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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Eye On Boise

House State Affairs rejects partial PCAP funding bill, refuses to allow hearing

The House State Affairs Committee this morning refused to introduce legislation from House Health & Welfare Chairman Fred Wood, R-Burley, to provide an ongoing funding source for the PCAP program from the Millennium Fund, which comes from a nationwide tobacco settlement. Wood said the proposal would provide up to $19 million a year to partially fund PCAP, without cutting into the corpus of the Millennium trust fund.

Rep. Brent Crane, R-Nampa, questioned whether the $30 million a year program couldn’t be funded from savings in the state’s Catastrophic Health Care Fund, which is returning $28 million in savings to the state this year. But Chairman Tom Loertscher, R-Iona, noted that those savings are one-time, not ongoing.

Wood said he wants to identify ongoing funds for the governor’s proposed Primary Care Access Program, which will cost about $30 million a year. “If we pass PCAP and there’s no agreement on what that funding will be for the next five years, you’re doing nothing but what Congress does, and nobody can vote for that,” he said. “In Idaho we don’t do what Congress does.” He said, “That’s why I think that HB 484 is going to be hanging around for a week or two or three or four until people can figure out how we are going to fund that.”

Rep. Lynn Luker, R-Boise, moved to introduce the bill to allow a hearing on it, but the motion failed on a 6-8 vote. Those voting against the motion were Reps. Crane, Palmer, Sims, Barbieri, Holtzclaw, McMillan, Smith and Jordan.



Betsy Z. Russell
Betsy Z. Russell joined The Spokesman-Review in 1991. She currently is a reporter in the Boise Bureau covering Idaho state government and politics, and other news from Idaho's state capital.

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