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JFAC joins with the House and Senate health and welfare committees in a joint hearing Monday morning on Health & Welfare and Medicaid budgets.
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State Health & Welfare Director Dick Armstrong tells lawmakers at a joint hearing on Monday that the only option to cope with soaring Medicaid costs is to cut services. Idaho already has the strictest eligibility criteria in the nation, he said, and provider rates are "dangerously low" already.
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Participants in a tea party rally on the Idaho state capitol steps on Monday; across the street behind is a knot of protesters.
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Holocaust survivor Rose Beal speaks in the Capitol rotunda at the state's official observance of Martin Luther King Jr./Idaho Human Rights Day on Monday.
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Sen. Denton Darrington, R-Declo, presides over the Senate Judiciary Committee, which voted unanimously on Monday to introduce legislation to close a loophole in Idaho's rape law that led to dismissal of a recent Ada County rape case.
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The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee opens its budget hearing on the public schools budget, meeting jointly with the House and Senate education committees on Tuesday.
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State Superintendent of Schools Tom Luna makes his budget presentation to lawmakers on the joint budget and education committees on Tuesday.
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Lawmakers, including Sen. Steven Bair, center, and Sen. Nicole LeFavour, right, at the public schools budget hearing on Tuesday. Members of the budget and education committees had lots of questions for state Superintendent of Schools Tom Luna.
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Lawmakers on the joint budget and education committees hear the public school budget presentation on Tuesday.
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Sen. Bob Geddes is named the new head of the Idaho State Tax Commission on Tuesday by Gov. Butch Otter
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State Tax Commission whistle-blower Stan Howland addresses lawmakers and others on Tuesday, at a talk in a Senate hearing room. Howland, a former longtime state tax auditor, said changes are needed to stop improper secret deals with influential taxpayers.
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Rep. Maxine Bell, left, and Rep. Rich Wills, right, are among lawmakers on a legislative task force that on Tuesday voted to permanently restore trails funding to Idaho state parks that comes from the portion of gas taxes burned in off-road vehicles and boats.
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Idaho Supreme Court Chief Justice Daniel Eismann delivers his "State of the Judiciary" address to the House on Wednesday; he also spoke in the Senate. Eismann suggested an increase in Idaho marriage license fees to fund counsel for civil cases involving children and families.
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Rep. Leon Smith, R-Twin Falls, introduces legislation to amend Idaho's "conscience" law to protect patients' living wills and other advance care directives. Last year's law allows providers to decline to provide end-of-life services that violate the provider's conscience.
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Sen. Mitch Toryanski, R-Boise, asks questions of state schools Supt. Tom Luna on Wednesday about Luna's education reform plan. Toryanski said at a town hall meeting in his district the night before, 90 percent of the questions were about Luna's plan.
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Richard Westerberg, president of the State Board of Education, makes his budget presentation to a joint meeting of JFAC and the House and Senate education committees on Thursday. In higher education in Idaho, he said, the news is "more students, less money."
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Members of the House State Affairs Committee, including Reps. Eric Anderson, R-Priest Lake, right, and Frank Henderson, R-Post Falls, second from right, listen to lobbyist Bill Roden on Thursday. Roden, lobbyist for the Coeur d'Alene Tribe, presented a new tribal policing bill after Benewah County reneged on a deal with the tribe last spring that averted pending legislation then. The committee voted unanimously to introduce the new bill.
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Bill Roden, lobbyist for the Coeur d'Alene Tribe, presents new tribal policing legislation to the House State Affairs Committee on Thursday. The committee agreed to introduce the bill, clearing the way for full hearings.
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Hundreds of Idahoans arrive for a the state's first-ever public hearing on public school funding on Friday morning.
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The crowd more than filled the Capitol Auditorium, the Capitol's largest hearing room, for Friday's first-ever public hearing on public school funding held by the Legislature's joint budget committee.
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Julie Dillehay testifies at the school funding public hearing on Friday.
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Karen Mahoney, a mom from Eagle, testifies to lawmakers at the school funding hearing on Friday. She told them, "Please don't buy my son a laptop." Instead, she asked that the money be sent to his school, "where it is desperately needed."
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Lauren Peters of Hansen broke into tears while testifying to lawmakers Friday about the impact of budget cuts on her children's school.
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Kaitlyn Howell, a high school student from Caldwell, testifies at the school funding hearing that she's taken three online classes, and they were "very ineffective."
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JFAC Co-Chairs Rep. Maxine Bell, right, and Sen. Dean Cameron, left, preside over the public hearing on school funding on Friday morning. More than 130 people signed up to testify.
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Alexa Bell of Kuna testifies to lawmakers Friday in favor of online education; she's a student at the Idaho Virtual Academy online charter school.
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The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee and House and Senate education committtees listen Friday to four hours of public testimony about school funding; the testimony ran nearly 6-to-1 against Supt. Tom Luna's sweeping education reform plan.
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Matt Barkley, a band director from Post Falls, said it was worth the 400-mile trip to testify at Friday's public school funding hearing.
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Sen. Dean Cameron, left, and Rep. Maxine Bell, right, talk with reporters after an unprecedented four-hour public hearing Friday on school funding. Bell termed the hearing 'extremely successful.'
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