Jim has spent most of his life in North Idaho. He knows and understands the issues that Bonner and Boundary County residents care about. He wants to preserve our North Idaho lifestyle while adapting for growth and technological change.
Jim will advocate for:
Your education is your “toolbelt” for life. The more tools at your disposal, the more you can do for yourself and others. As Idahoans, we have agreed in our state constitution that we support and will fund our public education system to make sure everyone has a chance at a productive and purposeful life. For too long, we emphasized a four-year college degree as the route for everyone. We are coming around on that issue with our newfound emphasis on career technical education. I will continue to support educational success through all avenues including career technical education, military service, on-the-job training such as apprenticeships, and college education.
Our public education system truly is the tie that binds us. Our founding fathers knew it. They not only emphasized the value of public education, but they also wrote it into our Idaho Constitution. Public education has been key to our success as a state and a nation. Let’s stick with the formula, even as we expand other educational opportunities.
We need more doctors and healthcare professionals in Idaho to meet demand. Idaho Launch is our effort to train more nurses, technicians, and healthcare providers. The program is working, and I will continue to support it.
Our medical education programs, with state support, draw doctors to Idaho, particularly the rural areas where we have a more acute shortage of doctors. There is current debate about whether the WWAMI program, University of Utah, or ICOM is the best route to increase capacity. I say it is all the above. We can support medical students in each of these programs, which will give us more doctors and better healthcare.
Just as important as bringing more doctors into Idaho healthcare is keeping the doctors we have. Idaho laws surrounding women’s healthcare have created uncertainty in the medical community when providing care for complications in pregnancy. This past year, there was an Idaho court decision (Adkins v. State of Idaho) that helped to clarify the law. Revising Idaho law to reflect the court decision and remove the ambiguity from code is the next step, which I will be supporting.
Idaho living is getting too expensive, particularly in our resort areas. The homeowner’s exemption came about in 1982 from a successful citizen’s initiative aimed to provide property tax relief to Idaho homeowners. The exemption amount, currently at $125,000, is set by the Legislature. I am pushing to increase the amount to align with the intent of the citizen’s initiative and make owning a home more affordable.
As co-chair of the 2025 Idaho Land Use and Housing Study Committee, I led the group through an in-depth look at land use policy which affects how private business meets market needs. We also looked at many affordable housing models. I am committed to land use policies that will improve affordability and availability in Idaho.
The best decisions are those made closest to home. I always advocate for more local control and less top-down governance, especially unfunded mandates.
We have a three-legged stool of taxation in Idaho that we work to balance. Income tax, sales tax, and property tax affect each of us differently. Unfortunately, we took away some of the balance last year. In the past eight years, Idaho has incrementally reduced the income tax rate five times, from 7.4% to 5.3%. I was in the legislature for three of those cuts, voting yes on two and no to the 2025 cut. It has proven to be the right vote. The state is facing a significant budget deficit because of last year’s tax cut. I am as frustrated as any with the idea of cutting transportation services, school funding, or any other legitimate state functions.
We will balance the state budget this year, as we always do, but it won’t be pretty recovering from this self-inflicted wound.
Whether for work or play, we have abundant natural resources in North Idaho that must be managed properly.
None of us like spending our summers breathing wildfire smoke. I am pleased with the new Shared Stewardship Agreement between the State of Idaho and the U.S. Forest Service that promotes better management and utilization of our national forests which will reduce wildfire risk.
All of us want our lake and river waters managed for maximum use. I have been advocating for operating Lake Pend Oreille at full summer pool for more of the year and operating at a higher level during the winter months.
As our population grows, groundwater management is becoming increasingly important. No one wants a dry well. The current water adjudication in the Clark Fork / Pend Oreille basin is moving along to define water rights. We will continue to fund the process, as well as look forward to the Kootenai River Basin adjudication
I have been a player in these issues and will continue to work for you to make sure we’re getting the right answers.
We are falling behind in infrastructure investments, while our state is still rapidly growing. In the past twenty years, our Idaho population has increased by 33%. At the same time, we have increased our transportation system capacity by less than 2%. Those numbers make it painfully clear why it is so hard to get on the highway. While supporting our long-term investments such as the ITD Strategic Initiatives program that we funded with $275 million last year, I also recognize that we have to think out of the box sometimes. A few years back, I pushed through the Lakeshore Drive improvements at the south end of the Long Bridge. Currently, I am working on safety improvements on the Highway 95 corridor from Samuels to the Canadian border.