The Blog at MSPC

So many families applied that the program hit its nearly $50 million statutory cap Friday, forcing the Idaho State Tax Commission to close the application window about a month before the law's outside deadline of August 15.

Public trust erodes when voters believe democratic decisions are only respected when they align with elite opinion.

We currently know that roughly half of participating families fall below the program’s priority threshold of 300% of the federal poverty level. What we do not know is the median income of all participating families. But critics routinely leap from “we don’t yet know” to “wealthy families are exploiting the system.”

To be clear, not every community will attract a grocery store overnight, even with fewer barriers. There are places where the economics are genuinely difficult. But that makes it all the more important not to sabotage the projects that are viable.

The two-stairway requirement acts as a binding constraint on supply, especially for small and mid-size apartment buildings. It doesn’t just make construction more expensive—it makes many projects impossible to build at all. Entire categories of housing that would otherwise be viable simply never get proposed.

The data suggests that the consequences are measurable—in dollars, in jobs, and in opportunity.

As Idaho’s application window for the Parental Choice Tax Credit has come to a close, the final numbers tell a powerful story. We now know the final numbers submitted to the state tax commission by the the March 15 deadline: 6,069 families applied, covering 13,568 students across the state.

The impulse behind House Bill 542—the Stop Harms from Addictive Social Media Act (what lawmakers are calling the Shazam act) —comes from a legitimate concern: protecting kids online.

Since applications opened on January 15, a total of 6,030 families have applied, covering 10,105 students. That’s not a one-day surge. That’s nearly a month of steady participation.