IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (KIFI) – With one day left until the election, candidates are making a final push to draw voters to the polls.
Two candidates running for Idaho Senate District 33, Democrat Jan Brown and Republican Dave Lent (incumbent) spoke about the rising costs of fuel, housing, groceries, health care and other essentials, and the role government should play in addressing inflation and improving economic outcomes.
Lent pointed to relief from recent tax cuts passed by the Legislature.
“Over the last eight years I’ve been in the Senate, five of those years we have reduced taxes for Idaho citizens. The number that we have reduced taxes to is $2.8 billion – a lot of that coming from income taxes,” said Lent. “At the same time, we’ve reduced those taxes, we’ve tried to streamline our state government to make it less burdensome for our citizens. Many people would be might be surprised to know that Idaho is in the bottom five when it comes to property taxes in the United States per person.”
Brown called for raising the homeowners’ exemption and indexing it to inflation.
“There are some things we can do immediately at the state level. One of them would be addressing the homeowner exemption to make sure that we raised that exemption from its current $125,000 up to $200,000,” Brown said. “I also feel like the wealthy are getting a lot of the tax breaks that we really need to address. That means total tax reform – trying to equalize property, income and sales tax. The way it used to be in the 1980s, when I first arrived in Idaho, was far more balanced.”
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