• Twitter
• Facebook
• Reddit

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — As what is now the second-longest Idaho Legislature in 119 years hit its 95th day, quirks are emerging almost hourly in an institution that's jealously guarded its reputation over the years as an enclave for eccentrics.

Take this week's House debate on Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter's bill to reform Idaho's 62-year-old system of doling out liquor licenses by quota.

Currently, a single license is allowed for every 1,500 residents of cities; Otter's plan would have given cities and counties the right to issue licenses to restaurants and hotels as they saw fit.

That prompted one lawmaker, Rep. Russ Mathews, R-Idaho Falls, to raise the specter of McDonald's restaurants across the state seeking licenses to sell Jack and Cokes and Long Island iced teas alongside Happy Meals and McNuggets.

Mickey D's customers, Mathews feared, would "be able to get a little nippy instead of a happy toy."

The measure was soundly defeated.

You know something is a little topsy turvy when neighboring Utah, with America's largest population of teetotaling Mormons, just a month earlier had passed state's most sweeping liquor law reforms in 40 years, but Idaho decided to stick with a system promoting "temperance and morality" that came into existence two years after GI's returned from World War II.

The weirdness doesn't stop there.

Rep. Jeff Thompson, another Idaho Falls Republican, is pushing a bill to shield companies from civil liability if they pass policies letting employees store their guns in their cars while at work.

One of the arguments Thompson used to win its 51-19 passage in the House on Monday was that Cabela's Inc., the big Nebraska-based sporting goods retailer that's one of America's largest firearms outlets, prohibited its own employees from leaving their weapons out in the rig while they were at work. Thompson said Cabela's needed an incentive to reverse course.

It turns out Thompson didn't have his facts straight. Cabela's has no such policy.

"Despite reports to the contrary," Cabela's spokesman David Draper told The Associated Press on Thursday, "we do not prohibit employees from lawfully possessing, carrying or storing firearms in vehicles on company property. We apologize for any misunderstanding and have clarified the intent of our policies with our employees."

Thompson told the AP that somebody from the National Rifle Association, which is behind his bill, had told him otherwise.

"It was my understanding they (Cabela's) had that policy," he said Thursday. "We are researching that."

Thompson's "guns in cars" bill is the eighth piece of firearms legislation to cross Idaho lawmakers' desks this year.

Other bills oppose federal firearms licensing, forbid the state from taking away residents' weapons if martial law is declared, and give state parks managers authority to tell campers not to shoot their guns off.

Until now, it seems, parks manager had little clout to tell people to stop popping off rounds within a few yards of the neighboring Winnebago.

"I realize this is important to some people," Sen. Kate Kelly, D-Boise, told at a Senate hearing Thursday where Thompson's measure was cleared for floor debate. "But I'm questioning whether the people's business and the money we spend needs to be spent year after year (on gun bills). I just hope we don't have to do this again next year."

Sen. Kelly: Don't hold your breath.

The odd atmosphere permeating Idaho state government in the 2009 Legislature's waning days is illustrated perhaps most tellingly not by who was among the 2,500 who gathered Wednesday in a park across from the Capitol building for the national "Tax Day Tea Party," but by who wasn't there.

While fired-up speakers railed against big government, taxes, the Federal Reserve, abortion and perceived attacks on "America's Judeo-Christian heritage," Otter, a man who has built his political career as one of Idaho's biggest, baddest big-government haters, was nowhere in sight.

Odd for Otter: After all, wasn't he one of just three U.S. House members in 2001 to vote against the Patriot Act? Didn't he veto raising Idaho's drinking age to 21 as lieutenant governor in 1987, because he thought it was an unfair federal mandate? And wasn't this the guy who told Reason magazine in 1978, "If a person, of his own free will, wants to use marijuana, I question whether the government has any propriety in telling him he can't."

So where was Otter on Tax Day 2009, as scores of Idahoans, fed up with Washington, D.C.'s fiscal sloth, were outside the Republican governor's offices with placards proclaiming, "Somali Pirates? How 'bout those pirates in Congress?"

"He was meeting with his accountant," said his press secretary, Jon Hanian.