Mayor’s Old Digs Become A Real Meth

When U.S. Sen. Dirk Kempthorne was just a lowly mayor, he and his family lived in an unpretentious ranch-style house in a pleasant, family-oriented southeast Boise subdivision.

Now the Kempthornes’ former abode on Cornhusk Court has been the site of something altogether different: a meth lab bust.

Last Sunday, neighbors called the police to report a suspicious person. When officers arrived, they saw two people in the house’s back yard, who immediately ran inside when they saw the cops.

By the time it was all over, police had arrested three people for minor violations and taken custody of methamphetamine lab equipment, drugs and chemicals.

“It just makes me sick,” Kempthorne said. “And like the neighbors, I’m outraged that that sort of activity is going on in that neighborhood. It’s a wonderful neighborhood.”

Kempthorne should know. He and his wife, Pat, had the house built and lived there 10 years with their two kids. The subdivision is marked by well-kept yards with blooming flowers and a handy walkway to the nearby elementary school.

“I know a lot of the kids that are there, I know a lot of the parents that are the Little League and soccer coaches.”

The Kempthornes sold the house about four years ago.

“This demonstrates that no community is immune, no neighborhood is immune,” he said.

Let’s just fix that comma

Remember that bill this year that would have softened Idaho’s harsh mandatory penalties for driving with a suspended driver’s license? The one that died on a technicality before ever getting a vote in the Senate, despite 14 months’ work and unanimous House approval?

The 40-page bill was found to be in conflict with already-passed legislation lowering Idaho’s drunken-driving limit from 0.10 percent to 0.08 percent blood-alcohol content. It amended various sections of law dealing with driver’s licenses, but also, while it was at it, made a series of extremely minor changes in the section that had the 0.10 limit.

The changes:

“More than” was moved from one place in a sentence to another, without changing the meaning; “.04 through .09” was changed to “.04 but less than .10”; “higher” was changed to “more”; and in two references, “police officer” was changed to “peace officer.”

The “more than” change came in the very sentence that set the 0.10 limit.

That meant, if the driving bill became law, it might supersede the 0.08 bill and reimpose the 0.10 standard. And since the problem wasn’t discovered until the last day of the legislative session, there was no time for amendments.

It wasn’t the first time multiple bills amending the same section of Idaho law have clashed. In 1983, the Legislature tried to raise the gas tax from 12 to 14.5 cents a gallon, but by the time three different bills had passed and the Legislature had adjourned, the tax had inadvertently been set back at 12 cents.

Unhappy legislators had to hold a special session, just to vote again for the tax increase they’d already approved.

Is there a there there?

State schools Superintendent Anne Fox already has drawn two Republican challengers for next year’s primary election, Twin Falls Rep. Ron Black and New Plymouth school superintendent Ryan Kerby.

So it’s probably not the best timing that Fox this week put out a press release trumpeting the grants her department is giving to schools for abstinence-only sex-education classes.

The final line in the press release? “We are pleased that districts were interested in using the money to support abstinence-only programs in THERE local districts.”

Ouch! The abstinence-only (vs. abstinence-based) rule already was controversial. But the grammatical error brings the kind of sniggering that a hard-challenged incumbent might want to avoid.

, DataTimes MEMO: North-South Notes runs every other Saturday. To reach Betsy Z. Russell, call 336-2854, fax to 336-0021 or e-mail to bzrussell@rmci.net.