A bill that would add significant new restrictions to Idaho’s initiative process is headed to the full Senate for amendments.

The Senate State Affairs Committee voted 6-3 to move the proposal out of committee. Senate Pro Tem Brent Hill (R-Rexburg) joined two Democrats in opposing the motion.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Winder (R-Boise) said there may be an “error” in the bill that “needs to be dealt with at some point” involving how county clerks handle the petitions.

Under the bill, anybody signing a petition for an initiative would need to know the legislative district in which they live. County clerks are responsible for validating those signatures and several districts include more than one county.

"This would likely result in errors, unnecessary costs, and would need considerably more time than is currently provided to check signatures in those districts," says Phil McGrane, the Ada County Clerk.

The comittee's vote comes after the committee took hours of testimony last week that was overwhelmingly against these changes.

Senate Minority Leader Michelle Stennett (D-Ketchum) fought back against a much narrower timeline spelled out in the bill.

Currently, campaigns have 18 months to gather signatures. But the proposal would only give them six months, if it’s passed.

Combined with provisions nearly doubling the number of signatures they’d need to collect and requiring the signatures to come from nearly every corner of the state, Stennett says it would edge out grassroots campaigns.

“Changing this is just going to allow companies and big money from outside to come in and take over the process and peddle initiatives to the state from a national platform,” she says.

Sen. Christopher Mathias (D-Boise), who is a substituting for Sen. Cherie Buckner-Webb, put his concerns simply: “As a veteran, this does not smell like freedom to me.”

Winder and other Republicans on the committee have said they view the timing of the bill as “unfortunate” and that’s it’s not a rebuke of the nearly 61 percent of Idaho voters who voted yes to a Medicaid expansion initiative last year.

A press release sent on behalf of the entire Republican Senate caucus said that the bill from Sen. Scott Grow (R-Eagle) was hammered out by a working group of senators and representatives who met in private.

The release also maintained that former Treasure Valley Racing President John Sheldon did not lobby or advocate for the bill on behalf of one of his clients, the payday loan company Moneytree.

But in an interview with Boise State Public Radio on Friday, Sheldon said he had forwarded Grow talking points on a federal court order about similar restrictions made to Colorado’s initiative process on behalf of Moneytree.

Emails obtained through a public records request confirm that Trent Matson, Moneytree’s head lobbyist, was also included in the chain.

A second message from Sheldon to Grow labeled “BALLOT STATUTE BRIEFING POINTS FOR GROW.docx” closely mirrored – nearly word for word in at least one instance – the senator’s introductory speech for his bill during a March 11 committee hearing. Sheldon sent the email three days before that hearing.

In another email sent two weeks before the introduction of Grow’s bill, Sheldon referenced a lunch meeting the two had and included a Wall Street Journal article on other states implementing initiative restrictions.

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