Bill Description: House Bill 747 would limit pest abatement on private property, limit some forms of aerial abatement to emergency situations, and allow landowners to opt-out from abatement efforts.
Rating: +2
NOTE: House Bill 747 is related to House Bill 554 (2026), but House Bill 554 provides much stronger protections for property owners. Most notably, House Bill 747 does not include the requirement for written permission from landowners to conduct abatement efforts.
Does it violate the spirit or the letter of either the United States Constitution or the Idaho Constitution? Examples include restrictions on speech, public assembly, the press, privacy, private property, or firearms. Conversely, does it restore or uphold the protections guaranteed in the US Constitution or the Idaho Constitution?
House Bill 747 would amend Section 39-2804, Idaho Code, which lays out the powers and duties of abatement districts. The bill would strike language explicitly granting a district “the right to enter upon any and all lands” for “the control of mosquitoes and other vermin of public health and welfare importance.” But unlike House Bill 554, it would leave in place their broad authority to take “necessary and proper steps” for these purposes.
Both bills appropriately strike language that claims to give an abatement district authority to “exercise the right of eminent domain and for these purposes to condemn any necessary land or rights-of-way in accordance with general law.”
The bill would amend Section 39-2812, Idaho Code, to add a new subsection that says, “Aerial abatement methods shall be used to deploy adulticides within an abatement district only when the respective board of county commissioners has declared a health emergency. In such cases, aerial adulticide abatement methods may be used only to treat property within the abatement district that has not been exempted pursuant to section 39-2814, Idaho Code.”
This language applies only to “adulticides” while House Bill 554 would have applied this standard to all aerial abatement methods.” House Bill 747 also says that the requirement for an emergency declaration does not apply to “aerial abatement methods deploying a larvicide.”
The bill would require an abatement district to publish notice 10 days prior to the start of any abatement season. This notice would “describe the abatement activity, location, and methods to be used; disclose all possible products authorized for use during the abatement season; and provide information on how to opt out of abatement-related activities.”
(+1)
House Bill 747 would create Section 39-2814, Idaho Code, to recognize the right of “an individual who owns property within an abatement district” to “submit a written notice that includes the physical address of the property to the board of county commissioners for the county in which the property is located requesting that the property be exempted from any and all abatement-related activities.”
This notice will “remain in effect until the owner of the property rescinds the notice in writing.”
This bill does not include the language found in House Bill 554, which would require abatement districts to “strictly adhere to the requested exemption.”
Both bills would allow a property owners whose exemption is violated to “submit evidence of the violation to the respective board of county commissioners”; “initiate a civil action against the respective board of county commissioners and abatement district”; and receive a monetary payment from the board of county commissioners for each violation plus reasonable attorney's fees and costs.
House Bill 747 sets this penalty at $1,000 while House Bill 554 sets it at $5,000.
Additionally, House Bill 747 requires that “a government agent knowingly allows abatement-related activities to occur on, over, or above an exempted property” while House Bill 554 requires only that the “abatement related-activities occurs on, over, or above an exempted property.” This shift increases the burden for the aggrieved property owner who would be required to prove the action was committed intentionally rather than through carelessness or oversight.
House Bill 747 still takes some positive steps to protect property rights, but they are significantly weaker than those contained in House Bill 554.
(+1)
