Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador steps down from Central District Health seat

Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador will resign from the board that oversees Boise’s public health district, leaving an open seat to represent Ada County, Labrador told the Idaho Statesman.

The state’s top attorney submitted his resignation letter for his seat on the Central District Health board Wednesday. His resignation is planned to be effective after the board meeting Friday.

“It’s been an honor,” he said in an interview.

Labrador, a former Republican congressman and former chairman of the state GOP Party, was a controversial appointment on the board in January 2021. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, he opposed promoting the use of masks and criticized the public health district for supporting guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on social media. His term would have expired in 2025.

Labrador was elected as attorney general in the November general election, which made it difficult to commit time to the health board, he told the Statesman. He said he had no idea that he would run for an elected position at the time he was appointed to the board.

Labrador’s departure leaves an open seat on the board for Ada County, and whoever fills that seat will be appointed by the Republican-dominated Ada County commission. Another Ada County seat is held by Dr. Ryan Cole, a Garden City pathologist who discouraged the use of COVID-19 vaccines and has been disciplined over prescribing ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug, to treat COVID-19. Jane Young, a nurse practitioner, holds the third Ada County seat.

The seven-member Central District Health board oversees public health policies in four Southwest Idaho counties, including Ada, and became a target of protests during the coronavirus pandemic in late 2020. Labrador said his appointment to the board helped quell the anger over public health measures. At the time, the board was considering a district-wide coronavirus order that would have included mask mandates in public and in places where maintaining distances of 6 feet apart weren’t possible. The board never implemented the order.

The health district in June 2020 had implemented mask mandates for public spaces in Ada and Valley counties. In February 2021, shortly after Labrador’s appointment, the board rescinded the mandates.

“My goal was to bring down that tension,” Labrador told the Statesman. “You saw kind of the temperature come down quite a bit, and we had some really productive meetings. … I think it totally changed the environment.”

Rod Beck, who chairs the Ada County commission, told the Statesman that commissioners hope to fill the position by the Oct. 20 board meeting.

“Raúl Labrador fit the bill. He knew the role and the mission of the health district,” Beck said. “We don’t want anybody to inflame the issues. We want somebody that just knows and understands the role of the board and knows and understands the role and the mission of Central District Health.”

Did Labrador have ‘conflict of interest’?

Beck and Ada County Commissioner Ryan Davidson told the Statesman that when Labrador was elected attorney general, commissioners considered whether Labrador had a conflict of interest by continuing to serve on the board. Because Central District Health isn’t a state agency, they saw no problem with him continuing to hold the position, they said.

Davidson said he “thought it was fantastic” that Labrador continued to serve.

Jim Jones, a former Idaho Supreme Court justice and former Republican attorney general, said he didn’t believe Labrador’s position on the board violated any ethical standards because the attorney general is not responsible for providing the health district with legal advice. In moments when a conflict arises between state law and health district policies, he would have had to recuse himself, Jones told the Statesman.

Beck and Davidson, both Republicans who voted for Labrador’s appointment, said they stood by their decision to appoint Labrador to the board and called him an asset.

Davidson in a statement Wednesday said the board “needed someone who understood that mask mandates, shutdowns and forced vaccinations were, at the end of the day, simply bad policy.”

“It was a very challenging time, but I have no regrets about putting Raúl Labrador in there,” Davidson told the Statesman in an interview. “I think he did what needed to be done.”

The story was updated 8:51 a.m. Aug. 17 to include that the board approved mask mandates in Ada and Valley counties during the coronavirus pandemic.