Good morning, Chair Cannon and committee members. My name is Jean Henscheid, I am co-president of the League of Women Voters of Idaho but today I speak on behalf of myself and, if I may take the liberty, on behalf of the six generations of my ancestors who lived in Idaho before me. I ask the committee to reject HB 447.

I am from Blackfoot. You may have heard of it. In many ways and for many decades this area was the epicenter of the resentment and division caused when taxpayer money is appropriated to religion. This practice condemned my corner of Idaho to decades of pain this bill now threatens to reignite, this time across the state. 

There was a time in southern Idaho when religion was given public funding to “own” and control water, a commodity more precious than gold in our high deserts. This was also when religious leaders instructed sugar beet farmers to deal exclusively with religiously controlled sugar beet factories. Here too, government subsidies were used to underwrite religion. The hurt caused by this intermingling was felt on both sides when powerful opponents of one religion fought to have its members barred from voting, imprison their men, criminalize their families, and attempt to keep their elected legislators from being seated in this very building. My own Bingham County was cleaved from Oneida to separate members of one faith from their enemies. What happens when taxpayers, who are asked to support all without fear or favor, to write checks to religion was a formative story of my childhood. 

Supporters of tax credits to religious schools have offered an innocuous enough story about the consequences of asking taxpayers to pay for religion. Idahoans who have been here long enough to remember must remember. Especially to leaders from my beloved southern Idaho, I implore you to see through the rosy picture you’ve been painted, recall our past, and reject this bill. Thank you, I stand for questions.

Submitted on 03-12-24 to the Idaho House Revenue and Taxation Committee