BOISE, Idaho — Newly elected Speaker of the House Rep. Mike Moyle (R-Star) finished House Committee assignments and most notably stripped a Democratic seat from the Joint Finance Appropriations Committee (JFAC).
Speaker Moyle awarded 9 of 10 total JFAC seats to Republicans. The minority party previously held two seats.
"You'd like to think you're heading out on a good foot where you're working in a good bipartisan manner to be working on the good important things facing the people of Idaho," House Democratic Leader Rep. Ilana Rubel (D- said. "These budgets are incredibly complicated, and they booted one of our members who had deep, deep experience. They knew this stuff inside out. [JFAC is] gonna have a bunch of newbies and I think the state of Idaho will lose by not having that experience on there."
Rep. Rubel criticizes Speaker Moyle's move for not awarding JFAC seats in proportion to party representation in House chambers.
"As far as we can tell for the last 100 years, Democrats have had proportional representation on J-FAC," Rep Rubel said. "This is the most important committee."
Democrats hold 11 of the 70 total seats in the House; that's good for 15.7% representation in the house. With only 10 House seats on JFAC, Speaker Moyle cannot achieve perfectly proportional representation. Speaker Moyle must either round up to 2 seats (20%) or down to one seat (10%).
The Speaker chose the latter.
"I've always worked well with Mike Moyle. I get along with him. I think he's a fun guy. I really hope we can work together on productive things going forward. I cannot express how disappointed I am in what has gone down in the past couple of days," Rep. Rubel said. "I am hoping he finds some way to partially fix this going forward. But it has been a real kick in the teeth which is disappointing. I would not have expected this based on my prior good working relationship with him."
Democrats control 7 of 35 senate seats: that's good for exactly 20%. Of the 10 senate JFAC seats, Democrats are represented with perfect proportions at two seats.
When taking the legislature as a whole, Democrats control 18 of 105 seats. That's 17.14% of the statehouse. Combining House and Senate JFAC seats, the Democrats control 15% of the committee.
KTVB was unable to get in touch with Speaker Moyle for comment. Speaker Moyle notified KTVB he was busy with work related meetings.
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