As Idaho Legislature bills hit ‘problematic levels,’ lawmaker wants to limit new legislation

BOISE (Idaho Capital Sun) — On the heels of a record-breaking influx of new legislation in 2025, a new bill would limit how many bills individual lawmakers can ask the Idaho Legislature’s research arm to draft. 

The Senate State Affairs Committee on Friday introduced a resolution that would cap lawmakers’ requests to 10 finished pieces of draft legislation from the Legislative Services Office each year. The bill’s sponsor Sen. Jim Guthrie, a Republican from McCammon who chairs the committee, said the limit was not requested by the Idaho Legislative Services Office, which drafts bills for lawmakers.

Senate Concurrent Resolution 114’s statement of purpose says the number of bills legislators have brought in recent years “has ascended to problematic levels,” which “creates logjams for bill drafters and has placed unreasonable expectations on that critical human resource.”

To pass, the resolution would need to pass both the Idaho House and Senate with at least two-thirds support. If it succeeds, it would establish a new joint rule for both chambers of the Legislature. 

Here’s how the proposed rule would work:

• Each year, from July 1 to June 30, legislators could ask the Legislative Services Office for a maximum of 25 pieces of draft legislation and 10 completed routing slips, or RS for short. Those are the final forms of draft legislation before they are officially introduced for consideration and become available for the public to see.
• Legislation revised in the drafting process would count as one piece of draft legislation.
• Several exceptions would apply to: Budget bills, amendments, trailer bills that are essentially add-ons to other bills, bills brought by interim committees, and when exceptions are granted for lawmakers by the leader of their legislative chamber.

In the first week of this year’s legislative session, the Legislative Services Office prepared 179 draft pieces of legislation — more than the first week of every legislative session since 2021, according to the Legislative Services Office’s weekly progress report. But only eight bills had been officially introduced in the first week of this year’s legislative session.

The resolution capping draft legislation requests could return for a full public hearing in a Senate committee in the coming days or weeks, before it would go for a vote in the Senate.

Idaho Capital Sun is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Idaho Capital Sun maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Christina Lords for questions: info@idahocapitalsun.com.