Today's headlines:
- Idaho's Supreme Court upholds the state's Parental Choice Tax Credit.
- Gem State lawmakers consider a constitutional amendment allowing public dollars to go to private religious schools.
- Local governments wouldn't be able to set their own anti-discrimination policies under a bill passed by the Idaho House of Representatives.
- Washington is considering taxing tech companies to fund local newsrooms.
- Coeur d'Alene is gifting land to a local nonprofit to help increase social and recreational opportunities for people with disabilities in North Idaho.
And despite its reputation for clean energy, an investigation by Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica found Washington ranks dead last when it comes to renewable power growth. Reporter Tony Schick discusses what's keeping the "Evergreen State" from moving forward.
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SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting contributed by Owen Henderson, James Dawson, Eliza Billingham, and Doug Nadvornick.
The show is hosted and produced by Owen Henderson.
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TRANSCRIPT
[THEME MUSIC]
OWEN HENDERSON: From Spokane Public Radio, it’s SPR News Today.
I’m Owen Henderson. It’s Friday, February 6, 2026.
On today’s show, a bill to funnel tax revenue to private religious schools is headed to Idaho’s House floor just as the state Supreme Court has rejected a challenge to school choice tax credits.
And Washington lawmakers are looking at funding local news outlets, especially in rural areas. The tech companies that would have to foot the bill say it’s not their fault journalism isn’t profitable.
Plus, Washington has some of the most ambitious clean energy goals in the nation. But an investigation by our partners at Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica found that in 2025, the Evergreen State came dead last in the rankings for renewable energy growth.
I’ll speak with one of the journalists behind the reporting about what he found and what officials are now trying to do about it.
Those stories and more, coming up on SPR News Today.
[FADE OUT THEME]
The Idaho Supreme Court says a law that allows the legislature to allocate public money for private school expenses does comply with the state constitution.
The court ruled unanimously yesterday against a challenge to the Parental Choice Tax Credit.
That program allows parents to apply for state money to cover private school-related expenses like tuition.
State Attorney General Raúl Labrador celebrated the ruling, calling the decision a “victory for Idaho families” in a statement.
In its own statement, the coalition that had challenged the law said while the court had ruled the tax credits constitutional, that “does not mean that they are good policy.”
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A proposed constitutional amendment heading to the Idaho House floor would allow taxpayer money to be funneled to private religious schools.
The proposal would repeal the so-called Blaine Amendment. It bars the government from sending public funds to religious organizations.
Republican Representative Elaine Price says it’s discriminatory.
If the amendment is passed by Idaho voters this fall, she says she doesn’t think religious schools will be draining state coffers.
ELAINE PRICE: “I can’t see the future. I don’t see a bunch of religious schools running and trying to get money.”
OH: Supporters point to a recent U.S. Supreme Court case out of Montana that says taxpayer money available to nonreligious private schools has to also be made available to religious schools.
Constitutional amendments need support from two-thirds of the House and Senate, plus a simple majority of voters in the election this fall to take effect
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The Idaho House gave the green light yesterday to a bill that would ban cities and counties from passing anti-discrimination laws.
James Dawson reports.
JAMES DAWSON: Only the state legislature could adopt an anti-discrimination law under the bill, which lawmakers have rejected for more than a decade.
Several Republicans who support the measure, like Rep. Clint Hostetler, say gay and transgender people are using these local ordinances to push their views onto religious conservatives.
CLINT HOSTETLER: “This isn’t about acceptance, this is about dominance. And I just see this as setting the record straight. We cannot abuse or impose the will of anything against our faith community.”
JD: Democratic Rep. Monica Church and the rest of her party joined a handful of GOP lawmakers in opposing it.
She says it further erodes the state’s embrace of local control.
MONICA CHURCH: “What is the long-term effect of voting for a bill that says, ‘Cities serve at the pleasure of the state?’ Yikes. That is the least Idaho thing I have ever heard.”
JD: Idaho’s largest county and 12 cities have these laws on the books.
The bill now heads to a Senate committee for consideration.
James Dawson, Boise State Public Radio News
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OH: A Washington Senate committee is considering a proposal allowing local news outlets to access state funding.
The bill would impose an excise tax on search engines and social media platforms to raise money to supplement struggling news organizations, especially in rural areas.
Everett Herald publisher Carrie Radcliff endorsed the idea in a hearing yesterday.
CARRIE RADCLIFF: “These platforms have long profited from advertising tied to news content without fairly compensating the outlets that produce it.”
OH: Radcliff and other supporters say local news is an essential service worth public funding.
The Washington Technology Industry Association opposes the bill. Here’s its director of government affairs, Amy Harris.
AMY HARRIS: “Senate Bill 5400 is built on a flawed premise. That premise is that a small number of technology companies cause the decline of local news, and that those same companies should be responsible for fixing it. That is simply not accurate.”
OH: The bill was originally introduced last year but didn’t make it out of committee.
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The City of Coeur d’Alene is partnering with a local nonprofit to increase opportunities for people with special needs.
As SPR’s Eliza Billingham reports, the public-private partnership will end up benefitting people of all abilities.
ELIZA BILLINGHAM: Coeur d’Alene Parks and Rec has had extra land near Cherry Hill Park for years. It’s just been waiting for the right thing to do with it.
Then Lindsay Patterson and her team at Specialized Needs Recreation came along.
For four decades, SNR has given kids and adults with disabilities the social, recreational, and learning outlets that are hard to find in North Idaho.
SNR is hosting hundreds of people every week in a building that’s about 2,000 square feet. Patterson said that’s just not cutting it anymore.
LINDSAY PATTERSON: “Our average is 10% or higher—right around there—month to month growth.”
EB: So they asked the city if it would gift them the land near Cherry Hill park to build a 20,000 square foot facility. The city council quickly and unanimously agreed.
It’s a win-win for everyone. The nonprofit doesn’t have to fundraise quite as much because it doesn’t have to buy land.
Plus, SNR typically runs its programs during the day. That means Parks and Rec can eventually use the sport courts, meeting rooms, and kitchen for its own public programs in the evenings.
I’m Eliza Billingham, reporting.
[SHORT MUSIC BED]
An investigation by our partners at Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica found that Washington state ranks last in the nation for renewable energy development.
Now, the state has launched new efforts to improve that.
Tony Schick reported that story and he joins us now to tell us where things stand. Thanks for being here, Tony.
TONY SCHICK: Yeah, thanks for having me.
OH: So your investigation found that Washington ranks behind even conservative states like Iowa and Texas despite prioritizing renewable energy. Why is that?
TS: Yeah, a lot of it has to do with infrastructure and policy and the fact that there aren't enough transmission lines to get the power in Washington from the places that developers want to make it on the eastern side of the state to the places where it's going to often get used, which is often on the west side of the state where there's a lot more people.
So there are hundreds and hundreds of proposals for projects, but before those projects actually move forward and start construction, they need to know that they're going to be able to plug into the grid and move their power before they want to start building their project.
It takes years, sometimes decades, to get that and it's really expensive because there's not room on existing transmission lines or substations.
So that means we have to build new ones and that's really expensive.
And oftentimes developers are getting hit with that cost. And I've been told it has a real chilling effect on developing renewable energy.
OH: So the federal One Big Beautiful Bill also cuts out credits for certain new projects. How will that come into play as the state is already struggling with development?
TS: Yeah, Washington was struggling even under the Biden administration, which, you know, was really, really kind of activist on the climate change front and devoting a lot of money and effort to building renewable energy.
So if you remove those tax credits and also staff cuts to the federal Bonneville Power Administration, which owns 75% of the grid in the Northwest, and those cuts make it a lot more difficult for BPA to process their huge backlog of projects that want to connect.
So what's happening now at the federal level is going to make it even, even harder.
OH: So then what are some of the consequences if we in Washington are not able to develop more sources of renewable energy while we still have these goals to phase out fossil fuels?
TS: Well, keep in mind, this is happening as we're seeing huge spikes in demand in the northwest for power, largely because of new data centers and the demand for AI.
Our supply of new energy is not keeping pace with the increase in demand. And there are projections out there from utilities showing that we could see rolling blackouts within five years.
Now, there are people who dispute that and say, that's, you know, maybe going a little too far.
But the point is, we are going to see serious energy crunches if we don't add a lot more energy soon. And maybe it results in rolling blackouts at peak times, like a cold snap in the winter, or a big heat wave in the summer.
Even without that, it will result in energy shortages, which can mean utilities having to buy power on the open market, which is going to drive up your utility bill.
OH: So you wrote that legislators are now taking some steps to try and streamline this renewable development process, in part as a response to your investigation. So what are they doing to try and speed things up?
TS: Yeah, the response has been pretty remarkable, I would say. It went from an issue that we had to put in front of policymakers and say, “Are you aware of this?” to a lot of people paying close attention to it, really making a priority.
Both governors in Washington and Oregon have signed executive orders trying to speed up the permitting and development of renewable energy.
State agencies in Washington have gone so far as to offer up their own state employees as staff to Bonneville to help Bonneville with the analysis that it has to do with the federal agency.
There are also bills in the Washington legislature. One would require these data centers to kind of throttle down the amount of power they use at times of peak demand. It's called demand response.
So basically, when everybody else really needs power, the data centers would have to scale back so that there'd be more room on the grid.
Another would create a state transmission authority, which would be a new state agency that could plan and build transmission lines so that the state could take things into its own hands and not be so reliant on the federal government to build transmission lines that it needs to meet its state goals and to meet demand.
OH: Well, do you think these proposed solutions are enough to start actually making a dent on the issue?
TS: I think a lot of these solutions, if they're implemented, could go a long ways.
People I've talked to who've studied this have looked at the demand response from data centers and thought that's an interesting way to go. It's something that the Northwest actually has done before.
Once upon a time, we had a ton of aluminum smelters along the Columbia River using a lot of cheap hydropower, and they used tremendous amounts of energy, and they were required to throttle down at times of need.
So it's a concept that we've actually tried before in the Northwest.
OH: Tony Schick is an investigative editor and reporter at our partner station, Oregon Public Broadcasting.
Thanks so much for joining me this morning.
TS: Thanks so much for having me.
[SHORT MUSIC BED]
OH: SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting today was contributed by James Dawson, Doug Nadvornick, Eliza Billingham, Tony Schick and me, Owen Henderson. I’m also the host and producer.
Thanks for listening.
It’s SPR.
