When I left Boise a week ago, it was 100-plus degrees. While I was gone, it turned unseasonably cool and rainy with flash flooding, and now it's settling down somewhere in between. Among the news developments of the week (I'm still catching up): On Tuesday, Gov. Butch Otter agreed to shift $2.1 million from the state's rainy-day fund to purchase childhood vaccines through January 2010, at the request of a joint legislative task force. “The $2.1 million that we are putting in will only get us to January, so I am hopeful that their task force and some of the other legislative work can provide an ongoing protocol and an ongoing program to provide the necessary vaccines for the citizens of Idaho,” Otter declared. The move came as Idaho's system for vaccinating kids was thrown into turmoil due to budget cuts, at a time when the state's immunization rate is the lowest in the nation.

On Thursday, Otter launched his transportation task force's first meeting, saying that though the panel will look broadly at transportation funding issues and report back in December of 2010, it's OK to make recommendations earlier, too. "I'm prepared to move as soon as you are prepared to move," Otter told the group. "We don't have to wait 18 months." Meanwhile, Idaho Statesman reporter Dan Popkey wrote an interesting Sunday story here about why and how Otter's transportation initiatives have failed so far.

The Lewiston Tribune reported Saturday that this year's legislation from Sen. Gary Schroeder, R-Moscow, requiring Fish & Game to ask other states if they want any of Idaho's wolves drew responses from 20 states - all saying "no." And Blake Hall's former seat on the state Board of Education has been filled; Otter's choice to finish the remaining eight months in Hall's term is Emma Atchley of Ashton, a former teacher and school board member, University of Idaho Foundation board member and GOP activist.

On a sad note, the intensive search that was on for a missing 8-year-old boy, Robert Manwill, ended with the recovery of his body from a canal and a homicide investigation; the little boy's funeral took place over the weekend. And Idaho's unemployment rate increased again in July to 8.8 percent, the highest in 26 years. The modern-day record is 9.4 percent, recorded from October 1982 to February 1983.