A Contract with Pocatello

From Senator James Ruchti, Mary Shea, and Nate Roberts

A written commitment to the families of Pocatello and District 29.

Pocatello families are paying higher prices for gasoline, food and housing, and Idaho’s government isn’t just ignoring the problem, it’s making it worse. We commit to fight for affordability and are putting our promise in writing.

We promise the following:

1. Focus on Affordability:  Cut the Grocery Tax, Provide a Gas Tax Holiday, and Build Starter Homes

Life is expensive. Pocatello families need to know somebody is listening and taking action.

• Repeal the sales tax on groceries outright, so families save at the register every time they shop instead of waiting for a credit.

• Provide a gas tax holiday to give relief from unprecedented gas prices.

• Make starter homes more affordable for young families so they can afford a place to live. 

2. Make Data Centers Pay Their Own Way

Giant tech corporations are getting tax breaks worth hundreds of millions of dollars while Idaho families pay more for electricity and worry about water. 

• Data centers must pay their fair share of property taxes. No data center should be exempt from the property taxes every Pocatello homeowner and small business pays.

• Data centers’ consumption of electricity shouldn’t increase your utility bills. Enforce laws that make them shoulder the grid upgrades so Idaho households and small businesses don’t have to pay more.

• Protect our water. Data centers shouldn’t be able to consume that scarce resource or pollute. Require full public disclosure of water use before any data center is approved, and protect existing farm and household water rights, so when water is short in the Portneuf Valley and across Idaho, families and farms come first.

3. Keep Idaho's Promise to Public Schools

Every Idaho child deserves a great public school, and Idaho homeowners shouldn't be stuck with the state's unpaid bill. Idaho's Constitution requires the Legislature to maintain "a general, uniform and thorough system of public, free common schools." Instead, districts ask local voters for levy after levy just to fix leaking roofs and keep good teachers. We will propose to:

• Meet the state's constitutional duty. Fund public schools at the level the Constitution requires, so local property taxes stop covering what the state owes.

• Recruit and keep the best and brightest teachers. Raise pay for new and veteran teachers so great teachers choose Idaho classrooms, and stay in them.

• Fix the buildings our kids learn in. Idaho schools need billions in repairs, an estimated [$2.7 billion] over the next five years alone. That is far more than the $1 billion facilities bond the Legislature approved in 2024. The state should pay for those repairs, and districts should be allowed to use state facility dollars for routine maintenance, not just new construction, so a leaking roof gets fixed before it becomes a replacement.

• Fund schools on enrollment, not daily attendance. Idaho let its enrollment-based funding rule expire and went back to funding schools on attendance. Schools now expect [about $24 million] less next year. Districts should be able to build a budget around the students they actually enroll. When the funding formula comes up for its overdue rewrite in 2027, we'll fight for a formula that puts students and stable budgets first.

• Repeal the private school voucher program, or at a minimum hold it accountable. No public money goes out the door without receipts. Every dollar is publicly reported. The program can't grow past its current [$50 million] cap without a public, recorded vote.

4. Make Idaho the Place to Start and Raise a Family

A third of Idaho's OB-GYNs have left the state, and a third of our counties have no maternity care at all and quality child care is expensive and hard to find. Between the lack of maternity care and the expense of raising kids, many young couples are delaying starting their own or not having kids at all. 

• Create a Rural Maternity Care Fund that repays loans for doctors and midwives who deliver babies in underserved counties and provides stabilization grants to keep rural labor-and-delivery units open.

• Protect the Medicaid coverage rural hospitals depend on to keep their doors open.

• Cut the cost of child care with a state child care tax credit for working families, expanded eligibility for Idaho's child care assistance program, and restored local authority over child care standards, taken away from communities in 2025.

• Meet Idaho’s constitutional requirement to “maintain a general, uniform and thorough system of public, free common schools.“

• Respect the will of Idaho voters if Proposition 1 passes. 

5. Local Decisions Made Locally

Decisions about Pocatello should be made in Pocatello, not overridden by politicians in Boise. We will propose an independent, bipartisan committee of former county commissioners, mayors, and other local officials to go through Idaho Code, identify laws that unnecessarily strips power from cities and counties, and recommend repeal, starting with child care standards and housing.

6.  Keep Idaho's Public Lands in Public Hands

Every Idahoan owns our public lands, from the Caribou-Targhee above Pocatello to the Sawtooths. Working families hunt, fish, camp, and graze cattle on them. Once public land is sold to billionaires and out-of-state corporations it is gone forever, and so are the guiding, outfitting, and tourism jobs our small towns rely on. We will propose to:

• Make the ban on selling or transferring public lands law. In 2026 the Legislature declared that Idaho's public lands "should not be sold or transferred," but that was a memorial, and memorials aren't binding. We will turn it into law. We will also oppose any scheme to take over federal land the state cannot afford to manage. 

• Open state endowment lands to Idaho hunters and anglers. We will propose a constitutional amendment, for voters to approve, so endowment lands keep earning money for public schools while also protecting the public's right to hunt, fish, and recreate on them.

• Unlock public land Idahoans already own. We will fund access easements and expand Idaho Fish and Game's Access Yes! program, working with willing landowners, so families can reach landlocked public parcels without risking a trespass ticket.
  

Our Pledge

In 1994 a party put ten bills in writing and promised a vote within 100 days. If you send all three of us to Boise and we fail to keep our word, you will know, and you should hold us accountable. If we keep our word, District 29 will have done its job.

— Sen. James Ruchti, Mary Shea, Nate Roberts