Voter Guide: Dustin Manwaring (R)

• Website: https://manwaringforidaho.org/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/manwaringforidaho/
• Twitter:  @DustinManwaring

Q: Tell us about your background, including your education, career experience, public service, and any previous political involvement. What experiences have best prepared you to serve in the Legislature?

I am a sixth-generation East Idahoan. My experiences growing up and living in Idaho and operating my business and raising my family here have taught me the importance of hard work, personal responsibility, and service to others. I have gained practical experience in law and policy by running a successful business law practice for 17 years and serving in the legislature in various leadership roles, including serving as House Caucus Chairman and as a member of our joint budget and finance committee.

My public service includes four terms in the Idaho House of Representatives, volunteer work for local nonprofit groups including the Lillian Vallely Youth Foundation, and leadership in my church.

The experiences that have best prepared me to serve are being in mid-career as a professional operating my own business and working and living in the community I represent. I drink from the same hose as the rest of my friends and neighbors and want the best for my children and to leave Idaho better for them than I found it—and that means great! I have learned that through hard work and dedication and a strong education, it is possible to earn a living wage and raise a family in Pocatello and give back to my community through public service.

I know how to evaluate difficult issues, manage limited resources, bring people together, and remain accountable for results. I would bring that practical, solutions-oriented approach to the Legislature as I have shown by experience.

Q: If elected, what would be your highest legislative priority, and what specific policies or actions would you pursue to address it?

My highest priority would be making Idaho a place where families can afford to live, work, raise children, and build a secure future. That requires disciplined budgeting, a strong economy, effective public services, and policies that do not impose unnecessary costs on households and employers. It also means continuing to keep the tax burden low and red tape out of the way of growth.

I would focus on affordability in housing, healthcare, childcare, and higher education, including:

• The ‘Right to Build’ single family housing by default;
• Bending the cost curve down for health insurance and healthcare by reducing administrative burden, claim processing times, and prior authorization procedures for medical treatment and pharmacy access;
• Support childcare grant programs with buy-in from families, childcare providers, and employers like the Tri-Share program started by United Way Southeast Idaho through its KIDS First Coalition on which I serve; and
• Greater transparency and measurable performance standards in budgeting and review of agency spending so taxpayers can determine whether public programs are achieving their intended results.

My record demonstrates my ability to get things done and tackle tough issues like those stated, and my approach would be to identify practical reforms, establish clear goals, and work with any legislators and community leaders from across the state who are interested in producing durable results.

Q: Many families are concerned about rising costs of fuel, housing, groceries, health care, and other essentials. What role should government play in addressing inflation and improving economic opportunities, and what specific steps would you support?

State government cannot control every national or global factor that contributes to inflation, but it can avoid making the problem worse. Government should keep taxes and regulatory burdens reasonable, maintain responsible budgets, and remove unnecessary barriers that increase the cost of housing, energy, transportation, health care, and starting or expanding a business.

I would support policies that:

• Increase the housing supply by streamlining permitting and reviewing unnecessary land-use and construction barriers while respecting local communities and property rights;
• Reduce unnecessary occupational licensing and regulatory burdens, particularly for small businesses;
• Expand career and technical education, apprenticeships, and other pathways to well-paying jobs;
• Promote reliable and affordable energy;
• Review taxes and fees that disproportionately affect working families; and
• Require careful evaluation of proposed legislation’s likely effects on consumer prices and small businesses.

Government should not attempt to solve inflation through unchecked spending or temporary measures that create larger long-term obligations. The goal should be sustainable economic growth, broader opportunity, and prudent stewardship of taxpayer dollars.

Q: Immigration remains a major issue at both the state and federal levels. What is your position on immigration policy, and what role, if any, should state government play in addressing immigration-related concerns?

The federal government has the primary constitutional responsibility for immigration and border enforcement. Congress and the executive branch must secure the border, enforce immigration laws consistently, and establish a lawful and workable immigration system.

At the same time, state governments must address the practical consequences of federal policy. The state should cooperate appropriately with federal authorities, protect public safety, prevent human trafficking and illegal drug distribution, and ensure that public resources are administered lawfully and responsibly.

We should distinguish between lawful immigration—which has strengthened our country—and unlawful conduct that undermines the rule of law. Immigration policy should be firm, fair, humane, and consistent. States should not attempt to create conflicting immigration systems, but neither should they ignore the effects that federal failures can have on schools, health care, law enforcement, housing, and local government budgets.

• Access, affordability, and workforce shortages continue to challenge the health care system. What do you see as the biggest health care issues facing residents, and what solutions would you advocate for?

The most significant challenges are the cost of care, shortages of health professionals, limited access in rural and underserved communities, inadequate mental and behavioral health services, administrative burdens, delays in claims processing and payments, and prior authorization requirements for treatment and medicine.

I would advocate for:

• Expanding medical, nursing, dental, behavioral-health, and allied-health training opportunities;
• Increasing price transparency and competition;
• Expanding telehealth where it improves access without compromising quality;
• Strengthening mental-health and substance-use treatment, including crisis services; and
• Reducing administrative burdens that take providers away from patient care.

Any health care proposal should be evaluated according to whether it improves access, protects quality, increases patient choice, and reduces—not merely shifts—costs.

• As lawmakers consider state budget priorities, what level of funding do you believe public schools should receive? What factors shape your position, and what outcomes would you hope to achieve?

Public schools should receive sufficient, stable, and responsibly allocated funding to provide students with a high-quality education and prepare them for college, a career, military service, or another productive path. The discussion should not focus only on a single dollar amount. It should also consider enrollment, student needs, local costs, classroom staffing, facilities, transportation, special education obligations, and measurable educational outcomes.

My priorities would include attracting and retaining effective teachers, improving literacy and mathematics outcomes, expanding career and technical education, maintaining safe learning environments, and ensuring that resources reach classrooms and students.

Funding should be transparent and accountable. Taxpayers deserve to know how education dollars are used, and parents deserve clear information about student performance. The objective is not simply to spend more or less—it is to use public resources effectively, so every student has a genuine opportunity to succeed.

Q: Looking at the most recent legislative session, what do you think lawmakers got right, what did they get wrong, and what changes would you advocate if elected?

Lawmakers were right to take on housing affordability. The starter home subdivision and accessory dwelling unit bills set reasonable statewide standards that let more Idahoans build and own homes, while keeping local health, safety, and infrastructure requirements in place. I particularly supported these reforms because they fit the ‘Right to Build’ approach I have advocated: increasing supply is the most durable way to bring housing costs down for young families and first-time buyers. I also supported the investment in new Idaho medical residencies and the decision to protect career and technical education from most proposed cuts, because both address workforce shortages directly.

However, the Legislature fell short on long-term budget planning. In particular, cuts to higher education, including a 5% reduction for four-year institutions like Idaho State University, and late-session cuts affecting graduate medical education did not adequately account for the effect on students, employers, and the health care workforce in communities like Pocatello. Those decisions risk working against the very workforce goals the Legislature says it supports. The Legislature also should have done more to modernize the K-12 funding formula, which has been discussed for a decade without action.

If elected, I would advocate for multi-year budget forecasting that weighs tax policy and spending decisions together, modernization of the school funding formula, greater public transparency, and a more disciplined focus on whether legislation produces measurable benefits. Major proposals should be carefully vetted, their fiscal consequences should be clearly disclosed, and the public should have a meaningful opportunity to participate before final decisions are made.

What is one issue that has not received enough attention during this campaign, and why do you believe voters should care about it?

One issue that deserves more attention is Idaho’s long-term energy and water capacity as our state grows. It may not generate the most headlines, but it directly affects families’ utility bills, the businesses that create jobs here, our farmers and ranchers, and long-term state finances.

This matters because demand for electricity and water is rising quickly with population growth, new manufacturing, and large energy users like data centers. If it is not addressed, the state could face higher utility rates, strained water supplies for agriculture, and lost economic opportunity to states that planned ahead. East Idaho is uniquely positioned to lead, with Idaho National Laboratory, a skilled technical workforce, and strong partnerships with Idaho State University. I would pursue a long-range state energy and water plan that supports reliable baseload power, including advanced nuclear and hydropower along with renewables and natural gas; protects existing water rights; ensures large new users pay their fair share of infrastructure costs.

Voters should care because effective government is not only about responding to the issue receiving the most attention today. It is also about anticipating long-term challenges, protecting future opportunities, and addressing problems before they become more difficult and expensive to solve.

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Video transcription:

Q: The first thing is tell us about you and your background and what got you into politics and what make you a good politician?
Yeah, well, I'm 6th generation East Idaho, and so this is home to me. I'm born and raised here. I went away for college for a little while, but I came back and been in Pocatello. I have a law practice here in Pocatello for 17 years. And I first ran for the legislature back in 2016. So that was, you know, after being in practice for you know, five or six years, young professional, looking around, how do I get myself more involved in the community? Where can I start to give back a little bit? And that's where I took an interest in, you know, paying attention to state policy. I'm an attorney. Where can I fit in and contribute back? And that's where I felt most interested and drawn to.
And so, I also just saw a opportunity to be a younger professional that was in the legislature. We have one of the older legislatures in the country, and to just have that representation of a younger voice in the legislature. Now, fast forward 10 years, I'm still probably one of the younger ones.
but not quite as young anymore and have more experience after serving a few terms, finishing up my fourth term in Boise. And so now I have that passion combined with that experience and still in, you know, mid-career, raising my family, young family, professional business that I operate and drinking from the same hose as everybody else that's trying to out there make a living and put their kids in school and make it work. And so that's what I bring to the legislature is trying to trying to relate to, you know, Idaho families and keep it a place that more people like me and my wife want to want to be here for.

Q: If you're elected, what would your highest legislative priority be this year and what specific policy or actions would you pursue to address it?

Yeah, I really am focused on some of those affordability questions and some of those that I'm honing in on. I think we have some more housing reform policy that we can take at the state level. We started doing that last legislative session. I think we need to take it a step further and sort of push it a step
closer to like a right to build a single-family home as the default as opposed to some of the red tape that's still in place. We don't like to preempt local regulations, but we do need to ease that burden and get more housing supply on the market, not just multifamily homes. I mean, we have a lot of concern as I talk to people, you know, in this campaign in particular, but I mean, I just feel it.
That we're not going to be able to have our kids and grandkids afford homes. And so we got to do everything we can to eliminate that burden and start to increase that housing supply in Idaho and bring that cost down. Same thing with healthcare. Deeply committed to continuing to work on healthcare reform. I did a bunch of health insurance work this summer. We're going to bring some policy bills into this next legislative session to help bring the cost of health care down. That's really hard. A lot of those decisions are federal policy, but you have to start to work to bend that cost curve down. And some of those things we're working on are like prior authorization reform, timing for medical bills being paid on the healthcare side.

And the other thing that I'm really doing is the last couple of years, I've worked a lot on medical education and trying to increase our workforce for medical education. So we have a severe doctor shortage. You can almost pick out any, well, many areas of the health professions and they're short on labor. And so we got to keep focusing in on building that pipeline from high school to college to medical school and then residencies and keeping them here and wanting to be here and stay here.
Or we're not going to have, as we have an aging population, we're going to continue to have a severe drought of physicians, particularly in rural Idaho. So those are, that's just a snapshot of kind of the things I'm mostly interested in.

Q: Many families are concerned about the rising cost of fuel and housing and groceries, healthcare, you know, all that stuff, just like rising cost of everything inflation. What role do you think state government should do in addressing that inflation and help improve the economic opportunities here in the state?

Yeah, and I talked just about some of that kind of with the housing supply. I mean, the costs, I mean, with the doubling of the housing costs in the last 8 to 10 years and the interest rates going up, really with that interest rate and the value of houses, you basically, you made it extraordinarily more difficult
to buy and afford a home. And so the costs that go into that are deeply concerning to many families, but you also add on, once they paid for housing, once they paid for healthcare, once they paid for childcare, you don't have a lot more room in your budget to pay for fuel and groceries that are
inflated more than we've ever seen, you know, in a long time, maybe ever. And so, you know, I would be looking for ways, like I said before, increasing the supply for housing, but also I think we need to continue to promote more reliable and affordable energy in Idaho. We don't want to increase utility bills as we have pressure on our system for things like data centers and other things that, you know, are potentially going to add pressures to costs on utilities. So they need to be able to pay for themselves. But we need more energy on the grid.

We need to reliable, affordable energy is a big one. We need to keep taxes low. I hear a lot about property taxes and the tax burden that families face. We've done some of that tax relief at the state level and pushed down some property tax relief to the locals. But we don't have too many levers when it comes to property tax that we can pull at the state level because those are those are assessed at the local level, collected at the local level. Those budgets are passed at the local level, but we do we do get to set the state policy around, you know, how much those local revenues are, how much they can raise, how much they can increase their budgets, for example, in a particular year. And that gets passed on to families. And so a good, simple, fair tax policy is one of those ways that we can keep Idaho an affordable place to live.

Q: What's your position on immigration and what role, if any, should the state government have in playing any immigration-related issues or concerns?

Yeah, I mean, immigration really is a... a federal, they have primary authority over immigration. They control our federal borders around our country. But it impacts all of the states, primarily from everything from labor to crime and illegal drugs in particular.
That trafficking that comes through some of that illegal immigration is real. And it's especially real in a place like Pocatello and the district I'm in, where we have, you know, the two interstates intersecting here. We're already having drug trafficking area. And so any, you know, additional illegal immigration does impact, you know, crime and drug trafficking issues. At the same time, we have, we need to make sure we do have, we're paying attention to the impacts that we have in Idaho related to our workforce, right? I mean, I think we need to make sure that we're not doing the federal government's work and, you know, if, you know, making it, making it our burden to round up people and ship them out of here. I mean, I think that's one of those things that is very, very controversial about how we handle some of those things, or you know, you've heard a lot. Well, most folks have heard, you know, about being sanctuary counties and cities for things like that. But I, but I think, you know, what we ought to do is respect federal policy, keep a secure border. Idaho has done that. We've supported the
Customs and Border Patrol, we've sent our state police down to the border to be trained and get more training down there and just be more educated on how that works and show our support for a strong border. And I think that's the best way to keep some of these issues out of Idaho is by keeping that, keeping that strong border and, you know, down in Texas and Arizona and New Mexico in particular. And we keep out these issues I was just talking about, the crime, the drugs and the things. A strong federal border eliminates a lot of the issues at the state level that we don't have a lot of control around.

Q: So you're okay when the governor sends the Idaho state troopers down there to help the troop or help the immigration guys. Basically, I guess you're right, they're learning from them is what they're doing.

Yeah, I think they are learning. I mean, they're also helping the border down there. I mean, I think there's I think there's both, but I think they're mostly kind of learning what it what it's really like to enforce a border, and I think they're also getting they're getting those boots on the ground training on some of the drug interdiction things and the trafficking issues, I think they're short of shoring up their knowledge of how that stuff's coming up and what, you know, the ways it comes in and the ways it gets distributed.

Q: What solutions do you think you could advocate for to help with the health care issues going on facing residents?

Yeah, yeah, and I have. I mentioned several things we're working on with regards to medical education and health insurance reform. And I think those are big ones that I've tried to take the lead on and will continue to take the lead on in the legislature. I think you'll see as we roll out some of our rural health care transformation funds, we have a big tranche of federal money coming in over the next five years, almost a billion dollars each year for the next five years. We have a lot of state policy decisions to make on how we roll that out and improve access to healthcare throughout Idaho, and particularly rural Idaho. We have several struggling rural hospitals that, you know, don't have much cash on hand. They're barely keeping the doors open. We know that. Operating margins are slimming up. And at the same time, we have rising health premium costs. So it's kind of this collision course of what are we doing here?
And at the same time, kind of that third kind of punch is the federal government has, you know, lowered how much they're reimbursing the states for Medicaid. And so the states having to take on more and more share of that Medicaid payment burden. And that's costing us, you know, a big chunk of our  state budget is going towards that. In fact, I mean, this is a side note to the question, but I think it's important. I mean, we are the first time in the last two years, we're paying more out in Medicaid and healthcare costs, health and welfare costs in the state of Idaho than we are for education. And that's been, that's the first time that I know we've ever whoever done that and it's a rising burden. So I think we need to keep doing things.

One of the things that we can do also is we, as the state of Idaho, we are the largest employer. We have a large contract with the health carriers, right? And so we can set the stage and precedent for how a lot of the rest of the private market works in Idaho by having a large contract and what we negotiate in that contract then gets kind of pushed out and sort of becomes the precedent. So we have to do a good job of setting that precedent well for the rest of the state of Idaho and the private market. I think we can continue to reduce the administrative burden and that goes along with some of the
the issues I mentioned earlier on health insurance reform as we continue to minimize the time for prior authorizations, minimize the time for, you know, increase the prompt payment timeline on things. And so waiting as long as that can lower the cost of health care and those savings.
You know, we hope it will be passed on to Idahoans.

Q: All right, next subject is about public schools. As lawmakers consider state budget priorities, what level of funding do you believe public schools should receive and what factors shape your position and what outcomes would you hope to achieve?

Yeah, well, this is a good one, and I kind of led to that. I mean, we have an obligation to fully fund public education. It's A constitutional obligation. I think we're still working to get there, particularly with things like special education and school facilities, we've made a lot more progress on school facilities in the last few years. We've sort of put a lot of dollars back into that. We still have some work to do. But we are, we are, I think, trying to make good on our commitment to fully fund school facilities and get away from many of those local levies. You know, we have a lot of local levies now. We're funding, you know, we're funding too many salaries, frankly, from local levies, and I think we got to get away from that. We keep putting levies on the ballot to fund schools, and I think, you know, we need to figure out a way to change our school funding model. We're still, I know the state superintendent's going to be, you know, working on that again to try to try to get something done. We've been working on that for years. We need to, we need to fix that, but...
Yeah, I think we need to, one of the things just as a high priority is the special needs students in special education. As I talk to our local district here in public school, charter schools, they are seeing an increased burden of the percentage of population that are needing special needs. I mean, between 16, 17, 20% of the population are special needs. And a school district like Pocatello, you have, where it's a more larger school district, which traditionally has more resources than further out areas, people are, you know, coming in to utilize these resources and it adds even additional strain on some of these larger systems. And so we have a lot of work to do to continue to make sure our public schools receive budget priorities that they that they should should have to be taken care of. And we'll continue to do that because that is our that is one of our number one prerogatives as a legislature is funding public education. And I'm committed to do that.

Q:  What one issue that you think hasn't received enough attention this campaign? And why do you think voters should care about it?

Yeah, I let on to this one, and it's kind of two-pronged, but it's making sure that we have energy resources and infrastructure developed out and water capacity. I think those resource issues, and I could add fire into that, making sure that we're doing good fire management. But all of those resource issues really will impact what we have available in the rest of our state budget going forward, how much we've paid for those things in advance and not, they never become cheaper paying for resource. It doesn't ever become cheaper to build a road or to add capacity to a dam or to inject more water into the aquifer in the future. I mean, we've talked about inflation. It's always more expensive. And so I think to take care of Idaho long term and to have a place where we can build off of that and have other places in our budget to fund things like education and health care, we can't let off the gas on investments in our energy resources. We have to have more sources of energy put on the grid. We need to build out our transmission lines. We don't have enough transmission east to west, north to south. And then those water capacity issues. I mean, those are, it seems like that's had a lot of attention, but it needs to, right? I mean, I don't know if there's ever enough attention on these resource issues to be able to invest more. It's really expensive to add capacity to a dam or to build out canals from a river to deliver water that, you know, might need to switch from groundwater to surface water. But we need to continue to make these serious investments in our Idaho resources. And so enough attention or not, I think it needs more. I think we need to keep that focus there.

Q: Let's see here. Anything else you want to talk about that you want to bring up or any?

Well, I think, I mean, this is a controversial issue, but I think I think I should just say, I think state level, local level, we're dealing with several issues from, you know, feeling pressure on things like data centers. It always take up a lot of noise and space in our time and for good reason. I think we're going to be dealing with those issues and it'll put pressure on the state legislature this year to sort of set some state precedent and give some direction to the locals on what they should be doing with regards to, you know, protecting people's privacy, making sure that development doesn't inherently increase, you know, make that affordability burden more on Idaho families, and so that we're not, I think some of the some of the economic incentives that we've had in the past. We've been working on for a couple of years, but, I think, Idahoans are really asking for some of that to be reigned in and that development pays for itself and were going to take some heat and really listen to that sentiment and carry it forward in the policy making that we have.

Q: And you brought up that data center. What do you think of flock cameras? That was a big issue last night in the city council meeting, but not much you can do about it?

Yeah, I wasn't there, but I actually just listened through most of that this morning. Very interesting discussion, I think.
And I'm interested in it because I, I mean, that is one of the areas I'm, you know, kind of working on. And I think, you know, several legislators are, and we'll have to, you know, kind of get to a point where we see what we're going to do. But I think the default for me, I think there are a lot of good points. I mean, I think, I think, I think I totally understand the sentiment in that room.
And you know, you sit there and you think, you know, all the good that can come from these cameras.
you know, that's two or three police officers salary, also in the cost of the contract. Which one are we better off with? What, you know, we have to kind of balance those interests. But I think at the end of the day, what's most important for me is that we're making sure, and they've already done some of it here in Pocatello, you know, with auditing and training and all those things and protections, but you peel it all back, you have to have probable cause. You have to have a warrant when you're invading somebody's privacy, and we need to make sure that that's the default. So from a state level, that's what I think we're going to be honing in on and giving the public that assurance that they're not going to be tracked and their privacy is not going to be invaded without a warrant. And we will respect and follow the Fourth Amendment.

Editor's note: This interview was transcribed using Closed Captioning software. All content was reviewed and verified for accuracy by the Local News 8 editorial team.