The House State Affairs Committee has voted 11-5 in favor of SB 1192a, the bill to exempt a state parking garage project near the Capitol from Boise city planning & zoning requirements. Rep. Vito Barbieri, R-Dalton Gardens, spoke out against the bill. “I do think it’s bad form for the state to require everyone else to comply with this process and somehow the imperial government doesn’t need to,” he said. “The process is there and everybody’s got to go through it. … It just seems to me that somehow we might be overreaching here, and I’m not sure that it’s appropriate simply because of some bond timing.”

Rep. Kelly Packer, R-McCammon, said, “Just because we can doesn’t mean that we should. … We have an obligation to uphold the laws … abide by them. … I think we need to follow the same processes that we ask everybody else to.”

The five opponents of the bill in the committee were Reps. Barbieri, Packer, Smith, Gannon and Woodings. Those voting in favor were Reps. Loertscher, Batt, Anderson(1), Andrus, Luker, Crane, Palmer, Sims, Holtzclaw, McMillan and Monks. You can read my Sunday column here about the debate in the Senate over this bill.