Labrador Letter: Making money for Idahoans

Dear Friends,

This past couple of weeks saw a whirlwind of activity in the Supreme Court on several issues where Idaho played both large and small roles in many of these landmark decisions.

As our office has been involved in so much federal litigation attacking the Biden Administration’s overreach, a frequent criticism leveled by liberals, left-wing column-writers, and some in the corporate media (but I repeat myself), is that I waste taxpayer money by filing and joining these lawsuits. To no great surprise, the people vehemently complaining against my efforts disagree with both the positions taken by my office in these cases and the fact that we have been successful in attacking these policies.

Still, it’s not a complaint I dismiss without consideration because I hate seeing government waste money at any level. As a taxpayer, I know exactly where that money came from – the sweat, time and labor of our citizens. That’s why I take great pride in properly managing the resources entrusted to me and make decisions about litigation with those resources in mind. Whenever possible, I leverage those resources to bring funds back into our state. 

But if you made the mistake of only getting your news from the mainstream media or based your opinion of this office based on columnists who obsessively write every time they disagree with my approach, you would think that our office is wasting taxpayer money at unprecedented levels. This is simply not true. 

I’m sure you have not heard from any source in the media that my office has closed seven major consumer suits totaling over $161 million coming directly to Idaho. These come either in the form of dedicated funds designated for specific needs like combating tobacco or opioid addictions or can be added to the state general funds to be used for other needs like roads and schools.

Unsurprisingly, the local media doesn’t report on these massive settlements. Instead, they prefer to clutch their pearls when my office has been asked a few times to pay attorneys’ fees in lawsuits where I was attempting to hold government agencies accountable. By the numbers alone, the Office of the Attorney General is doing the job I promised to do for the people of Idaho. We have returned almost five times our entire annual office budget of $33.6 million in just the last 18 months.

Recently, we settled decades of costly litigation with the tobacco industry and received a $74 million payment, ending the yearly back-and-forth between tobacco lawyers and our attorneys for monies owed under the Master Settlement Agreement. Similarly, we have won settlements against the pharmaceutical industry for their role in the opioid addiction crisis, as well as advertising companies which have perpetuated the problem. The opioid suits alone have yielded over $78 million for Idaho.

And just a few weeks ago, my office settled a multi-state claim against health and cosmetic giant Johnson & Johnson for deceptive marketing practices related to their ubiquitous talcum-based baby powder. This baby powder, sold for over 100 years and marketed as safe, has been linked to mesothelioma and ovarian cancer. I joined with 42 other states and received a landmark settlement of $700 million. Idaho’s individual award was $5.7 million. 

It is indeed possible to be a watchful steward of taxpayer funds while at the same time fighting constant federal government interventionism and overreach in protection of our state laws and sovereignty. These are not mutually exclusive goals. I’m grateful for the opportunity the citizens of Idaho have given me to effectively and aggressively do both.