IFF - Idaho Freedom Foundation

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Boise's urban renewal agency used $30,000 of taxpayer funds to write and market legislation to change how urban renewal agencies are governed and operate.  The revelation comes after inquiries by the Idaho Freedom Foundation to Boise's Capital City Development Corporation. 

The early graduation idea promoted by Reps. Steven Thayn of Emmett and Brandon Durst of Boise is the most innovative education concept to hit the Statehouse since the late 1990s. The Thayn/Durst plan, which passed the House 61-7 last month, would start a pilot project that would allow students to graduate early. That would save taxpayers money, a portion of which would be allotted to students in the form of a scholarship.

After ten years in existence and $1.8 million in revenue collected, the Western Elmore County Recreation District (WECRD) has yet to come up with a final plan for a community recreation center, much less break ground on the project.

State lawmakers would have you believe they're doing something pretty spectacular by passing a ban texting while driving. Are they? We don't know. The problem is there's no data that show that a ban on texting actually decreases accidents. We also don't know whether a lack of a ban increases the number of accidents.

State lawmakers last week very nearly fumbled on an issue with massive implications for taxpayers. It happened Wednesday when the House State Affairs Committee voted 13-5 to reject a proposal to block a 1 percent cost-of-living increase for retirees on the state’s pension program, the Public Employees Retirement System of Idaho (PERSI).

In 1999, Gov. Dirk Kempthorne made raising childhood immunization rates a central component of his first-year legislative agenda. He pushed a bill to create a statewide immunization registry. The measure sailed through the Senate 26-6. But his proposal ran into stiff opposition from House members, who protested the government's increasing dictatorial involvement in the family. So lawmakers amended the legislation to add provisions declaring that the new vaccination registry was to be strictly voluntary. 

A review of school district health programs shows wide variances in what taxpayers are paying to buy health insurance for public employees across the state and even in neighboring school districts.  The reason: districts are buying into plans with bells and whistles, such as extremely low deductibles or no deductibles at all, that would cost much more if bought by individuals.

At the Statehouse, lawmakers are split on whether to uphold the state Department of Agriculture's new rules governing raw milk.  The department has come up with rules intended to protect the public. But the rules go too far, restricting farming operations doing business with consumers who willingly and knowingly consume unpasteurized milk.

Idaho taxpayers could save millions of dollars if the state’s school districts started requiring their employees to contribute to their monthly medical plan premiums, but the Idaho Freedom Foundation has found that many schools continue to demand that taxpayers fund 100 percent of the cost of medical benefits of district employees.
 Assuming school employees were to pay just 10 percent of the cost of medical insurance premiums, the savings would be at least $11.1 million.