Farmers' Right to Repair
I will fight tooth and nail to pass the Right to Repair bill to support our farmers, and Julianne Young has fought and will continue to fight tooth and nail to defeat it.
In 2020, Julianne Young voted to kill the Right to Repair bill by holding it in committee. Julianne likes to throw up a smokescreen to hide her betrayal of our Bingham County farmers by claiming she received a “100% score” from the Idaho Farm Bureau’s lobbying office in Boise. The problem with the score from the Idaho Farm Bureau’s lobbying office in Boise is that only those bills that make it out of committee are scored.
With an Idaho Freedom Foundation score of -6 on the Right to Repair bill (House Bill 452), one of the worst scores in 2020, Julianne Young cannot take that big of a hit to her loyalty score. The Idaho Freedom Foundation has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in support from corporate special interests, but very little support from farmers, which explains why the Idaho Freedom Foundation gave the Right to Repair bill such a bad rating. You can read more about the Idaho Freedom Foundation’s sources of special interest funds in the last link below.
Julianne Young outspent Donavan Harrington by more than 2 to 1 in the 2020 primary but only beat him by less than 300 votes. Because Julianne Young is so greatly disliked by Bingham County farmers and local government leaders, she obviously will need that Idaho Freedom Foundation money and support to survive her primary every year. She is much more dependent on the Idaho Freedom Foundation than she is on farmers.
If farmers buy new equipment, they take on additional debt load that can be hard to pay in a bad year. If they make do with used equipment, then they will have more breakdowns during planting and harvest times or during critical watering times. The recent problem that has developed with new equipment, however, is that some manufacturers have been keeping control over the advanced software codes so that farmers can’t repair their equipment themselves or take it to be repaired at a place that has a quick turnaround time. Farmers have become dependent on the manufacturers’ whims and repair schedules. That’s not right, and it’s not fair. Under the Right to Repair bill, farmers are simply asking for fairness.
In 2019 at the beginning of the long 4th of July weekend, an irrigation pump motor went out on one of our farms. Most of the irrigation supply stores were closed for four days straight, and it took me most of the day to find a replacement—from a relative who learned of our difficulties, it turned out.
When an irrigation pump goes out, or the grain needs to be harvested before the hail storm arrives, or the potatoes need to be harvested before an early frost (like happened in 2019), there is NO TIME to be wasted by red tape preventing the repair of a tractor or harvester or other farm equipment. I have zero tolerance for that kind of nonsense.
Every year when they plant their crops, Idaho's farmers know that they could be one or two years away from bankruptcy or from having their farms seized to pay the operating loans if things go wrong. Not being able to repair their own equipment is NOT one of the things they should be worried about.
We can’t pass a bill in the Idaho legislature to prevent hail or blight or early frost, but we can pass the Right to Repair bill.
Our farmers anchor Idaho's economy, and we need to support them—not only because it’s what’s fair but also because they provide jobs and help fund our local schools and local governments. The Right to Repair bill is good for farmers, education, and our local economies but bad for the out-of-state special interests that fund the Idaho Freedom Foundation and their allied politicians like Julianne Young.
In a campaign video made during the primary posted on her Facebook page, Julianne Young said that her "recollection" was that in the committee a couple of liberal Republicans sided with the Democrats to support the 2020 Right to Repair bill (House Bill 452). This was false!
The image of the committee minutes below shows 6 Republicans (underlined in black) voted to kill the Right to Repair bill by holding it in committee, but 6 Republicans voted AGAINST holding the Right to Repair bill in committee. So if only Republicans would have voted, the motion to hold in committee would have failed because there was no tie-breaker. So how the Democrats voted had no affect on keeping the bill alive. For the Democrats (highlighted in yellow), 1 voted to hold the bill in committee, and 3 voted AGAINST holding the Right to Repair bill in committee, but the Democrat votes did not change the outcome from if only Republicans had voted.
Also, it makes me wonder if the following Republicans like it that Julianne condescendingly called them not "more conservative" for voting against killing the Right to Repair bill in committee:
Representative Neil Anderson, her seatmate from Blackfoot. No wonder he donated $500 to Julianne Young's primary opponent!
Representative Rod Furniss
Representative Linda Hartgen
Representative Laurie Lickley, a rancher
Representative Britt Raybould, a farmer
Representative John Vander Woude, who is a farmer and chair of the committee. Not my idea of a liberal!
For more information, please read:
https://www.idahofb.org/News-Media/2020/01/right-to-repair-situation-improves
https://www.idahofb.org/News-Media/2018/03/a-right-to-repair-farmers
https://idahofreedom.org/house-bill-452-right-to-repair-act/
https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article225248740.html