Committee approves bill to eliminate JLOC, move oversight of OPE to Legislative Council

The House State Affairs Committee, in a party-line vote, approved a proposal to eliminate the bipartisan Joint Legislative Oversight Committee and move oversight of the Office of Performance Evaluations to the Legislative Council, in a move that its sponsor says will eliminate red tape and its opponents say will undermine the nonpartisan nature of the office.

The bill would also reduce the votes needed to approve a director of the office and alter the language regarding the office’s conduct and issuance of evaluations.

Eight community members testified in the HB 68’s hearing Tuesday morning, all in opposition.

“Nothing changes here with regards to transparency,” House Majority Leader Megan Blanksma, R-Hammett, told committee members. “This is just more reflective of what the actual Legislature looks like.”

JLOC, which would be eliminated by the bill, is the state’s only committee evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. Legislative Council, which oversees management of responsibilities of the Legislature, is made up of the Senate pro tempore, House speaker, majority and minority leaders from both parties, and four senators and representatives, two from each party.

Blanksma said she thought the minority was overrepresented in JLOC. The committee, created in 1993, can authorize the OPE to conduct independent performance evaluations of state agencies and programs. The office has been nationally recognized for its work.

Those who testified against it argued that moving the oversight of OPE to a group controlled by Republican leadership could introduce partisanship to a process that has engendered positive changes in the state over the years.

Susan King, also a Boise resident, said she especially appreciated the 2020 report the office did on Idaho’s response to Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias, because those diseases have affected her life. She said the office must stay neutral to promote confidence in its work by the public.

“I want to know that there is not partisan fox of any color in the hen house,” King said.

Testifiers cited a number of previous reports produced by OPE as examples of the work it’s done, including ones related to school facilities, foster care, Alzheimer’s disease and dementia care, and emergency services volunteers.

Blanksma argued the bill wouldn’t change anything about the office.

“This is about JLOC, and if you look at it, the process remains the same, that’s what it is,” she said. “I appreciate that so many people think I am nefarious in doing this, but the fact of the matter is, OPE remains independent and does the study itself.”

The bill would repeal the section of code regarding the office’s conduct and issuance of performance evaluation reports, which dictates how the office will conduct an overview of operations of an agency or program and how material related to that can be handled prior to publicly releasing a report.

The bill keeps the definition of “performance audit or evaluation” the same.

House Minority Leader Illana Rubel, JLOC co-chairperson, interprets the bill as fundamentally changing the mission of the office.

“This is a complete transformation of OPE’s mission, it’s not just shifting it from one committee to another,” Rubel said. “They will no longer be able to do deep dive investigations into particular functions of state government. They would be transformed into just a very high level auditing organization that does very high level summaries of state agencies and contracts.”

Rubel said the office has been a “model of bipartisan cooperation” and called the move “a tragedy.”

“I view it basically as a naked, partisan power grab,” Rubel said.

Longtime director of the office, Rakesh Mohan, is also concerned about the potential changes, which include requiring just a simple majority vote by the council to select a new director instead of the 75 percent now required.

“The reason JLOC was formed the way it was formed was to get rid of the politics, and it’s a lot easier to get a majority vote than getting 75 percent,” Mohan said in an interview. “... it has nothing to do with Republicans or Democrats, whichever is in the majority will introduce politics.”

Guido covers Idaho politics for the Lewiston Tribune, Moscow-Pullman Daily News and Idaho Press of Nampa. She may be contacted at lguido@idahopress.com and can be found on Twitter @EyeOnBoiseGuido.