Betsy Z. Russell

Rep. Stoicheff

Proposed laws that threatened to crimp Indian gaming were declared dead on arrival in the House on Thursday. House State Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Crane said he plans to schedule a hearing Monday, calling for a study of gambling issues. But two proposed laws passed by the Senate this week won't get hearings. House Speaker Mike Simpson said those two measures - vehemently opposed by Idaho tribes - wouldn't really do anything, anyway.

Legislation to continue splitting cigarette tax funds between school substance-abuse prevention and county juvenile probation narrowly passed a Senate committee Wednesday, and headed for a final vote in the Senate. Another measure, which would impose Idaho income tax on lottery winnings and earmark the money for the same two programs, passed the House Tuesday and will get a Senate committee hearing Friday.

Sen. Gordon Crow's new version of legislation to clean up mining contamination in the Coeur d'Alene basin leaves out conservation groups, but Crow said Wednesday their representation isn't needed. "It depends how you define conservationist," he said, pointing to his bill's list of who should serve on a new commission to oversee the cleanup.

A scaled-back package of gambling legislation cleared the Senate Wednesday after hours of debate, with senators saying they don't mean to restrict Indian tribes. "In my mind, what we're doing here today will not impact the tribes' ability to play the games that they're playing," said Senate President Pro-tem Jerry Twiggs, R-Blackfoot.

Legislation to allow Idahoans to vote on a major upgrade of U.S. Highway 95 will get a committee hearing Thursday. Sen. Evan Frasure, R-Pocatello, chairman of the Senate Transportation Committee, said late Tuesday that the highway bill made the cut. He has 13 bills left to hear at his committee's final meeting Thursday and scheduled only six.

A non-binding but strongly worded memorial urging federal authorities to crack down on Indian gaming in Idaho passed the Senate on Tuesday on a voice vote. Only about half a dozen senators opposed SJM101, including one North Idaho senator.

Legislation calling for a statewide vote on a grand plan to fix U.S. Highway 95 may be in trouble. The measure has passed the House, and awaits a hearing in the Senate Transportation Committee. But committee Chairman Sen. Evan Frasure said Monday that legislative leaders' push to bring the session to a close may prevent his committee from giving the bill a hearing.

Sen. Shawn Keough waged a fight in the Senate on Monday, but her bill to require stricter snow-load standards for school roofs failed by five votes. The measure, which Keough, R-Sandpoint, and Sen. Gary Schroeder, R-Moscow, pushed in response to the collapse of three school roofs under heavy snow in Sandpoint this winter, died on a 15-20 vote.

He's the silent representative, seldom heard from in floor debate, quiet in committee. Freshman Rep. John Campbell, R-Sandpoint, hasn't proposed any legislation all year. But when he made his first political maneuver last week, it was a sneaky one that shocked some of his fellow representatives.

The House on Friday passed a law that'll force taxpayers to compensate billboard owners for income lost when the government requires signs to be removed. The bill now goes to Gov. Phil Batt, who vetoed similar legislation last year.

Idaho Indian tribes' heartfelt testimony in Boise this week appears to have paid off. After last-minute negotiations Friday, a Senate committee that was poised to vote on a bill restricting tribal gaming suddenly was presented with two new bills. One is a toned-down version of the original bill. The other is a resolution encouraging the governor to form a committee to study Indian gaming. Both were sent to the full Senate by unanimous votes. The original bill was dropped. But the Senate State Affairs Committee, on a 7-2 vote, also approved a non-binding memorial that calls on the federal government to crack down on reservation gambling in Idaho. Although the tribes tentatively see the new bills as an improvement, they're not pleased with the harsh language of the memorial. "If gaming is so bad, then, again, why is the state doing it?" asked Ernie Stensgar, chairman of the Coeur d'Alene Tribe. Under federal law, sovereign Indian tribes can engage in any kind of gambling that is legal elsewhere in the state. Tribes have used the law that legalized the state lottery, in part, to argue that they can operate video gambling machines. Those machines have brought new prosperity to the long-depressed reservations. "We've had Indians and non-Indians testify about the good of Indian gaming," Stensgar said. "I don't believe they realize how much of a setback it would be for our tribes and our communities if those machines were taken away." Tribal unemployment has plunged since the casinos opened on the Coeur d'Alene, Kootenai and Nez Perce reservations. The Coeur d'Alenes have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to area schools, purchased a bus for senior citizen programs and built a college scholarship fund for their young people. The Kootenai Tribe this week offered to donate $93,000 to the struggling Boundary County school district if the anti-tribal gambling bill were defeated. On Friday, the Kootenais' lobbyist, former state Sen. Skip Smyser, said he couldn't tell yet where the new legislation left that offer. "We're going to analyze it over the weekend," Smyser said. "Monday, we should have an idea where we're going." Lobbyists for the tribes were involved in the negotiations that took place between the governor's office and legislative leaders this week, but none had seen the final legislation when it was handed out Friday to a surprised committee. David High, the deputy attorney general who drafted the original bill for the governor and who drafted the new version, said, "I believe the prior version was viewed as too confrontational with the tribes." The new bill focuses more on what the lottery can do, High said. It also could affect tribal gaming, but to a lesser degree. The original bill declared that the state lottery can't offer video lottery, video pull-tab games "or any similar electronic or electromechanical imitation or simulation of any form of gambling." The idea was to short-circuit tribal claims that their machines are the same as the lottery's games. The new bill leaves out any reference to video machines, saying only, "The lottery may only offer lotto games, scratch ticket games and paper pull-tab games." Frank Lockwood, spokesman for Gov. Phil Batt, said, "The lawyers are going to argue about this just like they argue about anything else, but I think this legislation strengthens the governor's hand." Stensgar said the tribes don't plan any changes as a result of the legislation. "Our operations are going to continue, and that's what we wanted all along," he said. "We still believe that we're operating legally." Stensgar was hopeful that the governor's study committee will help settle the issue. "Hopefully sitting around a table as peers, we can come to some conclusion," he said. Rather than saying they oppose gambling, state officials should acknowledge that limited gambling - like the state lottery and tribal gaming - can help government purposes like schools, Stensgar said. "They could say we oppose full-fledged gaming, but we realize that some gaming is good for governments and what they're trying to do."

Rep. Jeff Alltus is being fined $200 for violating campaign finance laws, while two other Panhandle lawmakers are facing smaller fines. The three are on a list of 24 legislative candidates and three initiative committees who failed to report large last-minute campaign contributions before last November's election. Such contributions are required by law to be reported in writing within 48 hours.

Idaho's Indian tribes are pulling their members out of poverty and dependence, boosting their schools and their young people's college prospects and providing new opportunities for their senior citizens - all because of gambling. That was the message tribes brought to the state Legislature on Monday, as the Senate State Affairs Committee kicked off a hearing on legislation that could crimp tribal gambling.

Gambling on Idaho's Indian reservations will be the hot topic Monday, as a state Senate committee kicks off a hearing on two measures aimed at restricting tribes' gaming activities. The first measure is a nonbinding memorial, SJM 101, proposed by Sen. Laird Noh, R-Kimberly. It calls on the federal government to crack down on gaming that violates the state constitution.

Sen. Gordon Crow's bill to allow elected officials to switch parties while in office cleared a Senate committee Friday. Crow, R-Hayden, proposed his legislation after former Kootenai County Assessor Tom Moore attempted to switch to the Republican Party 14 days before his death, in an attempt to secure the succession of his GOP deputy.

State employees who are seething over the Legislature's decision not to fund any raises for them in the coming year are divided about a sickout scheduled for Wednesday. Warren Lundquist, business representative for the Service Employees International Union in Boise, said, "When people call me, I say the word I got is everyone wants to go out Wednesday." But Jerry Rasavage, executive director of the Idaho Public Employees Association, said his group not only doesn't back a sickout, his members are "horrified with the idea of walking out."

Hunting groups, still stinging from an initiative last year that attempted to ban certain types of bear hunting, want to amend Idaho's Constitution. But a proposal to make it impossible for citizen initiatives to regulate hunting will have to wait.

Rep. Jeff Alltus got slam-dunked Monday when he tried to push legislation to give fast-growing counties a fairer share of state sales tax. Alltus, R-Hayden, didn't get a single vote in the House Revenue and Taxation Committee, which dismissed his proposal as an attack on rural areas.

Complicated, controversial legislation opening local telephone service to competition cleared a House committee Friday, over the lone objection of Rep. Jim Stoicheff. Stoicheff, D-Sandpoint, said he thought the bill had been skewed to help the existing phone companies "hold onto their empires."

Sen. Clyde Boatright's bill to protect carnival operators from lawsuits filed by injured riders not only died in committee Friday - Boatright himself made the motion to kill it. "I thought it was best if we held the bill in committee, did a rewrite on it and brought it back next year," Boatright, R-Rathdrum, said afterward.

Can it be coincidence that both these things are happening? The Legislature is tackling lots of big, complicated, technical issues, from telecommunications deregulation to truck weights to workers compensation reform. All around the Statehouse, people are falling asleep in committee hearings in what appear to be record numbers. Look into almost any legislative committee room. You'll see lawmakers nodding off. Lobbyists with heavy eyelids. Visiting schoolchildren fast asleep in their chairs. Reporters struggling to stay awake.

GTE is claiming it falls under an exemption for rural telephone companies and shouldn't have to face competition for local phone service in North Idaho. Competitors are skeptical of the claim, since GTE is the nation's largest phone company. But if it succeeds, the move could keep competitors like AT&T; and GST Telecommunications out of the North Idaho phone market. Mitzi Sachs, vice president and general manager of GST Telecommunications in Spokane, said an exemption for GTE could thwart her company's plans to offer high-tech phone, data and Internet services to Coeur d'Alene businesses. "I think the consumer is the loser, especially the business consumer," Sachs said. "It'll delay technology getting to Coeur d'Alene that much faster." The Idaho Public Utilities Commission agreed Thursday to schedule a hearing on GTE's claim within the next 45 to 60 days. The move came just as the House State Affairs Committee is deliberating on a bill that would grant small, rural companies an automatic, three- to five-year exemption from competition. GTE, with 123,000 telephone customers in Idaho, is the state's second-largest provider of local phone service. But its North Idaho service area doesn't include any communities with more than 50,000 people - which could allow the company to fit under the legal definition of rural phone companies. "This catches me totally flat-footed - I can't imagine what their thinking is," said Rep. Ron Crane, chairman of the House State Affairs Committee and sponsor of Idaho's telecommunications deregulation bill. "There's a lot of support among the legislators for what we consider to be the rural telephone companies - we're a rural state." But legislators generally think of the tiny firms that provide phone service in towns like Albion, Cambridge and Weippe when they think rural, Crane said. "We have a lot of rural area in Idaho that's high-cost," said Carol Rutgers, director of external affairs for GTE. "We think there should be some consideration of how that's going to impact universal service." When competitors come into the market, they tend to pick off the higher-profit business customers, not the expensive-to-serve remote residences, Rutgers said. GTE provides local phone service throughout North Idaho. Small rural companies have been lobbying the Idaho Legislature strongly on the deregulation issue. They persuaded lawmakers to give them protection from competition in the state legislation, saying immediate competition from such competitors as AT&T;, Sprint and MCI would pose a hardship for small firms. GTE probably wouldn't qualify for the three-year exemption in the state legislation, because the bill includes a requirement that qualifying companies have less than 2 percent of the nation's subscriber lines. But if the PUC upholds the company's claim to rural status under the federal law, GTE might be able to keep competition at bay. Eileen Benner of AT&T; said of GTE's claim, "That's something, isn't it? Poor old little GTE. "Is that the kind of company that needs to be shielded from competition?" she asked. Three companies have received PUC approval to compete with GTE in North Idaho, once they negotiate agreements with GTE to use its lines. AT&T;, one of the three, has requested that the PUC arbitrate between it and GTE because the two firms haven't been able to reach an interconnection agreement. But Rutgers sent a letter to the PUC this week saying the agency can't arbitrate anything because GTE is a rural company that's exempt from competition. Under the 1996 federal law deregulating telecommunications, the PUC must look into whether allowing competition against a rural phone company would be economically burdensome, whether it's technically unfeasible and whether it would interfere with maintaining universal phone service. The PUC must use those criteria to decide whether to allow competition. "All we're asking is just keep that in mind as we go forward," Rutgers said. GTE has argued unsuccessfully for rural exemptions in at least two other states, Ohio and Minnesota. GTE is all for competition where it will be fair, Rutgers said. "We're talking about rural and hard-to-reach areas."

Lawmakers tried to divert $500,000 targeted for property tax relief in Kootenai County to statewide public schools on Wednesday, but the effort failed. The money is part of a $1 million chunk designated by Gov. Phil Batt to offset property taxes now paid by residents of Kootenai, Twin Falls and Jerome counties to support community colleges.