New bill would protect Idaho government employees who talk to state legislators

BOISE (Idaho Capital Sun) — An Idaho bill introduced Wednesday could protect government employees who communicate with state lawmakers.

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Dustin Manwaring, a Republican from Pocatello, said he’d been thinking about proposing the bill for years. His bill would bar employers from restricting public employees from communicating “in good faith” with state lawmakers, legislative staff or committees in the Idaho Legislature.

“This is really about good governance and government transparency,” Manwaring told the House State Affairs Committee before it introduced the bill Wednesday. 

The bill comes as the governor’s office has restricted state agency testimony on bills before the Legislature, and directed agencies to coordinate with the governor’s office before responding to questions from legislators and journalists. Idaho Gov. Brad Little’s chief of staff recently detailed the policy in a memo to agency leaders, which the Idaho Capital Sun obtained. 

Manwaring’s bill would prohibit employers from taking or threatening “adverse action” against public employees for talking with legislators, and would ban employer policies that restrict “employee communication” with the Legislature. He said the bill would build on the state’s whistleblower law. 

Manwaring told the Sun in an interview that his bill isn’t in response to the governor’s office’s policy but that his bill would halt it. He said he was inspired to bring the bill by years of experience as a legislator and in talking to other lawmakers. 

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

In the coming days or weeks, the legislation could receive a full committee hearing with public testimony before it would advance to the House.

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