Campbell Was Out To Lunch On Amendment

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 was in its “amending order.” The process is an open one, in which anyone can offer an amendment to a bill.

So Campbell proposed one. His amendment, to a bill by a freshman Boise representative that would charge damages against anyone unlawfully introducing a species of fish into Idaho waters, sounded simple: “On page 1 of the printed bill, delete line 8.”

In Campbell’s statement of purpose for his amendment, he said it was designed “to include a definition as to the relationship to any fish as it relates to native species of the state of Idaho.”

But his amendment didn’t add any definition. It deleted the enacting clause of the bill, rendering the bill completely without effect.

That kind of thing isn’t unheard of in the Legislature. It’s been tried before.

But lawmakers said privately that they were shocked by Campbell’s statement of purpose, which clearly was an out-and-out lie.

“I’ve got a long background in fisheries and so on and so forth,” Campbell said in an interview. The damages the bill allowed, which could go up to $10,000, are “pretty heavy,” Campbell said, adding, “Personally I’d like to kill that bill.”

The amendment was voted down.

When the fish bill came up for a vote this week, Campbell, true to form, didn’t offer any debate. He voted against it, but it easily passed.

Campbell, who manufactures fishing tackle and writes an outdoors column for the Daily Bee in Sandpoint, noted that his fellow lawmakers didn’t bow to his expertise earlier.

“If my compatriots in the House didn’t believe what I was saying, I’d just as soon go to lunch. I’m not gonna waste my time.”

They look familiar

“Not a bad-looking bunch,” said state Controller J.D. Williams, as a huge pack of high school students filed past him in a narrow hallway of the Statehouse basement. “These kids are from my hometown,” he added proudly. “I’m related to probably a third of ‘em.”

Scramble for seats

When the anti-Indian gambling bill was up for its first day of hearings in the Legislature this week, the Idaho Family Forum issued an “action alert” to its members that “Indian tribes are busing people in to demand gambling in Idaho” and calling on Family Forum members to show up for the 2:30 p.m. hearing at 2.

The Gold Room, where the hearing was held, seats less than 100 people, and there were far more than that interested in the hearing.

Tribes got hold of the flier, and went one better: “We just made sure we were there at 1:30,” said Bob Bostwick, of the Coeur d’Alene Tribe.

That’s why the vast majority of those seated in the packed hearing room were tribal representatives, who opposed the legislation.

The difference a week makes

The three North Idaho members of the House Revenue and Taxation Committee all have different reasons why they didn’t support Rep. Jeff Alltus’ bill to give fast-growing counties a fairer share of a chunk of state sales tax money, which now is divided based on 1965 business inventories.

Alltus, R-Hayden, didn’t give the committee much of a pitch for his bill last week, all agreed. Nor did he lobby them in advance or even alert them that the bill was coming.

But Rep. Hilde Kellogg’s version, an interim study committee to look into how Idaho divides up all its tax money that it sends to local governments, had no such problems. It sailed through the committee this week, and could lead to reforms next year.

Kellogg, R-Post Falls, is the committee’s vice chairman, and House Speaker Mike Simpson said earlier that he was working with her on the bill.

, 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.