Rep. Steve Berch Newsletter: 2025 legislative session preview

Rep. Steve Berch Newsletter - 2025 Legislative Session Preview

Welcome to my first legislative newsletter of the new session! For those new to receiving my newsletter, here’s a brief review of what you can expect.

My newsletters are much longer than most. It is my responsibility is to keep constituents informed. A lot goes on during the three months the legislature is in session (over 700 pieces of legislation last year alone!). There are three sections to my newsletters:

Narrative. This provides my personal insight and perspective on the activities taking place within the legislature during the session.

Rotunda Roundup. This is where I discuss legislation in progress that I know constituents care about based on my conversations at the door, and legislation people should care about that may fly under the radar. I describe the bill, how I voted on it, and the reason for my vote. I often vote against bills with good sounding titles that aren’t so good when you read past the title.

In the hopper. This is a brief list of specific bills that may be coming up for a vote later in the session.

I send newsletters out about once every two or three weeks during the legislative session, depending on the level of activity taking place. I also send a very lengthy end-of-session summary in April (my 2024 review email was 15 pages that reviewed 66 bills during the session). I will also send emails periodically when the legislature is not in session (May thru December). These emails may highlight specific events, feature op-eds that I’ve written, or an occasional fundraising email. You can unsubscribe anytime via the link at the bottom of all my emails.

I welcome your feedback and input. The more I hear from constituents – even if we may disagree – the better job I can do representing District 15. My contact information appears at the end of each newsletter.

NOTE: You can look up any bill introduced since 1998 by CLICKING HERE.

On your mark, Get set . . .

The 2025 session of the Idaho Legislature begins on January 6^th, but things really started during the Organizing meetings on December 4-6. This is when House and Senate party leaders were elected by each caucus, after which committee chairmen were appointed and each legislator was given their committee assignments for the next two years.

I was honored to be elected House Assistant Minority Party Leader by my caucus. As such, I will be working closely with my colleagues and majority party leaders to help ensure that new legislation will best serve the interests of all Idahoans.

There is also a change in my committee assignments. I have served on the Education, Business and Local Government committees since I was elected in 2018. I will continue serving on Business and Local Government, but I will not be on the Education committee. Instead, I will now join the Revenue & Taxation (Rev&Tax) committee.

Supporting public education is still a top issue for me. However, I chose to make this change for two reasons:

We have four very strong advocates for public education in the minority caucus to fill two seats on the Education committee: Sonia Galaviz, Chris Matthias, Monica Church and myself. Sonia will be moving to JFAC, which sets the state’s budgets (including the education budget). I chose to step aside and give Monica an opportunity to join Chris, who will be returning to the Education committee.
I will still be involved in education, especially if a school voucher bill is introduced in Rev&Tax as a tax credit, as it was during the 2024 session.

In addition to Business, Local Government and Rev&Tax, I will also join the Ways and Means committee. It is comprised of the three majority and the three minority party leaders – Leader, Assistant Leader, Caucus Chair – and is chaired by a designated House member. The Ways & Means committee tends to serve two very opposite purposes:

It is the place where bills are sent to die. When a committee introduces a proposed bill, the Speaker of the House assigns it to a committee to hold a public hearing and decide if the bill should move to the floor of the House for a full vote. Most bills sent to Ways & Means are usually held there and never come up for a vote, thus killing them. However . . .
It is also the place where bills are fast-tracked to move quickly to the floor of the House for a full vote (without taking public testimony). This usually happens late in the session for bills that majority party leadership want to push through quickly. In the past, several large tax bills have originated in Ways & Means days before the legislative session ends.

Finally, I have requested that my membership on the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee (JLOC) be continued for the 2025-26 session. JLOC oversees the Office of Performance Evaluations (OPE), which conducts detailed research and analysis on topics proposed by legislators. JLOC is the only equally bi-partisan committee in the legislature (four Republicans and four Democrats, two each from the Senate and House). This is structured to ensure bi-partisan support for decisions pertaining to the assigning and release of OPE reports. A majority of JLOC members must vote to approve all committee decisions. All OPE reports are available to the public by visiting the OPE website.

Rotunda Roundup

This is where I will discuss specific bills being debated in various committees and on the House floor. This starts to pick up steam toward the end of January and intensifies as we reach the end of the session in March or April.

In the hopper

The creation of actual bills won’t begin until after the start of the 2025 legislative session. However, there are several bills that members of the majority party have indicated they may introduce during the session. I will discuss these bills in greater detail in upcoming newsletters:

School vouchers. Majority party leadership promised that a school voucher bill of some sort will be passed by the House in 2025. It is expected to be in the form of a tax credit. It is not clear if the majority party will consolidate this effort into one bill or allow multiple versions of a school voucher bill to be introduced in the House and/or Senate.

Medicaid. There is a movement to scale back Medicaid benefits that directly and indirectly impact hundreds of thousands of Idahoans.

Budget bills. The legislature has only one responsibility mandated by the state constitution: pass a budget. The budget process was changed last year. Instead of passing a single budget bill for each state agency, majority party leadership decided to split each budget into two separate bills: a bare-bones maintenance budget and a second supplemental budget. As one legislator close to the process told me, “I don’t know how we’ll pass a full agency budget this year after the results of the November election.”

Mandatory Bible reading in public schools. A bill is in the works that would force teachers to read a selected passage from a Christian bible every day to every public school student.

Take possession of federal lands in Idaho. There may be a renewed effort to turn ownership of federal land in Idaho to the state. This could enable the state to sell what is now federal land to private businesses and citizens. The state would also take on the cost of managing these lands, including the cost of fighting fires.

Limit the use of absentee ballots. There may be a renewed effort to limit the ability to vote via absentee ballot by only allowing its use under a narrow set of circumstances. This effort would be aligned with one of many mandates in the Idaho Republican Party platform that many current and newly elected legislators signed a loyalty oath to uphold and implement.