Idaho is living through a defining moment, one shaped not by ideology, but by arithmetic. Families are arriving. Homes are being built. Roads are filling. Schools, police departments, fire districts, and city halls are being asked to do more, faster, and better. Cities like Nampa, Star, and Middleton are not abstract examples in a policy memo; they are the front lines of Idaho’s growth.
And yet, the laws governing how these cities pay for growth are stuck in a world that no longer exists.
House Bill 389 was framed as discipline. As protection. As prudence. For many homeowners, it did deliver short-term relief. But public policy cannot be judged by intention alone. It must be judged by consequence. And the consequence of HB 389, as currently structured, is that cities experiencing real, sustained growth are being systematically deprived of the very resources required to manage that growth responsibly. I know, I’m talking to Mayor’s of these cities and they happen to be Republican.
This is not restraint. It is suffocation by formula.
Under the current framework, cities are limited to a 3% increase in property tax revenue on existing property regardless of inflation, wage growth, fuel costs, or rising demands on public safety. New construction—the engine of growth itself—is capped at 5%. Even then, it is not fully counted. Only 90% of new value is recognized. When an urban renewal district sunsets, only 80% of that value returns to the tax base.
The remaining value does not disappear in reality. Streets still deteriorate. Police calls still rise. Fire response times still matter. But on paper where budgets are built and services are planned, that value is treated as if it never existed. Cities are asked to serve one hundred percent of their population with a deliberately discounted version of their own tax base. To make up for such a losses, cites have to campaign for bond levies that consistently fail to pass.
This is not a partisan failure. It is a structural one.
Fiscal conservatives should be appalled by a system that obscures real costs instead of confronting them honestly. They should be embarrassed by a framework that predictably erodes public services and shifts burdens onto fees, deferred maintenance, and working families. And anyone who believes in local control should ask why cities doing exactly what the state has encouraged, planning growth, permitting housing, attracting employers are penalized for succeeding.
The deeper injustice is that this system pretends growth is optional. It is not. Growth arrives in classrooms, in emergency calls, in traffic congestion, and in the quiet pressure placed on city staff trying to keep pace with demand. When revenue recognition is artificially constrained, cities are forced into choices that undermine long-term stability: postponing infrastructure, stretching public safety staffing, and quietly lowering the quality of life that made them attractive in the first place.
This outcome did not happen by accident. It happened because leaders like MIKE MOYLE curated this horrible plan.
And no backbone, Governor Brad Little signed HB 389 into law! He knew that a rigid 5% cap on new construction revenue was not sustainable for fast-growing cities. At the time, current Lieutenant Governor, Scott Bedke, served as Speaker of the House and he sheepishly advanced the legislative framework that produced this result. This was not passive oversight. It was active participation in a system that shifted risk and responsibility away from the state and onto cities least equipped to absorb it.
At the same time, Idaho’s broader tax policy tells a revealing story. Over the last five years, corporations have not seen a tax increase. Instead, repeated income-tax reductions have lowered corporate and high-income tax burdens while shrinking the pool of revenue available to support public services. The effect has been clear: powerful corporate interests with lobbyists in Boise have been protected, while cities and everyday Idahoans are told to “do more with less.
That is NOT fiscal responsibility. That is political convenience that is killing our cities- a slow and deliberate death.
HB 389 also exposed another gap between policy and lived reality. By tying eligibility for Idaho’s property tax circuit breaker to a home value capped at 125% of the county median, the law assumed a housing market that no longer exists. In fast-growing counties, values have surged far faster than incomes. Seniors and working families increasingly find themselves disqualified from relief not because they are thriving, but because appreciation alone pushed them past an arbitrary threshold.
Raising that threshold to 175% would not weaken the intent of the program. It would restore it. Relief should follow need, not outdated assumptions.
Protecting homeowners and funding cities are not opposing goals. They are inseparable. A city starved of capacity does not remain affordable. It frays. It improvises. It shifts costs into less transparent places, where families pay not through taxes, but through delays, deterioration, and lost opportunity.
Idaho can do better without abandoning fiscal discipline. Reforming HB 389 means restoring honesty to the system. It means removing the 5% cap on new construction so cities can count growth as it actually occurs. It means recognizing new value fully instead of pretending it is optional. It means allowing urban renewal districts to truly sunset, returning one 100% of their value to the communities that invested in them. And it means modernizing homeowner relief so it reflects today’s housing market, not yesterday’s.
As Lieutenant Governor, I will push these reforms directly and unapologetically. While the office does not write city budgets, it does preside over the Senate, shape legislative priorities, and force clarity where complexity has been used to avoid accountability. HB 389 did not emerge from malice. It emerged from incomplete thinking. That makes it fixable but only if we are willing to confront who benefited, who paid the price, and who deserves better.
Idaho’s future is already here. The only question left is whether our laws will meet it with integrity, realism, and a commitment to communities strong enough to grow with it. I’m a blue dog democrat and I’m tired of the shenanigans!