Two more House members have weighed in today with op-ed pieces on the House’s rejection of the child support enforcement legislation, which has placed the state’s child support enforcement system in jeopardy and is likely to force a special session of the Legislature: Rep. Kathy Sims, R-Coeur d’Alene, who was among the nine votes to kill the bill; and Rep. Robert Anderst, R-Nampa, who doesn’t serve on the Judiciary Committee where the bill died, but argues that the mess must be fixed.

Anderst writes, “As a sovereign state within the United States of America we often work on an interstate and international basis to find ways of dealing with cross-jurisdictional concerns.  Child support enforcement is one of those issues. … I understand the desire to protect Idaho sovereignty and I share it but in this case the practical effect of this “my way or the highway” approach to a truly cross-jurisdictional issue can be chaos. The legislators who have chosen to go out on this limb risk losing the entire system.”

“We should be protecting Idaho kids not placing them at risk,” he writes. “It would be irresponsible to throw this functioning system into chaos unnecessarily. The risk is too great.” You can read his full op-ed piece here.

Sims, whose op-ed piece appeared today in the Coeur d’Alene Press, writes, “We are concerned about protecting the sovereignty of Idaho. The United States government has made coercive threats of withholding federal funds from Idaho's child support programs, insisting Idaho recognize orders from foreign countries with little recourse or appeal. When an Idahoan has a foreign child support enforcement order, S1067 says, ‘is bound by the findings of fact on which the foreign tribunal based its jurisdiction; may NOT review the merits of the order.’ We would be required to enforce ill-gotten Child Support Enforcement (CSE) orders made in a foreign country.” You can read her full op-ed piece here.