debate a proposed constitutional amendment that would enable the Idaho Legislature to call itself into session.
“I don’t think that you need reminding in this committee what we have endured in the last — we’re coming up on a year — in terms of the representative governance we hold so dear in our Constitution that we have not had access to, nor have the citizens of Idaho had access to,” said Rep. Gayann DeMourdaunt, R-Eagle. “Our citizens and constituents deserve to be represented around the state by their elected representatives.”
The long-promised proposal came in response to Gov. Brad Little issuing a sweeping stay-home order in late March to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The shutdown and the staged re-opening that followed have since been given mixed reviews by many of his fellow Republicans, some of whom are criticizing Little’s still-in-effect emergency order, and some of whom question whether or not the virus the state’s Department of Health and Welfare reports has killed more than 1,600 Idahoans even exists.
But the unifying theme among House Republicans across the spectrum who have planned for this measure since before the August special session has been one of safeguarding the Legislature from what they predict could lead to an abuse of power.
“This is our highest priority,” DeMourdaunt said, “and it makes sense that this also is HJR 1. It is absolutely our highest priority and ought to be protected in the Constitution. Those checks and balances between the executive, legislative and judicial branch are crucial safeguards in protecting individual liberties and countering government overreach.”
The measure passed the committee 13-1, but not before the inner-workings of the bill were debated, from the potential for a future legislature calling itself into eternal session to how the requests for a special session would be tallied.
“I’m concerned about the mechanics of this,” Rep. Vito Barbieri, R-Dalton Gardens, told the committee. “The way we’ve been parsing words here in [these] recent issues that have come up, I’m concerned about what will be considered a written request. I’m concerned about whether or not leadership in the future will take those written requests and say, ‘Well, one’s asking for May 15th, and one’s asking for May 1st.’ Or, ‘One’s asking for this issue, and one’s asking for another issue, so we’re not going to count that toward a written request for a single issue.’”
The language of HJR 1 calls for a special session after joint written statements by at least 60 percent of both the Idaho House and Idaho Senate. The bill now goes to the House floor for consideration.