By David Goerg

REXBURG, Idaho—Rexburg Commons spoke with Idaho State Senator Doug Ricks, who represents District 34, about the upcoming legislative session for 2022.

Jan. 24 marks the beginning of the third week of the session.

CONSERVATIVE AGENDA 2022

Sen. Ricks provided a few comments about the Conservative Agenda for 2022, stating that he is aware of the agenda but that he is not associated with it.

The Conservative Agenda is a statement of intention and concern which has been signed by 31 of Idaho’s legislators. The group plans on pursuing the agenda over the 2022 legislative session.

According to a Jan. 10 press release, the conservative agenda will focus on three main goals: “Restoring Freedom, Lowering Taxes, and Less Government.”

Sen. Ricks has not signed onto the agenda.

“It’s spearheaded by Representative Nate. Fellow, my legislator in the same district,” Ricks said. “A lot of the bullet points on their agenda are just normal, everyday Republic Republican principles. There’s nothing really earth-shaking about the agenda.”

In explaining why he has not signed the agenda, Sen. Ricks referred to his personal political philosophy and his hometown roots in Eastern Idaho.

“[In terms of] accountability, I’m only accountable to my district. I try to stay focused. I don’t vote based on any kind of index or with a particular group—any lobbyist group or special interests. I’m a hometown boy, I grew up in Rexburg. I like the people here and I like the area. I try to represent the values that come from that area and stay focused on that … It is an honor to be elected and to represent my people back home. And I always keep that in mind in everything I do.”

RICKS’s PERSONAL AGENDA

Sen. Ricks does have plans to introduce and promote several of his own bills during the 2022 legislative session.

“I plan to continue efforts to bring thoughtful justice reforms. I have a couple of bills I’m working on there.”

Last year, in 2021, Ricks successfully introduced and passed the Sen. Bill No. 1027, also referred to as “The Idaho Wrongful Conviction Act,” a law which makes provisions for legal claims of compensation in instances of wrongful of conviction, along with significant forms of compensation for victims in those cases.

One of the new bills that Ricks plans to introduce later this year, as a part of the 2022 legislative session, deals with juvenile probation and the reduction of fees that accompany that penal system.

“We don’t want the juveniles getting into [financial] trouble early on, [or to] make the system so overbearing [that it becomes] a burden on the family,” Ricks said. “We also don’t want to remove responsibility, of course, but sometimes the fees can be overwhelming.”

The other bill deals with the interrogation process.

“We’ve got to make sure that all of our groups—meaning prosecutors and police—are all on board,” said Ricks. “We’re still adjusting, it’s a work in progress, but its [rooted] in common sense.”

Sen. Ricks declined to give more information at this time, but more information about both bills will be forthcoming in the near future.

THE STATE BUDGET

Ricks observed that the session has started off slowly this year.

“Each legislative session has its own personality, for some reason,” said Ricks. “We’re just getting off to a slow start on everything. Usually by this time, there’s quite a few bills rolling through on the Senate floor. The Senate hasn’t actually voted on any bill, per se, which is very unusual. The House has made more progress.”

One of the first bills that has been passed this year by the House deals with income tax reduction. More specifically, it lowers the income tax rate from 6 ½ percent to 6 percent.

“I don’t think there’s going to be a lot of push-back [on that bill] from our side,” said Ricks.

Ricks mentioned that one of the main reasons for the decrease in income taxation at this time is due to Idaho’s significant budget surplus.

“We set our budget based on estimates and calculations. And then if we have more money—like this year —we want to give that back. We feel like a lot of that is over collecting—we’ve received more than we need. So we want to give some more back to the people who paid it and by lowering the income tax that also spurred more activity.”

While the future of the legislative agenda in the Senate is unclear at this point, grocery tax repeal and property tax reform are hot-button issues in the State and it is expected that multiple bills will be passed on those topics in both the Senate and the House.

The recent income tax modification bill will be reviewed by Ricks and his peers in his capacity as a sitting member of the Local Government and Taxation Committee.

Currently, the total budget surplus for the state stands at around $5 billion, but comes from different sources.

“$1.9 billion is essentially state generated, and the [other $3 billion are] ARPA funds—federal dollars that Congress passed to stimulate the economy and give money to the state and local counties,” said Ricks.

According to the official government website, (https://www.gfoa.org/american-rescue-plan-spending-guiding-principles) the American Rescue Plan Act, also known as ARPA, was signed into law on March 11, 2021.

“…The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (“ARPA”) provides $350 billion in additional funding for state and local governments.

“The local funding portion is approximately $130 billion, equally divided between cities and counties. Localities will receive the funds in two tranches—the first after the U.S. Treasury certifies the proceeds to each jurisdiction and the second one year later.”

REXBURG ARPA

In regard to the dispersion of over $6 million in ARPA funding directly to the city of Rexburg, Ricks pointed out that his stewardship does not extend to the decision of making of the individual cities or counties that are in his district, saying: “I’m not a big fan of getting new federal dollars, but they are available and they will help things like broadband and cities build sewers and other types of things on their projects. It can be a benefit, economically.”

“I think the city can make good use of those funds, [but] I don’t speak for the city,” Ricks continued. “I try to represent everybody in the district over here in Boise State Legislature.”

The senator did mention that the city of Rexburg plans to build a new broadband infrastructure, perform upgrades to the city’s sewer systems, and upgrade the functionality of the traffic lights throughout the city.

“Right now, as you probably noticed, traffic gets really backed up certain times of day, especially the road to Walmart,” said Ricks. “There are really busy [traffic] times, so they’re going to hook [all the lights] together with a fiber cable. [Then] they can use a computer software program with the censoring of the cameras to adjust the traffic flow on the fly. You can actually go in and adjust the lights, so they flow traffic much better in the evening with traffic movement on Main Street … It’s nice to get a little extra money once in a while. I know the cities are making use of it. There’s always needs for upgrade and improvements. It was hard to turn those dollars away.”

Ricks appears to share concerns that many conservatives have expressed across the state, concerning the increasing overreach of the federal government in connection with economic stimulus money.

“The ARPA funds have earmarks,” he said. “The funds have strings attached to it. That’s one of the fallacies with getting money from the federal government—we have to play by their rules. They have particular strings attached and can only be used for certain things.”

Ricks discussed some of the perils of accepting federal money.

“[Accepting federal funding is] not necessarily, overall, the best thing to be doing because it kind of puts, sometimes, some false expectations that the money will continue to come in future years and there’s no way that this amount of money can be sustained … It just keeps putting our federal government into more and more debt. A trillion dollars is just outrageous. That is a concern.”