Tonight’s “Idaho Reports” reports on the sixth week of this year’s legislative session, and co-hosts Melissa Davlin and Aaron Kunz interview Gov. Butch Otter, who addresses everything from PCAP to tuition lock to exempting Girl Scout cookies from Idaho’s sales tax. Idaho Republican Party Chairman...
House Education Chairman Reed DeMordaunt, R-Eagle, has announced that he won’t seek re-election after his current term. DeMordaunt is in his third term in the House. “I came to the Idaho Legislature with a passion for education,” he said in a statement. “I see it…
The House has voted 55-14 along party lines in favor of HB 463, the minimum wage pre-emption law, which bans local ballot measures or ordinances to increase the minimum wage; Idaho’s minimum wage is $7.25 per hour. Rep. Luke Malek, R-Coeur d’Alene, the bill’s lead...
The Idaho Senate has unanimously backed a proposal to amend the state's Constitution to allow the Legislature to override a governor's veto almost immediately, even after a legislative session has ended. The amendment would allow lawmakers to convene after the end of the session on bills the governor rejected...
Reps. Vito Barbieri and Kathy Sims unsuccessfully tried a rarely used maneuver just now to kill the bill outlawing powdered alcohol, which is being marketed as “Palcohol.” When the bill came up for amendments in the House today, to add a clause exempting medicines from...
The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee has voted unanimously to transfer $60 million from the current year’s budget to cover fire suppression costs on state-protected lands during the 2015 fire season. That transfer reduces the year-end balance the state will have at the end of the current…
Scientists from around the country are meeting in Idaho Falls this week in a "chemistry summit" to discuss technical problems plaguing a nuclear waste treatment plant there. The Post Register reports that the Integrated Waste Treatment plant was supposed to use steam to transform 900,000 gallons of liquid radioactive waste...
On a party-line vote, the Senate State Affairs Committee this morning agreed to introduce legislation proposed by David Ripley of Idaho Chooses Life to ban fetal tissue from being donated after an abortion, either for organ donations or medical research. “It is a broad response...
News, happenings and more from the Idaho Legislature and the state capital.
