The Senate and House have both convened this afternoon; the Senate won’t be taking up HCR 21 and 22, the public lands transfer resolutions, until tomorrow. The path forward on the defeated public schools budget isn’t yet clear.

“There’s been a lot of conversation going on over the weekend, and today as well,” said Senate Majority Leader Bart Davis. He said he’s hoping “at some point today that we could print an RS … that would deal with a part of what would be essential in order for the joint committee to go back to work.”

That would require convening a privileged committee in the Senate to introduce the RS, which stands for routing slip, the preliminary version of a proposed bill. “Things are fluid,” Davis said, “and they change from hour to hour. … But before we send any committee to go to work to print, we have to get an RS that we think is doable, and currently, that’s where the rub is.”

The Senate has passed HCR 33, to set up an interim committee to examine “how to improve and strengthen Idaho’s K-12 educational system.” Senate Education Chairman John Goedde, R-Coeur d’Alene, said unlike the governor’s education stakeholders task force, “This interim committee would not be restricted to not taking a look at collective bargaining and my guess is that would be one of the focuses on the interim committee.”

The House, meanwhile, is taking up HB 111a, the bill from House Agriculture Chairman Ken Andrus, R-Lava Hot Springs, to make a second offense of animal torture a felony.