Idaho Bill Would Shield State Employees Communicating ‘In Good Faith’ with Lawmakers

A recently introduced bill seeks to provide protection for Idaho government employees who communicate “in good faith” with the state’s lawmakers, legislative staff or committees in the Idaho legislature.

Introduced on Jan. 21, the legislation would prohibit employers from taking or threatening adverse action against Idaho public employees for talking with legislators, and would ban employer policies that limit employee communication with the state’s legislature, according to the Idaho Capital Sun.

Rep. Dustin Manwaring sponsored the bill, which he told the Sun would build on Idaho’s existing whistleblower law.

As the Sun’s Kyle Pfannenstiel reported, the bill was introduced on the heels of Gov. Brad Little’s office issuing a memo restricting state agency testimony on bills before the Idaho legislature.

That memo also directed agencies to coordinate with Little’s office before responding to questions from legislators and journalists, Pfannenstiel wrote, adding that the legislation could receive a full committee hearing with public testimony in the coming days or week, before advancing to the Idaho House.

Manwaring told the Sun that the legislation he’s sponsoring is not a direct response to Little’s new policy, but that his bill would put an end to it.

‘I’ve had enough personal experience with just having issues where I feel like sometimes we’re not getting the best information,” he told the publication, “or [that] we would just get better information if this protection was in place for employees to just be able to talk to us freely.”