“School facilities funding bill” nears finish line in 2024 legislature

BOISE, Idaho (KIFI) - Idaho House Bill 521 is headed toward the Senate Floor soon. If it passes and is signed into law, it will provide Idaho schools with a billion dollars over ten years for their repair, maintenance, and construction needs.

"I don't know that it is the silver bullet for fixing the facilities issue, but it is certainly a gigantic part of what we need to have addressed," said State Superintendent of Public Instruction Debbie Critchfield.

The bill would take out a bond of 1 billion dollars over ten years. The majority of funding for the bond would come from state sales tax revenue.

"A lot of it is we're increasing the amount of sales tax that we're going to use from the state. We're not increasing the rate. It's going to stay at 6%, but we'll use a little bit more of the sales tax that we generate revenue on and fund that down to the school side. And so that billion dollar bond, there'll be an annual payment of about $125 million over ten years that will pay that back," explained the bill's co-sponsor, Senator Doug Ricks.

The money will be distributed by how many students are attending in the district.

"So when you look at those dollar amounts as a proportion of the students that you have in your district, I think people will be very satisfied to see the amount of money coming into their district," said Critchfield.

There are a couple of options when it comes to schools getting their money from the bond.

"They can take their portion all upfront, and then for the next ten years, they figure out how they how they're going to phase that in whatever," said Critchfield. "Maybe it's an expense all set up. They're going to use that money, you know, all within the first year or two. Maybe it's something that's phased out. And then the other way they can use it is to get it in an annual basis, just annualized," she explained.

Senator Ricks maintains the funding plan is going to help lower taxes, as another 500 million will go towards helping schools pay down

"I really think you're going to see, you know, in addition to the bill we did last year, House Bill 292, that reduced property tax, this uses some of the same mechanisms that were put in place for that. But this will continue that effort to reduce property taxes. And I really think you're going to see possibly another 10 to 15% or even more reduction on property tax," said Ricks.