Idaho State Controller Donna Jones was listed in critical condition at St. Alphonsus Medical Center today, after being flown there with injuries from a car crash on I-84 near Heyburn. The Idaho State Police reported today Jones was involved in a one-vehicle rollover about 12:55 p.m.  Jones, 73, was traveling westbound on the freeway, when her Cadillac Escalade went off the side of the road; she overcorrected and the vehicle rolled. She was wearing a seatbelt.

She was first taken by ground ambulance to Minidoka Memorial Hospital in Rupert, then flown to St. Al's, where she arrived in critical condition; at 7 p.m., she was in the intensive care unit and still listed in critical condition.

Jones' Chief of Staff Brandon Woolf told the Associated Press that the 73-year-old state elected official was on a personal trip and returning from eastern Idaho when the crash occurred. She was elected state controller in 2006, and before that the Payette native served 12 years in the Idaho House of Representatives. The crash is under investigation by the ISP.

Theresa Cliff-Ryan, a U.S. rider and teammate of injured racer Kristin Armstrong, won the first stage of the Exergy Tour on Friday, a 76.7-mile road race through southwestern Idaho in a steady rain. Armstrong, who crashed in the race's prologue time trial on Thursday and broke her collarbone, was at the finish - just hours after undergoing surgery - to cheer her teammates on. German champ Ina Yoko Teutenberg came in second, and Australian Rochelle Gilmore third; based on combined times from the two days of racing, Teutenberg took the overall lead for the tour. As the sky turned from gray to blue, six riders crashed near the final turn in Nampa, including world champion Giorgia Bronzini of Italy. Click below for a full report from AP reporter John Miller. The professional women's cycling race continues through Monday.

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management has ordered Skinny Dipper Hot Springs in Boise County closed to all recreational use from sunset to sunrise, allowing only daytime use of the hot springs along the Banks-Lowman Highway along with the parking lot and access trail. “The closure will help provide for public safety,” the agency said in a news release. “Since 2004, there have been several fatalities, assaults and numerous injuries associated with night-time use of the area.”

Gov. Butch Otter has appointed Dave Case to the Ada County Commission, to fill the vacancy left by the May 4 resignation of Vern Bisterfeldt. Case, a current Ada County Highway District commissioner who will leave that post, defeated Commissioner Sharon Ullman in the May 15 primary; click below for Otter's full announcement.

For the past three months, one of Republican Idaho Gov. Butch Otter's departments has been headed by a Democrat and overseen by a majority-Democrat commission. It's the state Tax Commission, which is constitutionally required to have four commissioners, with not more than two of them from the same party. But since GOP commission Chairman Bob Geddes resigned in February, Democratic Commissioner David Langhorst has been the interim chairman, and the fourth commission seat remains vacant. That leaves the commission with two Democrats and one Republican.

“David Langhorst is doing a great job right now,” said Otter's spokesman, Jon Hanian. “We have not named anybody else at the moment; he's continuing to serve in that capacity.” Langhorst, a former Democratic state senator from Boise whom Otter first appointed to the commission in 2009, said, “These positions are public trust positions - they're not political.” You can read my full story here at spokesman.com.

The first stage of the Exergy Tour kicked off under mostly sunny skies, with a large and enthusiastic crowd of spectators in downtown Boise to see the 103 elite women cyclists from around the world compete. But it ended in a heartbreaker when local favorite Kristin Armstrong, the 2008 gold medalist in the time trial and the last rider of the day, crashed midway through the course and broke her collarbone. Amazingly, Armstrong got back on her bike after her crash by the Boise Depot and finished the course, coming in 13th, showing she was on pace to have won with a blisteringly fast time. But she's now out for the rest of the tour, which continues today with a 77-mile road race starting from the Nampa Rec Center.

Final results for the day showed top honors went to Tara Whitten of Canada, one of the Team TIBCO to the Top riders whose bike was stolen a day before the race, then recovered by Boise Police on the BSU campus and returned in time; she completed the course in 4 minutes 9 seconds. Two other Canadians rounded out the top three: Gillian Carleton was second, and crowd favorite Clara Hughes, a Canadian cyclist and speed skater who's won multiple Olympic medals in both sports, came in third.

Evelyn Stevens, a U.S. rider and former investment banker who's one of Armstrong's rivals for a spot on the time trials team at the London Olympics this summer, placed fifth; and Amber Neben, the other rival, a former Olympian and the world time trial champion from 2008, placed 10th.

Armstrong is scheduled to undergo surgery this morning and still hopes to qualify for the Olympics, though she's out for the Exergy Tour; click below for a full report from AP reporter John Miller.

Idaho state Superintendent of Schools Tom Luna has been named to a 19-member “Education Policy Advisory Group” by GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. “I am proud to announce the support of this impressive group of policy leaders who are devoted to expanding educational opportunities for students,” Romney said in a statement. “Our education system is failing too many of our kids, and I look forward to working closely with these leaders to chart a new course that emphasizes school choice and accountability, the importance of great teachers, and access to quality, affordable higher education.”

Luna is the only state school superintendent named to the group; the other members all either work for private education companies, think tanks, universities or the federal government. Among them are K-12 education co-chairs Nina Rees, senior vice president for strategic initiatives at Knowledge Universe; and Martin West, a professor with the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Rod Paige, former U.S. secretary of education, was named a “special advisor” with the group; Luna worked for Paige under the Bush Administration.

Luna, in a news release sent out by the Idaho Republican Party, said, “I am excited to work with Gov. Romney to improve education across the country. As governor, he showed how states can truly put students first and raise academic achievement for all children. We have worked toward the same goals in Idaho, passing the most comprehensive education reform in the country to ensure every student can graduate from high school and go on to postsecondary education without the need for remediation. Now, we must make this is possible for every child in every state.”

Idaho Statesman columnist Dan Popkey points out that three members of the Bush Administration who are are advocates of for-profit education companies join Luna on the new advisory group, and also contributed to Luna's 2010 re-election campaign; you can read his report here. Click below for the full Idaho GOP news release; you can read Romney's full announcement here about his advisory group.

Here's a news item from the Associated Press: BOISE, Idaho (AP) ― A federal judge has ordered mediation between Idaho and more than a dozen news organizations challenging the state's policy limiting public access to executions. U.S. District Judge Edward J. Lodge handed down the order Thursday, two days after The Associated Press and 16 other news organizations filed a lawsuit seeking to force officials to let witnesses view executions from start to finish. The suit contends the media and other witnesses have a First Amendment right to view all steps of lethal injection executions. Idaho Department of Correction policy blocks from view the first steps of the process, including insertion of the IV needles into the condemned inmate. Lodge's order requires the parties to enter mediation on or before June 1 under supervision of Magistrate Judge Candy Dale. You can read Judge Lodge's order here; click below for a full report from AP reporter Todd Dvorak.

Boise cycling star Kristin Armstrong, Olympic gold medalist in the time trial and headliner of the Exergy Tour, is clearly on her own turf in the five-stage women's professional bike race that kicks off today - the first stage, for example, tonight's prologue, has its turnaround at the Boise Depot, where Armstrong was married, as AP reporter John Miller noted in his report yesterday on the race. The final stage Monday, which starts and finishes at Hyde Park in Boise's North End, comes within a mile of her home.

Armstrong said, “I'm so happy to show Boise off to everybody.” At the opening press conference of the Exergy Tour yesterday, she said, “Last night I was talking to my husband, and I said, 'Wow, I really, I need all this stuff to start, because I have to get it out of my mind that I'm not just not going to a local race tomorrow. Because it's not often that we get to experience a world-class competition in your home town, waking up from your own bed, thinking you're going to roll down to a road that you ride a couple times a week. And you're going to actually be there with all of your competitors.”

Tonight's race, featuring more than 100 elite women bike racers from 18 nations, starts at 6:30 p.m. at Julia Davis Park, where it both starts and finishes; there's public viewing all along the route, with the most action likely at the park and at the Depot, which is the turnaround. It's designed in part to establish a seeding for the next stage, a 77-mile road race starting from the Nampa Rec Center on Friday. Festivities will start at 5 p.m., when the Expo opens, with live music from Bill Coffey & His Cash Money Cousins. Each day's stage features an Expo; tomorrow's in Nampa will include fitting and providing free bicycle helmets to the first 100 children ages 5 and under. There's more info here.

On the unsettled weather this week, including rain showers, Armstrong said she hopes the riders won't encounter thunderstorms in the mountains, but said aside from that, “The more weather the better, right? I mean, we're all tough women.”

In the past few days, three Idaho governors - former Govs. Cecil Andrus and Phil Batt and current Gov. Butch Otter - have published guest opinions in the Idaho Statesman newspaper with strongly worded messages about potential changes in the nuclear waste agreement Batt famously negotiated with the feds, guaranteeing that Idaho won't become the nation's future nuke waste repository. Today, Idaho Statesman reporter Rocky Barker sorts through the charges; you can read his full report here. The upshot: Both Andrus and Batt are urging Otter to stick with the 1995 agreement, and despite possible changes outlined by current INL Director John Grossenbacher, Otter is pledging that he will.
  

After what Exergy Tour communications director Heather Hill called “a little bit of an unexpected glitch here on the first day” - the theft and then recovery, apparently unscathed, of $120,000 worth of racing bikes and equipment from one of the teams - the event is on. “We are humbled to be hosting over 100 athletes representing 18 of their home countries, many of whom will represent their home nations in the Olympic games this summer,” Hill declared. She said the women's bike race is aimed at “raising the bar” for women's sports. “Our $100,000 prize purse, the largest for a ladies' five-stage race in the history of the sport, is one example of raising the bar.”

Steve Johnson, president and CEO of USA Cycling, the organization responsible for identifying, training and selecting cyclists to represent the United States in international competition, called the Boise women's cycling race “an exceptional event.” Idaho hosted the Women's Challenge from 1984 to 2002; this year's event marks the return of high-level women's bicycle racing to the state. “This is probably one of the biggest and most exciting women's bike racing events in the world this year,” Johnson said. “You have some of the greatest … cyclists in the world here. You don't have to go to London. It's a great opportunity to see the top level of women's professional bike racing right here in Idaho.”

The race starts tomorrow with the Prologue, an evening time trial starting from and finishing at Julia Davis Park in downtown Boise, running from there to the Boise Depot and back, and starting at 6:30 p.m. That'll be followed by a road race starting from the Nampa Rec Center on Friday at 11 a.m.; an individual time trial in Kuna on Saturday; a 59.7-mile road race from Garden Valley to Idaho City on Sunday; and a final 46.7-mile road race Monday at 11 a.m. starting and finishing at Hyde Park in Boise, and looping up and through the Boise foothills. Spectators are welcome at all the events; there are details online at exergytour.com. The public also is invited tonight to festivities in the Grove in downtown Boise, starting with live music at 5 p.m., a “Walk to London” event led by Olympians and Paralympians, and the team presentation at 7 p.m.

Among those racing are Boise Olympic cycling medalist Kristin Armstrong and U.S. rivals Amber Neben and Evelyn Stevens, all three of whom are competing for two spots on the U.S. Time Trial team at this summer's Olympics in London. AP reporter John Miller has a full report here on the competition. Stevens, 29, is nearly a decade younger than her two rivals. “I found the sport of cycling a little bit later in life,” she said today. At the age of “25 or 26,” she said, while working as an investment banker at Lehman Brothers on Wall Street, she started off riding a bike in Central Park. At last year's U.S. championships, Stevens won, with Neben second and Armstrong third. But Armstrong has beat Stevens in time trials three times this year; she holds the 2008 Olympic gold medal in the time trial, and was world champion in 2006 and 2009. Neben was world time trial champion in 2008.

Also racing are six-time German champion Daniela Glass; current road world champion Giorgia Bronzini of Italy; 2011 Swiss national road champion Pascale Schnider; British 2008 Olympic gold medalist in the road race Nicole Cooke; Australian national road race champion Alexis Rhodes; Swedish national time trial champion Emilia Fahlin; current German road-race champion Ina-Yoko Teutenberg; three-time Australian national time trial champion Shara Gillow; and many more.
  

Boise Mayor David Bieter kicked off the opening press conference of the Exergy Tour with some good news that was heartily welcomed by the assembled athletes: “I'm happy to report that all of the bikes have been found,” Bieter said. “They are in good shape, and the team will have their bikes to ride on.” He said, “Our kudos to the Police Department.”

Boise Police reported that the stolen racing bikes from Team TIBCO were recovered in three locations on the BSU campus, and appear to be undamaged. Their investigation into the theft continues.

The Boise Police say six of the professional racing bikes reported stolen from an Exergy Tour team this morning have been recovered by officers on the 1300 block of University Drive, locked together to a bike rack. BPD credited the recovery to a citizen tip, from a citizen who recognized that the bikes looked like those in pictures of the stolen property. There are still eight valuable racing bikes missing that racers need to compete; read the BPD's full update here.
  

Boise Police now say they've recovered six of the 14 professional racing bikes stolen last night from a women's professional cycling team in town for the Exergy Tour, which starts tomorrow; KTVB-TV has a report here. The Idaho Statesman reports here that the six recovered bikes were found locked together on the BSU campus.

The Exergy Tour has sent out the following statement on last night's theft of expensive professional bikes and equipment from one of the competing teams; the photo shows an example of what the bikes look like:

Last night several thousand dollars worth of bikes and pro cycling equipment was stolen from the Team TIBCO trailer in a Boise hotel parking lot. The team is in Idaho to compete in the Exergy Tour ladies pro cycling race. Below are the statements from Boise Mayor David Bieter, Boise Police Chief Mike Masterson, Exergy Development Group CEO James Carkulis, and Team TIBCO regarding this event.

A trailer-full of racing bikes belonging to a team of bike racers from California competing in the inaugural Exergy Tour, a professional women's bike racing event that kicks off in Boise tomorrow, were stolen when thieves broke a lock on the team's bike trailer parked outside their Boise hotel last night, and Boise Police are asking people to watch for the distinctive bicycles,which are marked with distinctive white TIBCO team logos and are valued at $120,000. The bikes are Specialized brand carbon fiber racing bikes; you can see the full BPD new release here, including photos of the bicycles. The bike wheels are Reynolds brand carbon fiber arrow style wheels painted black, with bold, white REYNOLDS lettering.

Sixteen teams from nine countries are competing in the Exergy Tour, which starts tomorrow and runs through Monday. They include many of the top women cyclists in the world, including athletes who are vying for spots on their respective Olympic teams for this summer's Olympics in London. Click below for a full report on the bike theft from AP reporter John Miller, who reports that the theft victims include Olympic hopefuls.
  

The Associated Press and 16 other organizations sued the state of Idaho today, challenging its execution protocols that bar media witnesses from viewing the entire process of execution, allowing them to see only the final portion. A 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals decision from 2002 declared it a violation of the 1st Amendment for media witnesses to be excluded from the earlier portions of the procedure, including the insertion of IVs for lethal injection executions.  “This lawsuit is really all about obtaining access to the entire execution process for viewing purposes. It's very important in a society such as ours to have full transparency in regards to the exercise of government authority,” said Chuck Brown, the attorney representing the news organizations.

The press had been in discussion with the state Department of Correction about the process since before its earlier execution of Paul Ezra Rhoades in November, and the department promised to review its procedures after that execution to address the concerns. However, it decided to make no changes, prompting the lawsuit. The lawsuit was filed today in U.S. District Court; in addition to the AP, plaintiffs include the Idaho Press Club, Idahoans for Openness in Government, the Idaho Statesman, The Spokesman-Review, and other news organizations from across the state. Click below for a full report from AP reporter Rebecca Boone. You can read the full complaint and exhibits here, including letters and emails back and forth between the press and Corrections officials seeking to resolve the matter short of court action.

From the “whatever happened to” department of Eye on Boise, today we bring you: Whatever happened to the investigation into Sen. John McGee? And the answer is: It's still pending. McGee, R-Caldwell, the former Senate majority caucus chairman, resigned from the Idaho Senate on Feb. 22 amid charges of sexual harassment of a female Senate aide; the Idaho State Police investigated, and turned the case over to Ada County Prosecutor Greg Bower on April 13, who could decide to file criminal charges.

Asked today where the case stands, Chief Deputy Prosecutor Roger Bourne said, “It's still under advisement, we're still looking into it.” Asked if it's normal for such a case to take this long, Bourne said, “It's not like we have cases like this all the time that we have a history on, that I can tell you whether it's normal or not. We're looking into a number of things, and it's going to take us a while.” He added, “There's a number of variables, and we're looking at several things.”

It turns out that mountain lions could be wandering the Boise River greenbelt at any time, preying on stay cats and squirrels, staying undercover, and keeping away from humans - and that's fine. The problem with the half-grown cat that was shot by police last night around midnight was that it had stopped behaving like a resident of the wild, and more like a townie - after its picnic on a deer carcass in a Warm Springs Mesa resident's front-yard flower garden, the lion had moved into town and stayed, gone for several jogs on the greenbelt, and then hung out on the BSU campus, where it was inside a Dumpster at the student union, feasting on garbage, when it was spotted.

“We did make a couple of attempts to try to get it out of town, and unfortunately, it stayed in town,” said Matt O'Connell, senior conservation officer at Idaho Fish & Game, shown here. The first plan was to use “aversive conditioning,” firing rubber bullets at the big cat to scare it back into the foothills it came from, when it was still in the Warm Springs Mesa neighborhood where it killed the deer, right across the street from a deep ravine leading back into the hills. But once it moved into town, that wouldn't have worked, and tranquilizing the animal could compromise it, O'Connell said, possibly sending it running into traffic or other trouble before the tranquilizer could take effect. “Employees saw the cat in a Dumpster on campus right near the student union,” he said. “The cat had kind of crossed the line between normal behavior,” and was going after human-provided - not natural - food sources.

Boise typically sees “one or two cats a year that wander into town,” O'Connell said. Typically, when humans encounter mountain lions, “Normally, the lion is going to run,” he said. “Lions are very wary of people. They're very clever at hiding. Most of the time it's not a worrisome thing.” He added, “If they stay on the greenbelt mostly out of sight, nobody knows about it.”

O'Connell said he was “disappointed” at the result this time, but added, “At least now people can use the greenbelt” without worrying about the big cat. “I feel bad for the animal,” he said. “I never like to see an animal, especially a young one like this, dying, but sometimes it's just the reality of what we have to do.”

The mountain lion that had been prowling downtown Boise and the Greenbelt since the weekend was shot last night around midnight by Boise Police, after it was spotted near a Dumpster in the area around the student union building at Boise State University. “They did take it out,” said Idaho Fish & Game spokesman Mike Keckler. “We did take possession of the cat.” The mountain lion turned out to be a young, subadult female, about 50 to 60 pounds.

“She'd probably been chased away by her mother; by this point the mother's raising new kittens, and then tend to run off the older ones because they're busy with the new ones,” Keckler said. “A lot of times these young cats are trying to find their way, and in this case, this cat ended up in town and was staying in town, and as such did not make a good candidate for relocation.”

The Boise Police Department said in a news release, ” Ada County Dispatchers began receiving calls from citizens at approximately 11:30 p.m. last night indicating the mountain lion was in the area of BSU and the greenbelt, just north of the stadium. Idaho Fish and Game officers, along with Boise Police responded to the location. On the advice of Fish and Game officials, the cat was shot as it walked across the greenbelt pathway. Fish and Game have taken the animal into their custody. It is unfortunate that the incident ended this way, however, safety for the citizens of Boise has to be the primary concern when conflicts of this nature take place in an urban environment like downtown Boise.”