Hitting the Home Stretch

The 2026 legislative session is nearly done. What's left for next week?

What a week. The second session of the 68th Idaho Legislature is rapidly heading toward a close. House and Senate leadership missed their goal of ending today, but it looks like they’ll wrap up by the middle of next week.

I hope to have an in-depth article on the status of the Idaho Child Care Program (ICCP) for you tomorrow. Until then, here are a few things that happened this week and what to expect before the Legislature adjourns sine die.

Fun fact: sine die means “without day” in Latin and refers to adjourning without setting a date to reconvene. When the House and Senate adjourn sine die, it formally ends the 68th Legislature—unless they’re called back for a special session. Most people pronounce it “sigh-knee die,” but Latin purists will tell you it’s closer to “see-nay dee-ay,” or something in that neighborhood.

The Legislative Services Office (LSO) has printed 967 House bills since the 68th Legislature convened in January 2025. Bills start at H0001, and the second session picks up where the first left off. Senate bills start at S1001 to avoid confusion. As far as I know, there has never been a House Bill 1000, but this year could come pretty close.

The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee (JFAC) is nearly finished with its work on the budget. A new health and human services maintenance budget passed the Senate floor this week, with JFAC co-chair Scott Grow calling for “kumbaya,” while embattled Sen. Jim Guthrie still denounced it as too harsh. It now heads to the House.

Speaking of the House, it narrowly killed an enhancement budget for the Office of the Attorney General this week. I’m told JFAC will reconvene on Tuesday to finish its business, including resubmitting the AG’s budget.

The Senate also sent another enhancement budget—this one including additional money for ICCP—back to JFAC without a vote on Friday morning.

H752, requiring people to use the public restroom corresponding to their biological sex, passed the Senate this morning on a 28–7 vote and now heads to Gov. Brad Little. The transgender lobby has fought this bill tooth and nail, but I wouldn’t expect a veto here. Say what you will about the governor, he has consistently stood firm on protecting women’s private spaces, going back to the women’s sports bill in 2020.

Senate candidate Scott Herndon, who co-wrote H752, shared his thoughts following the vote:

Sen. Guthrie debated against this one as well and was the only Republican to join the six Senate Democrats in voting no. I suggested on Idaho Signal this afternoon that he seems to think his constituency is District 19 and the Boise print media, rather than the salt-of-the-earth conservative voters in District 28.

An unusual sequence of events unfolded in the Senate this week. Members deadlocked on H760, which would allow developers to partner with nonprofits to build so-called affordable housing in exchange for tax exemptions. Lt. Gov. Scott Bedke broke the tie in the negative, so the bill failed.

But that wasn’t the end of the story. The next day, Sen. Mark Harris moved to reconsider, and the bill was brought back for a second vote. It failed even more decisively, as two senators flipped from aye to nay. Sen. Lesli Bjerke (substituting for her husband, Sen. Carl Bjerke) was also present and voted no, and the bill ultimately failed 15–20.

Who says you can’t eliminate a government program? A mere seventeen years after its budget was zeroed out, the Idaho Women’s Commission will finally be stricken from the books following the passage of S1236.

While several bills related to immigration enforcement remain locked in Sen. Guthrie’s drawer, Senate leadership is attempting to salvage something from the session. I’ve heard rumors that the White House has been putting pressure on Idaho to get something done. President Pro Tempore Kelly Anthon and Majority Leader Lori Den Hartog introduced four new bills on Thursday morning:

• S1440 establishes a 4% remittance tax on transactions sent out of the country with a credit for legal residents.

• S1441 encourages local law enforcement to enter into 287g memos of understanding with ICE, similar to a bill that failed 4-5 in Senate State Affairs earlier this month.

• S1442 requires NGOs involved in refugee resettlement to ensure they’re not assisting illegal aliens and to report audit information.

• S1443 allows illegal aliens in the prison system to be released early into ICE custody for deportation.

None of these bills are bad ideas, but they still don’t make up for H700 and H704—which would hold employers accountable for hiring illegal aliens and require use of E-Verify—failing to receive hearings.

However, there might be one more twist left. Remember S1247, the Senate E-Verify bill that only applied to a small percentage of Idaho employers? It finally received its House committee hearing Friday morning, and after a pretty wild back-and-forth between sponsor Rep. Joshua Wheeler and Reps. Brent Crane, Kyle Harris, Steve Berch, and Mike Veile, it was sent to the House amending order—presumably to give it more teeth.

Recall last year, when a bill outlawing mandatory DEI on campus was watered down to Sen. Guthrie’s satisfaction, only to be restored via House amendments. Guthrie was rather angry about that, expressing his displeasure with such an end run during final-day debate. Could history be about to repeat itself—this time with immigration bills he has unilaterally held?

All of this will come to a head when the Legislature returns for the final days of the session starting next Monday. Hold on to your hats—it’s going to be a wild ride.

Feature image created with Microsoft Copilot.