Otter back after hip chip repair
BOISE – Now we know why Gov. Butch Otter scheduled his hip-resurfacing surgery a month into the legislative session – just as lawmakers were taking up the agenda he laid before them.
Otter said even though lawmakers didn’t move on several of his major initiatives in his absence, he wasn’t sorry he had the hip surgery when he did – because it turned out that a chip the size of a nickel had broken off his hip joint and lodged between the ball and socket. For the last four months, he said, he’d been in “miserable pain” that sometimes kept him from sleeping at night. That pain ended, he said, “as soon as I came out of the operating room.”
“Even through the time that I was in recovery and wasn’t here on a face-to-face basis, we’ve been working,” he said. And he’s back now, as he made clear this week at a public bill-signing ceremony to sign into law the measure making dogfighting a felony in Idaho. The governor spoke out on a range of legislative issues, and made it clear he still plans to push for his transportation proposals and grocery tax-relief plan.
Otter said he’s been dealing with the hip problem for a decade, and couldn’t figure out why it’d suddenly become so painful. Now, his only regret is he wishes he’d had the surgery earlier.
The governor has crutches, but he’s not using them.
Public school budget-setting put off
The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee had been scheduled to set the public school budget this week, but now that’s been delayed to next week because of the Senate Education Committee’s passage of the revised iSTARS teacher pay legislation. “We don’t want to be out in front of the public policy decision,” said Senate Finance Chairman Dean Cameron, R-Rupert. “So we’ll put it off until after action on the Senate floor.”
The problem: The budget-setting so far has left room to spend about $24 million on increased school salaries next year, enough to give teachers 3 percent raises plus raise the minimum teacher salary by $500 a year. State Superintendent of Schools Tom Luna wants to instead give teachers just 1 percent, plus the $20.55 million iSTARS incentive bonus program for some of them, plus the $500 increase in the minimum, plus 3 percent for classified employees while holding administrators to just 1 percent, for a total of $33 million.
“As we understand it, it would put us outside the target by about $9 million,” Cameron said. “Frankly, I’m not tickled about it. We’ve got to figure out how we’ll react.”
No irony there
When the state Board of Education sent out its schedule for meetings this week, it included “open government training” on Wednesday at 3:30 p.m., followed immediately by – you guessed it – a closed-door, executive session at 5.
Last week, Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden said the board may have violated the Idaho Open Meeting Law in December, but because of a recent Idaho Supreme Court decision in an Ada County case, he couldn’t find that they’d “knowingly” done so. He recommended, and the board scheduled, training in the law.
Tiny agency almost eliminated
Legislative budget writers nearly killed the funding for the Women’s Commission this week, at the urging of Sen. Joyce Broadsword, R-Sagle. She called the state agency “a waste of money” and “a duplicative service.” Other JFAC members questioned what the commission accomplishes. The vote on its budget initially was split 10-10 – which meant it would have failed, zero-funding the agency. But then a slew of committee members changed their votes. The final vote, at 16-4, left the tiny agency’s less-than-$40,000 budget intact.
Governor defends golf tournament
Gov. Butch Otter sent out a statement this week speaking out strongly in support of the annual “Governor’s Cup” golf tournament, a tony fundraiser for scholarships at which “there are opportunities for business people and government people to talk.”
Otter sneered at any suggestion that the access the event gives lobbyists to top elected officials is anything but a good thing. “Yes, there is golf, trap shooting, fly fishing and other entertainment at some of the most beautiful spots on Earth, like Sun Valley last year and Coeur d’Alene in 2008,” he wrote. “Yes, there is camaraderie and good humor and – dare I say it? – fun.”
Senate journeys over rough road
The Idaho Senate ended up in an extensive debate this week over a proposed amendment to the chain-up bill, SB 1379. The bill now would require tire chains in dangerous, snowy conditions only for interstate truckers on three specific North Idaho mountain passes – Lookout, Fourth of July, and Lolo. Sen. Gary Schroeder, R-Moscow, proposed an amendment to add White Bird Hill. The other three passes had been targeted as particular problem spots where there’s already sufficient chain-up area to impose the requirement on semitrucks. Schroeder said White Bird Hill meets that criteria too, but others disagreed. After much debate and some confusion, only a handful of senators supported the amendment, and it failed.