The Senate Agricultural Affairs Committee this morning refused to introduce invasive species amendments proposed by the state Department of Agriculture after senators noted that the bill, as written, would authorize pulling over any vehicle for simply having a container - say, a cooler in the back of a pickup - and potentially sending the driver to jail for up to a year, fining him up to $3,000, and hitting him with a civil penalty of up to $10,000. That wasn't the intent, Administrator of Plant Industries Lloyd Knight told the committee. The amendments were designed to allow citations of people who blow past boat inspection stations on the freeway - as roughly 80 percent of boaters did when they passed the Huetter inspection station on I-90 just west of Coeur d'Alene last year without stopping, Knight said. Highway patrollers pulled over a handful, and were only able to cite them for failure to obey a traffic sign - the sign that said all boats had to stop for inspection for invasive species, such as quagga and zebra mussels.

The legislation Knight proposed would make failure to stop for inspection a misdemeanor for anyone "towing, carrying or transporting any conveyance," with "conveyance" broadly defined to include a vehicle, a boat, a trailer, a container and more. It also would allow the Department of Agriculture to impound infested conveyances; and allow law enforcement officers to stop, search, detain and impound conveyances. Knight said the Department of Ag made the bill broad so it could apply to any future invasive species, such as, perhaps, one carried on firewood, or one carried in containers of fish. Rules for each inspection program would be more specific, he said.

But Sen. Gary Schroeder, R-Moscow, brought up the cooler-in-a-pickup example - and said it'd fit the language in the bill. "If I'm driving down the road and I have a cooler in the back of my truck and I don't stop, if you want to, you can throw me in jail and fine me a couple thousand dollars," he said. "This appears to give the Department of Agriculture the ability to get involved in mischief if they choose to do so. ... You're telling me to trust you."

Sen. Brent Hill, R-Rexburg, said he rarely votes against printing a bill, but he'd do so in this case. "I think we may even be hinging on some constitutional issues," he said. The roll-call vote on a motion to introduce the bill failed, 3-5, even after committee Chairman Tim Corder, R-Mountain Home, said a full committee hearing on the bill would include information on the high costs of invasive species infestations, showing why "that might require us to take some extraordinary measures." Knight said afterward that he'll work on narrowing the bill and bring back a new version. "We'll work with them," Knight said. "I think we can get to a definition that will work for them."

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