Give Us a Vote! Home Page

GUV! is a citizen watchdog holding the McCall hospital taxing district to account. First objective: get district taxpayers a vote on keeping the tax. Second: question the legality of their decisions

Jan 29, 2025

McCall Memorial Hospital taxing authority was created 40 years ago to fund a public, local, independent hospital. The Give Us A Vote! movement argues that it now exists only to pad the profits of St. Luke’s, a private medical conglomerate. We tried first to get the district board to authorize a simple advisory vote to get an accurate reading of public opinion on whether the district still held value to the taxpayer. That was back in 2024. Since then, they’ve only given serious attention to talking themselves out of the idea.

So in June, 2025, we asked the Idaho Attorney General for an opinion

The AG agreed that the appropriations deserved in-depth scrutiny. As of the date of this latest update (early April, 2026) the inquiry is continuing. The AG has been especially skeptical of the district’s participation in an employee housing project. As a result, the district declined to levy funds to the project for FY’27, citing legal uncertainty. This is a complete about-face from FY’26, when they appropriated funds to the housing project despite the active AG inquiry. And it is a very, very long way from a few months before that when the board’s attorney advised the board that he saw no legal foundation for GUV!’s AG complaint.

Then, we ran into another hurdle…

The AG inquiry was promising. But the AG can’t secure a vote on whether or not to keep a taxing district. That’s when GUV found another roadblock. The weird and unique wording of the state statute all but precludes resort communities with hospital taxing districts like McCall’s from getting such a measure on the ballot. It is just a chance, freak thing.

GUV! went to the legislature to fix that problem and ran into lobbyists for the powerful Idaho Hospital Association, who used their influence to stall our bill to protect their member, St. Luke’s. So, district voters will have to wait another year, at least, to vote on keeping the tax. The obstacles we encountered can—and we believe will be—overcome.

The principal reasons why the Give Us a Vote! movement asked the Attorney General to get involved:

• We contend that MMHD is violating state laws and Idaho’s constitution by dispersing public funds exclusively to St. Luke’s, a private business conglomerate. These laws require competitive bidding, an “arms-length” distance and unequivocal evidence that the expenditures benefit the public more than the recipient.

• Once vital to the survival of a public, independent hospital, McCall Memorial Hospital taxing district’s only purpose in the last decade has been to subsidize facilities expenses of St. Luke’s Health Systems. SL McCall’s projected operating profit for 2024 was $15+M or 27%. They hardly need public funds to stay solvent. As one MMHD board member noted in a 2020 meeting (to no disagreement): “St. Luke’s has done quite well with operating a profitable entity in McCall.”

• This is not the first time the Attorney General’s office has had to review and revise the MMHD/St. Luke’s McCall relationship.

• "Not-for-profit hospital" is a misleading term in today's health care landscape. St. Luke's is making plenty of profit here in McCall and spending it on underperforming facilities elsewhere. In many instances, what the MMHD board defends as “charitable investments in the community" are nothing of the kind. They are big profit centers.

• The McCall Memorial Hospital District is an anachronistic, unfair property tax from a bygone age when the tax actually provided essential local healthcare services. It is now being spent by an insular group whose definition of "the interest of the taxpayer" is what they are interested in. GUV! hopes the AG will issue guidelines for future funding that will constrain the board’s bias toward St. Luke’s interests over the people who pay the tax.

And if you’re still here, we have more…

The Attorney General can’t resolve the fact that McCall-Donnelly taxpayer pays a premium for their healthcare. Only voters can do it.

• Taxpayers in the McCall hospital district finance facilities that benefit a regional patient market that doesn’t pay the tax. The market area of St. Luke’s McCall runs west to Council, north to Riggins and south to Smith’s Ferry. Yet the boundaries of the taxpaying district are McCall and Donnelly. All of the district funded projects benefit a far wider market than locals. An urgent care center in a resort treats a number of non-taxpaying patients that far exceeds the tax base, yet the price of the service is the same. Ditto with a hospital-to-airlift ambulance service, in which the taxpayer finances a service that transports patients exclusively to more expensive care at St. Luke’s hub facilities.

We can go on and on, but readers who have gotten this far don’t need much more convincing. GUV! just wants the district’s taxpayers to have a say.

The complaint to the Attorney General is available for download below. The Executive Summary is the short version. The Complaint contains the full argument, including legal and other substantiation.

Thank you for considering our arguments!