This Week in the Idaho Legislature

A quick update on what's going on at the Capitol. A couple of highlights:

This week in the Idaho legislature, the focus continues to be the federal stimulus package and the budget setting process. Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter issued his recommendations today for how to use $1,240,062,000 in federal stimulus funding being made available to Idaho by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The Governor’s recommendations are based on seven basic criteria:

* Create and protect jobs in all regions of the state
* Provide for quality education of Idaho’s school-aged children
* Provide temporary relief for Idahoans directly impacted by the global recession
* Minimize ongoing costs to taxpayers in the current year as well as future years
* Do not use the funds to create new state programs
* Do not use the funds to expand the size of state government
* Delay use of rainy day funds as a hedge against continued declines in state revenue

The REALTORS® legislation has passed the House and now makes its way to the Senate. The only real snag to this point has been the canary yellow paper we use on our RE 42 property Disclosure form. The concern generally raised is the yellow paper is meant to stand out so consumers are aware of the predatory practice of equity stripping. Obviously the REALTORS® we want to protect consumers and will continue to do so, but this is entirely impractical in today’s business practice of faxed and electronic transmittals. Additionally the people this is really directed towards aren’t using the form to begin with, and with 26 different forms in use how do we judge which are the most important.

The following is the current status of our legislation:

· HB 188 Real Estate License Law passed the House 62 - 0
· HB 189 Real Estate - Trust Accounts passed the House 62 - 1
· HB 190 Representation Agreements, Legal Description passed the House 65 - 0
· HB 191 Foreclosure Disclosure Form passed the House 45 -20

There were two ITD bills (HB47, 48) that would have impacted the rights of property owners which we opposed are now dead. There was also a proposal to put a new tax on new customers through the PUC (HB 52) that we strongly opposed which is also dead. These pieces of legislation would have impacted the housing market very negatively. Bad legislation that doesn’t become law is often just as important as the bills that pass.

· HB 218 Building Codes -The purpose of this legislation is to exempt single family dwellings and multiple family dwelling buildings up to four units per building, from the requirements to install automatic fire sprinkler systems.

There are also three bills related to banking law just printed this morning. The bills will likely be heard next week and we will be monitoring closely.

· HB 234 Trust deeds/foreclosure/judgments
· HB 235 Foreclosures and defiency judgments
· HB 236 Foreclosures/deficiency judgments

If you have any questions, call Miguel at the ACAR Office: 947-7226