As the 18^thday of this year’s legislative session opens this morning, the roads in Boise have some of the worst travel conditions I’ve seen in my quarter-century-plus here. The ice was an inch thick at my house; several of my neighbors had collided at the bottom of our steep hill. The freeway is closed in both directions from Boise to Glenns Ferry. It’s a big day at the Legislature: The public school budget hearing is up, and state schools Superintendent Tom Luna was scheduled to start speaking at 8 a.m. JFAC Co-Chair Dean Cameron, R-Rupert, just made an announcement: He won’t be calling the meeting to order just yet. “The superintendent is on his way – he’s been on the road for over an hour,” Cameron said. So they’ll wait.

Just moments later, Luna arrived, only 5 minutes late.