Rep. Lauren Necochea The safety of your family is perhaps the most local and personal issue. I’ll never forget my first town hall as a state representative.
In a neighborhood outside city limits, constituents expressed concern about the lack of adequate fire response for their families. Their fire district wasn’t properly staffed. The district’s hands were tied by state law, which capped its budget using a complex formula.
The cap had nothing to do with the level of service needed to keep people and property safe, the service residents desired, or what locally elected fire district commissioners deemed appropriate. The lack of local control put Idahoans at risk. Sadly, since that day, the Republican supermajority has only made problems worse.
House Bill 389 has eroded local control as a distraction from the true property tax solutions Idaho homeowners need. On the way, GOP politicians have lobbed personal attacks at city and county leaders — repeated last month — that are unbecoming and unproductive. The need for property tax reform has multiple root causes.
First, in 2016, Republican legislators, catering to lobbyists, capped the homeowner’s exemption. Before, the exemption automatically went up with home prices. Every Democratic legislator opposed this, foreseeing the unfair shift of the tax load onto homeowners.
Second, the Republican leaders’ chronic underfunding of our schools has made districts reliant on levies funded by property taxes. By 2022, homeowner.