The legislature
shall not in any manner create any debt or debts, liability or liabilities, except in
case of war, to repel an invasion, or suppress an insurrection, unless the same shall
be authorized by law, for some single object or work, to be distinctly specified
therein, which law shall provide ways and means, exclusive of loans, for the
payment of the interest on such debt or liability as it falls due, and also for the
payment and discharge of the principal of such debt or liability within twenty years
of the time of the contracting thereof, and shall be irrepealable until the principal
and interest thereon shall be paid and discharged. But no such law shall take effect
until at a general election it shall have been submitted to the people, and shall have
received a majority of all the votes cast for or against it at such election, and all
moneys raised by the authority of such laws shall be applied only to specified
objects therein stated or to the payment of the debt thereby created, and such law
shall be published prior to the general election at which it is submitted to the
people, in the same manner as amendments to this constitution are published. The
legislature may at any time after the approval of such law, by the people, if no debts
shall have been contracted in pursuance thereof, repeal the same.
This section shall not apply to liabilities incurred for ordinary operating
expenses, nor shall it apply to debts or liabilities that are repaid by the end of the
fiscal year. The debts or liabilities of the independent public bodies corporate and
politic created by law and which have no power to levy taxes or obligate the general
fund of the state are not debts or liabilities of the state of Idaho. The provisions of
this section shall not make illegal those types of financial transactions that were
legal on or before November 3, 1998.
Structure Idaho constitution