Senate Notebook
Senate passes nursing home measure
Legislation intended to weed out frivolous damage claims against nursing homes has cleared the Idaho Senate - including a clause requiring a two-week blackout on public release of any information from state inspections that suggest problems.
Republican Gordon Crow of Hayden was the lone dissenter Wednesday as the Senate forwarded the measure to the House for final action. Advocates maintained that the news blackout will preclude charges being tried in the media when so many prove to be unjustified.
The bill’s requirement that all damage claims be submitted to nonbinding mediation before a lawsuit is filed should eliminate many frivolous ones, they argued, pointing to 1990 statistics that showed 70 of 77 claims against nursing homes were determined to be unfounded.
Crow warned that the news blackout was all too similar to an attempt last year to keep secret Potato Commission deliberations on trademark enforcement cases along with investigative records, trademark usage audits, purchase and sales information obtained for cases and working papers generated by the commission during its administrative decision-making process.
“The fact is we have a First Amendment, we have freedom of speech, we have freedom of the media,” Crow said, arguing against the nursing home exemption.
Former Gov. Phil Batt ultimately vetoed the original Potato Commission bill last year.
Meth sentencing passes
A major piece of Gov. Dirk Kempthorne’s assault on methamphetamine has won unanimous approval from the state Senate.
Mandatory minimum sentences for manufacture or attempted manufacture were forwarded to the House on Thursday. Prospects for final passage were improved after the governor and House Judiciary Chairman Celia Gould reached an accommodation.
A longtime opponent of mandatory minimum prison terms, Gould agreed earlier in the week to support the proposal in return for Kempthorne’s assurances he will consider programs dealing with the underlying problem - demand for the substance.
Prevention and treatment would be at the top of the list.
Gould’s Senate counterpart, Judiciary Chairman Denton Darrington of Declo, told his colleagues the mushrooming incidence of methamphetamine manufacture and use demanded that those providing the drug be targeted.
“If they’re sitting in prison, they are not cooking meth,” Darrington said.
He pointed out that only three methamphetamine arrests were made in 1993 while 108 were made last year.
The bill giving prosecutors more flexibility in fighting the drug creates new crimes for manufacturing or trying to manufacture and then slaps those convicted with mandatory sentences of five or two years, respectively.