Idaho

Idaho tobacco settlement secures millions in funds, rather than spending years to litigate payments • Idaho Capital Sun

Published

2 years ago

August 27, 2024

Idaho tobacco settlement secures millions in funds, rather than spending years to litigate payments • Idaho Capital Sun

Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador reached a new settlement with tobacco companies to immediately get a big chunk of disputed funds, but it will leave millions on the table.

That’s instead of duking it out in litigation that can last over a decade.

Idaho’s settlement — reached in March — resolved years of complicated litigation, and it’s similar to ones 38 other states and territories reached, the Idaho Office of the Attorney General says.

Those are long-running cases over disputed payments by cigarette manufacturers, stemming from a quirk in a massive 1998 settlement. That earlier deal, called the Master Settlement Agreement, requires a handful of the largest cigarette manufacturers to pay states billions of dollars annually.

Instead of risking arbitration panels potentially denying Idaho full access to around $58 million in disputed payments by major cigarette manufacturers, Idaho’s new deal settles for $37 million — and an even higher share of future disputed funds.

Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador is sworn in on the steps of the State Capitol building on January 6, 2023. (Otto Kitsinger for Idaho Capital Sun)

“This settlement avoids decades of expensive litigation and eliminates risk that could threaten millions of dollars of Idaho’s annual … payment” from the original 1998 settlement, Labrador said in an April news release. “I’m committed to ensuring that the tobacco companies meet their obligations to Idaho under the (Master Settlement Agreement) without delay or uncertainty.”

As a result, Idaho is expecting a more “even payment stream year to year” from the settlement, Deputy Attorney General John Olson told a panel of lawmakers last week in a presentation before the Joint Millennium Fund Committee. The committee recommends how Idaho should spend its tobacco settlement funds.

Idaho lawmakers are gearing up to dole out more of the tobacco settlement funds toward youth drug prevention efforts, Boise State Public Radio reported. Over the years, Idaho lawmakers have directed the funds toward a range of issues, including toward public health districts, substance abuse treatment, the Idaho Meth Project and more, according to reports by the Idaho State Treasurer.

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New settlement resolves decades of litigation over disputed tobacco company payments

In 1998, Idaho and states across the U.S. reached the landmark Master Settlement Agreement meant to reduce smoking.

The settlement set up decades of payments by tobacco companies to states. But some of those payments went into disputed accounts that states would have to arbitrate to access.

That stems from the “non-participating manufacturer adjustment,” one of several adjustments in the 1998 master settlement agreement, Olson told lawmakers last week.

Each year, tobacco companies claim that the adjustment applies to reduce their payments to states, Olson explained, pooling about $3 million to $5 million of Idaho’s tobacco settlement payments into the disputed fund annually.

Idaho has spent years litigating to access those funds. Just this year, Idaho was litigating to access disputed funds from 2005, Olson said.

door to Attorney General Raul Labrador's office — The door to Attorney General Raul Labrador’s office at the Idaho State Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2023. (Otto Kitsinger for the Idaho Capital Sun)

Whether Idaho would win in arbitration depended on if it could convince an arbitration panel of judges that Idaho “diligently” enforced the terms of its law passed in accordance with the 1998 settlement.

James Simeri, the chief of the attorney general’s office’s Consumer Protection Division, which handles the litigation, told the Idaho Capital Sun in an interview that the settlement eliminated the risk of losing disputed funds. And it means Idaho will receive payments now, rather than waiting a decade or longer for litigation over individual years’ payments to resolve, he said.

“The attorney general’s looking out for the people of Idaho,” Simeri said. “And getting most of the money, but not all the money, but eliminating the risk of losing the money — seems desirable on the whole, in the circumstances, given the risks.”

And the office had to pay attorneys and staff for the litigation, he added.

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Why Idaho reached the new tobacco settlement

This year, Idaho is getting around $74 million in tobacco settlement funds. That includes the up-front payments for past disputed funds that the new settlement secured, along with Idaho’s $23.3 million payment originating from the 1998 settlement this year, Olson told lawmakers.

When Idaho reached the new settlement, around $58 million was in its disputed payments account from funds withheld through 2020, Simeri told the Sun in an email.

The new settlement also sets Idaho up to receive 75% of future disputed payments from 2015 through 2031, according to a February letter by Labrador, outlining the new settlement.

In the past, Idaho has won in arbitration. But the Attorney General’s Office says future success isn’t guaranteed, referencing a recent loss for the state of Washington.

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If Idaho lost its arbitration for those disputed funds, it could lose access to those funds — and maybe even lose more, through a reallocation provision in the settlement, Simeri told the Sun.

“It’s less than you could have gotten with a total victory. But if you compare it to a total defeat, it’s a lot more,” Simeri told the Sun in an interview.

Whether settling over the disputed funds is beneficial “is in the eyes of the beholder,” Brett DeLange, former chief of the Idaho Office of the Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division, told the Sun in an interview.

He thinks some states are essentially saying: “‘a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.’ … That having a lesser amount now is better than waiting so long to get the full amount.”

And he praised Olson and David Young — two Idaho deputy attorneys general on the tobacco settlement litigation — as “outstanding lawyers.”

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Idaho

‘Unrelenting’: Statehouse reporters recap 2026 legislative session in Idaho Falls – East Idaho News

Published

4 hours ago

April 19, 2026

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‘Unrelenting’: Statehouse reporters recap 2026 legislative session in Idaho Falls – East Idaho News

IDAHO FALLS — Two prominent Idaho Statehouse reporters say this past legislative session was “unrelenting,” chaotic, largely driven by budget cuts, and they see the Legislature getting more powerful.

Kevin Richert and Clark Corbin recapped this past legislative session at a forum on the ISU Idaho Falls Campus on Thursday.

Richert is a senior reporter at Idaho Education News, with more than 30 years of experience covering education policy and politics. Corbin is a senior reporter at the Idaho Capital Sun who has covered every Idaho legislative session, gavel to gavel, since 2011.

The event was hosted by the City Club of Idaho Falls, which “exists to sponsor and promote civil dialogue and discourse on all matters of public interest” and strives to be “nonpartisan and nonsectarian,” according to its website.

Budget cuts

Both Richert and Corbin said this session was driven by budget cuts. Corbin said this was due to a lack of revenue stemming from past income tax and the adoption of new federal tax cuts.

“Cuts for almost every state agency and state department dominated the legislative session,” Corbin said. “We’re talking about 4% budget cuts for most state agencies and departments in the current fiscal year, and we’re talking about an additional 5% budget cuts for almost all state agencies and departments starting next year — fiscal year ’27 — and continuing permanently.”

RELATED | Gov. Little signs so-called ‘crappy bill’ to cut state budget

Richert said he thought higher education was taking the brunt of budget cuts. “It’s not a question of whether tuition fees are going to go up at the universities; it’s a question of how much,” he said.

When asked what the future would hold, Corbin said the budget cuts aren’t likely to go away, and their effects will be felt over time.

“There could always be a change of leadership in the House, but they do expect the budget crunch to continue in the next year’s legislative session,” Corbin said.

‘Radiator capping’

Richert said he has one word to describe this year’s legislative session: “unrelenting.”

One thing that made it feel that way was that some bills were recycled over and over, he said. For example, Richert said the Legislature saw five different versions of a bill that proposed cuts to the Idaho Digital Learning Alliance.

“We had multiple bills that came from the dead,” he said.

The journalists said this is partly due to a tactic called “radiator capping.” The term means to replace the entire car — the bill’s text, in political terms — while only keeping the radiator cap: the bill number. By rewriting a bill on the House or Senate floor while maintaining its number, failed bills can effectively bypass the committee process.

“Those are the changes they tried to make on immigration bills, on union bills this year,” Corbin said. “It made it extremely difficult for the public to have any idea what was going on, to have any opportunity to participate in the legislative process and share their opinions.

A more powerful, more chaotic Legislature

Richert said Idaho’s annual legislative sessions are trending longer, commonly going into the early part of April, and producing a record number of bills.

“There are rumblings that this Legislature, as a body, is wanting to expand its reach over more and have even more power over the other branches of government to the point of — are we trending towards more of a full-time professional legislature?” Richert said. “We’re a long way from there.”

“The legislative branch of government, particularly the Idaho House of Representatives, is the most powerful I’ve seen it in 16 years of covering state government,” Corbin said.

He added that this year’s legislative session was unlike any he’s experienced.

“The overall temperature in the building was bad,” Corbin said. “It was divisive. It was chaotic. People were not hiding their feelings of disgust for each other. These traditional ideas of decorum and respect very much fell by the wayside.”

Richert said Gov. Brad Little vetoed very few bills that came across his desk, and the ones he did weren’t high-profile.

RELATED | Idaho Gov. Brad Little issues 5 vetoes. Here are the bills affected

“I think the governor behaved like he was very concerned about the supermajority-controlled Legislature, and I think that that Legislature, in turn, asserted itself and took control of the agenda this year,” Corbin said.

Are legislators representing Idaho?

Corbin said some bills this year also focused on the LGBTQ+ community, such as a bathroom restriction for transgender individuals, and a bill that banned the City of Boise from waving a Pride flag.

RELATED | Idaho governor signs bill to criminalize trans people using bathrooms that align with their identity

RELATED | Boise removes LGBTQ+ pride flag as Idaho governor signs bill to fine city for its display

When asked if these were what Idahoans wanted, Corbin said it doesn’t necessarily appear so to him, based on his review of Boise State University’s annual public policy survey.

“For years and years, I’ve heard concerns about affordability of housing, access to housing, managing the growth of the state of Idaho, having quality public schools available for our young people — that also generates a workforce pipeline for some of our businesses,” Corbin said. “I’ve heard about paying for wildfires. I’ve heard about having good roads, supporting access to public lands, public recreation, those are the concerns I hear from Idahoans.”

“But the Legislature spent a significant amount of time over the last two, three, four years placing additional restrictions on LGBTQ communities, placing restrictions on what teachers can and cannot teach in their classrooms, what school boards can and cannot do,” Corbin continued. “They talked about requiring a moment of silence every day to begin the public school day, where children could pray or read the Bible.”

RELATED | Gov. Brad Little signs public school ‘moment of silence’ bill into law

Corbin said it may be his own opinion, but perhaps it is easier to “make a bunch of noise about what’s going wrong and (distract) people with social issues” rather than focus on harder issues that Idaho faces.

“I think what you saw on the policy space is a reflection of the fact that you had legislators thinking about reelection, and legislators with time on their hands — and that’s not always a good combination,” Richert said.

Accountability

When asked how people can keep legislators accountable, Corbin said it can be done by following the state Legislature through trusted news sources, going to community events and voting.

“This is a great year to practice accountability, because all 105 state legislators and all statewide elected officials are up for election this year,” he said.