The Idaho Senate this afternoon approved amendments to HB 547, a controversial House-passed bill to forbid local communities from adopting any residential building code or energy code provisions that are more up-to-date or more stringent than those adopted by a state board. “This bill had some pushback,” Sen. Jim Guthrie, R-McCammon, told the Senate. “The amendment provides more flexibility for local governments than the original bill in terms of snow loads, wind loads, geologic and seismic uniqueness, that kind of thing.”

“This may have the appearance of being a radiator cap, but actually it’s just replacing the heater hoses and the thermostat,” Guthrie said to chuckles.

In Idaho legislative lingo, to “radiator cap” a bill is to remove its entire contents, leaving only the bill number, and turn it into an entirely different bill. The analogy is to pulling a car into the shop for work, removing the radiator cap, driving a different car in in its place, then screwing back down the radiator cap and calling it the same vehicle.

To become law, the amended bill still would need passage as amended in both the Senate and the House and the governor’s signature.