As a 4:40 p.m. deadline ticks near, Gov. Butch Otter has signed 18 bills today and allowed one to become law without his signature, and now has just two left on his desk from this year’s legislative session: SB 1395a, and SB 1430. Those are the bill to grant raises to top state elected officials for the next four years, and the appropriation bill tapping the funds for those raises in next year’s budget.

I’m awaiting a copy of the governor’s statement on why he allowed HB 441a, the personal property tax bill that was amended in the Senate, to become law without his signature. The bill was part of a session-ending compromise between the House and the Senate, in which both houses agreed to reject a rule the state Tax Commission adopted in November to draw the line between real and personal property for purposes of the new $100,000 per-taxpayer, per-county personal property exemption.

In place of the rule, which specified that a group of types of property like railroad tracks, pipelines and cell phone towers are real property – not personal property – and thus not eligible for the exemption, HB 441 as amended in the Senate rewrote the definitions in law, rather than rule. The outcome moves Idaho back to a more clear “three-factor” test to define the two categories, and has essentially the same result. HB 441 is retroactive to Jan. 1, 2014.

Among the 18 bills signed so far: SB 1410, which sets standards for wireless networks in Idaho high schools to receive state funding; SB 1396, setting up a 30-member committee to review student test questions and suggest which ones to revise or eliminate; HB 633, the budget for the state Department of Agriculture; HB 593, to set up a tax relief fund and deposit into it any sales taxes remitted to Idaho by remote retailers who aren’t now required to do so; and SB 1370aaa, the bill regarding legislative substitutes that was amended three times in the Senate, and in the end does little to change the current system beyond asking lawmakers to verify that their subs are eligible to serve.