A proposed bill would hypothetically would give smaller Idaho cities like Coeur d’Alene and Post Falls more discretion about who their city councils actually represent.

House Bill 413 includes a “may/shall” provision that, if passed, would give towns with fewer than 100,000 people an option to divide council representation into districts. Under the hypothetical posed by the bill’s author, Rep. Joe Palmer of Meridian, citizens of the smaller towns could would then vote in their representatives by their residing district rather than vote for councilmembers who would represent cities as a whole.

The move is a byproduct of Palmer’s push for redistricting in the greater Boise area, which includes Nampa, Caldwell and the legislator’s home district in Meridian. Last year, Palmer introduced similar legislation that didn’t include the “may/shall” provision; its absence was cited as a key reason for that bill’s defeat at the time, as it evidenced legislation that didn’t look to improve the quality of the state population as a whole.

This year’s iteration looks to shore up that loophole, though it doesn’t necessarily equate to a win. HB 413 was introduced Wednesday and referred to State Affairs Thursday, the same committee in which the bill stalled last year.

As it stands, the city’s citizenry can already implement a process to draw districts based off neighborhoods and elect councilmembers based off where they live. HB 413 would streamline the process for smaller cities.

City administrator Troy Tymesen didn’t stress a personal preference for or against the idea of localized neighborhood representation, but Tymesen said if the people wanted councilmembers to represent neighborhoods over cities as a whole, they likely would have already chosen to do so.

“Coeur d’Alene is not a huge city,” Tymesen said, “and it generally doesn’t seem to matter to one’s views where a person lives.”

“The problem with this bill locally,” Coeur d’Alene Councilmember Dan Gookin added, “is that our town isn’t large enough, physically or demographically, to make such a move necessary.”

Should both the bill become law and the people of Coeur d’Alene decide to follow Boise’s lead, the number of councilmembers in Coeur d’Alene wouldn’t change from its current six. The manner in which any change would be implemented is dictated only by Idaho Code and not by city ordinance.

In other words, even proposing such a change is a procedural nightmare that would take years to maneuver through.

“An online poll might give us a sense of public sentiment on this issue,” Tymesen said. “I would also suggest that maybe a subcommittee could be established to investigate how (and if) this works in other cities — including some outside Idaho — to take public input, and to decide how to implement it.”

That said, the way we’ve voted in councilmembers up to this point makes a change a longer and harder process than a state legislature might envision.

“Because our councilmember terms are staggered,” Tymesen pointed out, “it is likely that the first three seats to come up for election after creating the districts would result in changes in membership of the council, with the other three grandfathered until the next election.”

In the end, both Tymesen and Gookin said any change in Coeur d’Alene as a result of the bill was pie-in-the-sky thinking, sabatoged first and foremost by good, ol’ American politics.

“... You run into an issue where your district representative may not be someone who matches your political philosophy,” Gookin said, “or, more likely, they hate your guts. So, yeah, the current system works. I see no interest out there [to change], other [than] from the chronically displeased.”