The most significant budget request in the Medicaid budget for next year isn’t the biggest in dollars. In fact, the request to transform Idaho’s children’s mental health services – for children with serious emotional disturbances – calls for hardly any increase in state spending next year. But it will result in more than tripling...
Here’s a link to my full story at spokesman.com on today’s tax-cut legislation, which cleared the House Revenue & Taxation Committee this morning on a party-line vote and headed to the full House. The measure, from House Majority Leader Mike Moyle, R-Star, would lower the…
House Resources Chairman Marc Gibbs, R-Grace, says he’s not holding the Idaho Fish & Game Department’s proposed fee increase hostage – he just wants the department to first propose solutions to increased depredation that Idaho farmers and ranchers have been seeing from the state’s increased…
An Idaho House panel has introduced legislation that would expand the list of the worst kind of felons banned from owning firearms. Lawmakers spiked a similar effort last year after Republicans opposed including felony convictions for arson, racketeering and rioting as qualifiers to lose one's right to own firearms...
House Resources Chairman Marcus Gibbs, R-Grace, has “returned two Idaho Fish & Game legislative proposals to the Fish & Game Commission,” including the department’s fee-increase proposal, saying neither will receive an introductory hearing in his committee, according to a news release from Fish & Game.…
The House Revenue & Taxation Committee has voted 14-2, a straight party-line vote with all Republicans in favor and both Democrats dissenting, in favor of HB 67, Rep. Mike Moyle’s bill to lower Idaho’s top personal and corporate income tax rates from 7.4 percent to...
This morning in the House Rev & Tax Committee, House Majority Leader Mike Moyle’s bill to cut individual and corporate income taxes is up for its hearing. Before it got to that, the panel agreed to introduce a bill from Rep. Clark Kauffman, R-Filer, to...
As budget hearings continue this week on health and human services programs, Idaho’s Division of Child Welfare is requesting a 20 percent increase in the stipends paid to foster parents for caring for children who have been abused, neglected or abandoned or who are unsafe…
Rep. Steven Harris, R-Meridian, introduced legislation today to remove a little-known restriction from Idaho law, dating back to 1988, that he suggested appears to make it illegal to remotely start your car to warm it up. The provision, contained in the section of state law…
Heavy snow has caused dozens of onion storage sheds in eastern Oregon and Idaho to collapse, resulting in as much as $100 million in damage. About 50 onion buildings collapsed under the weight of up to 40 inches of snow, reported The Capital Press...
The Idaho Supreme Court has delayed implementation of a new court records system in Idaho after hearing concerns from counties across the state, Idaho Public Television reports. The delay comes in the wake of revenue shortfalls for the courts and unexpected costs for the two…
More than 100,000 Idahoans have signed up for 2017 health insurance coverage through the state insurance exchange, Your Health Idaho, and the exchange is reminding Idahoans that the deadline to sign up for the coming year is Tuesday at midnight. “We know changes are coming…
Here’s a link to my full story at spokesman.com on how an Idaho legislative committee took action directed at sanctuary cities today, even though the state doesn’t have any. The proposal would cut off state sales tax funding to any newly declared sanctuary city, and…
Idaho House Minority Leader Mat Erpelding, D-Boise, has issued the following statement in response to the introduction today of immigration legislation targeting “sanctuary cities,” though Idaho doesn’t have any, and ordering local law enforcement officers to check the immigration status of anyone they arrest on…
Kathy Griesmyer, policy director for the ACLU of Idaho, says the ACLU still is researching the impact of the immigration bill that was introduced in an Idaho House committee today, but the group believes it makes far-reaching changes in current law enforcement practices in Idaho…
Legislation loosening the air quality standards for when field burning will be allowed in Idaho passed the Senate today on a 29-5 vote, and now moves to the House side. The change affects only ozone, not particulate pollution, the type of pollution that field-burning creates.…
A Common Core opponent from Wisconsin spent 30 minutes yelling and screaming at the House Education Committee Monday morning before the chairwoman cut him off, reports Idaho EdNews. Freedom Project Academy academic director Duke Pesta was in Boise for a “Buck the Core” anti-Common Core…
Idaho Democrats in the House and Senate have introduced the “Add the Words” bill – to add the words “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” to the Idaho Human Rights Act to ban discrimination on those grounds – as a personal bill in the Idaho House,...
Idaho’s investment of nearly $1 million last year to launch a new state Office of Suicide Prevention came “in the nick of time,” state public health Administrator Elke Shaw-Tulloch told JFAC this morning, as she shared new data on suicide in Idaho: In 2015, 362...
A fire alarm – complete with ringing bell and flashing lights – just briefly disrupted business in the Capitol. JFAC quickly evacuated, in mid-hearing. But authorities say it’s a false alarm – they’re letting everyone come back in and checking to make sure no one’s…
Rep. Paulette Jordan, D-Plummer, a member of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe, who cast the only “no” vote against a new immigration bill this morning, said she finds “two sets of ironies” about the vote. “As the only indigenous person in the room, the irony is...
Before a room packed full of silently disapproving immigration supporters, the House State Affairs Committee this morning voted to introduce legislation proposed by Rep. Greg Chaney, R-Caldwell, to discourage “sanctuary cities” in Idaho by cutting off state sales tax funding to them, and to order…
A full week of hearings on health and human services budgets opened this morning in JFAC, with Idaho Health & Welfare Director Dick Armstrong telling legislative budget writers that his department’s top budget priority this year is a redesign of the children’s mental health program....
Idaho GOP Rep. Raúl Labrador, R-Idaho, in a statement issued Sunday, praised President Trump’s new executive order suspending refugee arrivals and barring entry to the U.S. from seven Muslim-majority countries, calling it “bold” and saying, “President Trump has finally taken necessary national security and public…
When the Idaho House and Senate Health and Welfare committees held an open public hearing on health and welfare issues on Friday, people flocked from all parts of the state to complain about the Idaho Medicaid program’s new non-emergency medical transportation provider, Veyo. You can…
News, happenings and more from the Idaho Legislature and the state capital.
| Jan. 2017 | ||||
| 31 | 30 | 29 | 27 | 26 |
| 25 | 24 | 23 | 22 | 20 |
| 19 | 18 | 17 | 16 | 13 |
| 12 | 11 | 10 | 09 | 08 |
| 06 | 05 | 04 | 03 |
