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Now It’s Judicial Pay Raises: The Snowball Effect

By Ronald M. Nate, Ph.D.
January 20, 2025
Well, we called it. In the past few weeks, key members of the Idaho judiciary wrote a letter, and Idaho Supreme Court Chief Justice Richard Bevan spoke to the Legislature about the “need” for dramatic increases of 27% to 31% in judicial salaries. Here is what their proposed increases look like: These are outrageous pay […]
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Bannock County Returns Misspent Funds to the State, but Is That Enough?

By Rachel Hazelip
January 17, 2025
As the adage goes, “Where there is smoke, there is fire.” This appears to ring true regarding the misappropriation of public funds between Idaho State University (ISU) and Bannock County. Since the Idaho Freedom Foundation’s last article on the misuse of public funds, ISU has requested that Bannock County return the remaining balance, which they […]
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Sources and Uses of Idaho’s Taxpayer Dollars

By Fred Birnbaum
January 15, 2025
If you’re a state and local taxpayer, have you wondered where your money goes — your income tax, sales tax and property tax dollars? Let’s examine a chart developed by the Legislative Services Office and updated annually. DISCLAIMER: In our review of the budgets, the buckets depicting expenditures on the bottom row do not align […]
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Idaho’s State Spending Briefly Explained

By Fred Birnbaum
January 10, 2025
The Idaho Freedom Foundation has written extensively about Idaho’s budget, and will continue to do so. Numbers and financial analyses can be difficult for people to understand who don’t focus on it. Let’s discuss some of the basics. Let’s start with a few terms from the glossary of the Legislative Budget Book. General Funds “consists […]
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Governor Little is Dodging DOGE in Idaho

By Fred Birnbaum
January 7, 2025
“Idaho was DOGE before DOGE was cool.” That was Gov. Little yesterday in his State of the State address, and subsequent press conference, invoking the now “infamous” DOGE, the Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy led Department of Government Efficiency. Let’s give the governor his due on reducing regulations as a way to increase government efficiency. […]
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The Ancient Myth of Idaho’s Food Tax Credit

By Ronald M. Nate, Ph.D.
January 3, 2025
One of the weakest arguments against repealing the grocery tax is that because there is a “food tax credit” on your income taxes, it would be redistribution to leave the credit alone while removing the sales tax on groceries. A few squishy legislators insist on removing both the tax and the credit at the same […]
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Want Limited Government? Control the Spending!

By Fred Birnbaum
December 31, 2024
All eyes were on Congress over the past week as, yet again, at the 11th hour, Congress funded the federal government for several months and averted a shutdown. It’s a good thing Idaho doesn’t approach appropriations bills this way and that we have a drama-free budget every year. Or is it? As U.S. Representative Chip […]
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The War Against Cultural Marxism In Higher Education Is Far From Over

By Samuel T. Lair
December 23, 2024
On December 18, the Idaho State Board of Education unanimously voted to ban DEI offices from its public colleges and universities. The Board resolution declared, “Institutions shall ensure that no central offices, policies, procedures, or initiatives are dedicated to DEI ideology.” Though this action may seem like a great win, it largely fails to make […]
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Gov. Little Wins on Paper, Fails on Economics

By Ronald M. Nate, Ph.D.
December 11, 2024
Gov. Brad Little’s latest public relations blast may have gotten a “Wow” out of Elon Musk, but we at the Idaho Freedom Foundation are not as impressed. We know more about what the graph, depicting the number of pages of regulation cut throughout the past two decades, truly shows and how it came about. This […]
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If Voters Demanded a Conservative Mandate, Idaho’s Senate Didn’t Get the Memo

By Fred Birnbaum
December 9, 2024
One of the first things that stood out after President Trump’s recent election was his willingness to ignore official Washington elites with his selection of Cabinet posts and advisors. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., for Health and Human Services, Jayanta Bhattacharya to head the National Institutes of Health, and Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense […]
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Luma: Unpacking Another Failing System

By Fred Birnbaum
November 27, 2024
During the recent Joint Finance-Appropriation Committee fall review, a segment was devoted to a post-mortem of the troubled $200 million plus state Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, known as Luma. As it turns out, Luma is going to be a net loss for Idaho taxpayers. While a reasonably thorough report was issued by the Office […]
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What Happened with ISU and Bannock County Lab Money? — Anatomy of a Malfeasance?

By Ronald M. Nate, Ph.D.
November 26, 2024
By all appearances, officials of Bannock County and Idaho State University (ISU) colluded to keep control over $850,000 of state money and are using it like a slush fund, even though the law requires them to return unspent appropriated money to the state. The Idaho Legislature appropriated $900,000 for operating expenses for the East Idaho […]
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