Scott Herndon

Age: 56 Occupation: Home builder Education: BS Finance Arizona State University Town of residence: Sagle Q: Are you Pro-Life or Pro-Choice? Bonner General no longer offers childbirth services because health care providers left for fear of prosecution. How should the state address the exodus of doctors who are leaving Idaho because of abortion bans?

According to the 14th amendment of the US Constitution and Article I Section 1 of the Idaho Constitution, all human beings enjoy a right to life and should be protected from being unjustly terminated.

Your question propagates false information. Bonner General issued a letter explaining the closure of their maternity services, and the two reasons listed first were demographic changes in the area and business challenges. Kootenai Health operates in the same legal environment and has a thriving maternity practice.

Though Bonner General has failed in their obstetrics services for other reasons, they decided to throw abortion into the end of their explanation to drive a wedge into our community for political gain.

The reality too is that Idaho has a mandatory abortion reporting law, and Bonner General’s CEO confirmed they have been 100% in compliance with that law, and the hospital has never performed an abortion in decades. According to Bonner General, criminal abortions are never actually necessary in legitimate medical care.

Q: In 2024, the state approved a bare bones budget and then supplemental “trailers” to pay for additional items. Do you agree with the manner in which the legislature set the state budget this year? Why or why not?

A: I was a key player to get the change in the budget process. Many will remember Ronald Reagan always begged for the line-item veto.

Prior to my arrival in the senate, the legislature was forced to vote on the base budgets and the new line-item spending requests each year in one omnibus bill. That meant that if the $100 million Idaho State Police budget, which contained no helicopters, wanted to add a $7 million helicopter, like they requested in 2022, the legislature would have to reject the whole budget in order to simply reject the helicopter request.

This year we achieved major budget reforms that are a huge win for the taxpayers. Now, for example, legislators can confirm the base state police budget while taking a separate vote on the new spending requests in the line items. This allows much more thoughtful analysis of the new spending requests.

This year the changes allowed us to hold the growth of government relatively flat, reducing the burden on Idaho’s taxpayers.

Prior to the budget reforms this year, the legislature would routinely rubber stamp the omnibus agency budgets every year while only carefully reviewing 19% of the total spending.

Q: Do you believe Idaho spends too much on veterans? Not enough?

A: For three years in a row Idaho grew the spending on veteran’s services four times faster than the rate of inflation and the growth in the state. That was a little aggressive given the constraints of tax revenues and national debt. We leveled off that spending this year at about $61 million, and I was able to support the current budget for veterans.

The legislature also approved the spending of $8.6 million for a new veteran’s home in Boise and $34.5 million to renovate the veteran’s home in Lewiston. Q: What should the Legislature do to better support Idaho Public Schools?

A: Where we are failing in public schools is in reading and math proficiency in 8th and 12th grades. Currently, reading and math proficiency are less than 40% among students graduating from Idaho’s public schools.

One thing that would help is to tie academic outcomes to financial support. Right now, the public money distributed by the state to the local public schools contains no expectation of academic achievement. There is simply no accountability for the public money, and it is distributed only on the basis of headcount at the schools.

I support the concept of school choice so as to create options for kids that are not achieving in their current school. Last year I supported open enrollment, in which kids could attend any public school regardless of their zip code.

Unfortunately, we wasted an opportunity last year when we siphoned $80 million from the public schools and planted it in the Lauch program, which only benefits high school graduates. When that additional money was first set aside by the legislature in 2022, it was intended for K-12 career technical training. We should attempt to retrieve that money that got diverted to post-secondary job training and was lost from the public schools.