In Memoriam: Unfunded mandate reform bill sponsor Dirk Kempthorne

Key Takeaways

Counties and other local and state governments found an ally in the freshman U.S. Senate class in 1993 in the former mayor of Boise, Idaho. Republican Sen. Dirk Kempthorne spent a good chunk of his only term promoting what became the Unfunded Mandate Reform Act of 1995, which President Bill Clinton signed into law that March 22. 

Kempthorne, who later served as Idaho governor and as chair of the National Governors Association and as secretary of the interior under President George W. Bush from 2006-2009, died April 24 at 74. 

The law added procedural roadblocks into House and Senate rules to make it more difficult for Congress to impose the costs of mandates on state and local governments. 

“It’s pretty remarkable for a freshman senator to pass any legislation in the U.S. Senate and the fact that he was able to get the Unfunded Mandates bill signed into law during that time is especially meaningful for counties,” said Sara Westbrook, director of Government Affairs for the Idaho Association of Counties. “He also sponsored major changes to the Safe Drinking Water Act which has also been a boost for counties particularly since it included a multibillion-dollar state revolving loan fund to be used for water system infrastructure assistance. Both bills had numerous bipartisan sponsors which I think also resonates with county officials who are often more interested in governing well than in what party someone affiliates with.” 

The 1994 campaign to pass the bill marked the first time all major state and local public interest groups coalesced around legislation. NACo summoned its second largest public affairs effort at the time for a “Stop the Mandate Madness” march during the 1994 Legislative Conference in Washington, D.C., touting dueling bills by Kempthorne and Rep. Gary Condit (D-Calif.). Kempthorne’s bill with co-sponsor John Glenn (D-Ohio) won out. 

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) made Kempthorne the Senate floor manager in his third year in the chamber to shepherd renamed Senate Bill 1. 

“This is legislation that is going to help significantly redefine what federalism is, so that states and local officials are not treated as special interest groups. They are our partners,” Kempthorne said in January 1995. “This is a fundamental change to how we have been operating in Congress, but it is simply that we're going back to the fundamentals of what our founding fathers intended, in that sort of relationship, in which Senator Dole has often cited, and that is spelled out in the Tenth Amendment. This is something, too, that the public is going to benefit from immeasurably, because now Congress is going to know upfront, the cost of these mandates, they will know there is a mandate, they will know the impact of that mandate.   

“We will pay for it at the federal level unless we choose to have a waiver, and we will know the impact to our business sector before we pass these. And we will know what impact that may have on competitiveness, on jobs, on the economy. It's going to allow us to make better decisions. So that's the nature of this, Senate Bill 1 allows for accountability, and it's a process whose time has come.”