Reclaim Idaho’s new ballot initiative for higher taxes must be stopped
It’s time to put a halt to Reclaim Idaho’s ballot initiative to raise a heavy tax burden on Idaho businesses for the purpose of pouring more money into our education system. These are the same people who ran the Medicaid expansion initiative that cost Idahoan’s the repeal of the grocery tax and will eventually cost taxpayers hundreds of millions in future benefit costs. This is a radical left organization that will do or say anything to change our state into a liberal socialist society.
This is why we need to change our laws making it more difficult to pass these types of ballot initiatives circumventing the legislative process. Big business and the medical lobbyists along with outside forces spent millions in telling lies to Idahoans with outside money to get Medicaid Expansion. Now they want to use this same process to raise taxes on businesses to put more money into education without a notion of how they will improve Idaho’s education process. These people want to use the coronavirus crisis to circumvent the normal process of getting 6% of the signatures in person and use the internet to obtain these signatures which is currently not permitted in our state.
We are about to find out how liberal our governor really is as he has been asked to allow this change to take place because of the corona crisis. Idaho Statute 34-1807 lays out how petitions and signatures for an initiative must be gathered including verifying that the person collecting signatures is an Idahoan and at least 18 years of age. If he allows this left-wing organization to bend the rules they will continue to change our state to a liberal bastion like Portland and Seattle. This is how it starts, my friends, with a socialist program like Medicaid Expansion and now a way to raise taxes without going through our elected representatives. These purveyors of circumventing our legislative process need to be stopped in their tracks before they get a grip on this state that we can’t control.
I’m not normally a friend of business, but this bending of the initiative law in time of crisis is something we cannot permit and we need you to call the Governor and tell him to not allow this change in the rules. Reclaim Idaho is not going to stop with this initiative; there will be another and another. We have legislative representatives who were elected to make these decisions that represent all of Idaho’s districts. With the initiative process, they are seeking 6% of the signatures from only 18 of our 35 districts to get this measure on the ballot. If they are allowed to do this electronically this time, they will inevitably want to do it again. You will find those districts that have very liberal populations controlling our state through this process instead of a representative process that includes all of the districts in the state.
Reclaim Idaho does not have the best interests of Idaho in mind with these initiatives. They are trying to use a new weapon to rain down onerous taxes and new rules and regulations on Idahoans with lies and innuendo as they did with Medicaid expansion.
Idahoans need to call the governor today and say no to any online initiative process. Call him at 208-334-2100
