Jury Duty Shouldn’T Sacrifice Paycheck

Our judicial process certainly is at our collective top-of-the-mind awareness of late for obvious reasons.

About a month ago our daughter received notification of jury duty to begin on Aug. 28. It wasn’t until about a week before her report date that the potential significance of the Aryans’ civil trial and the jury selection beginning on that date occurred to her.

While she was able and for the most part willing to serve on any jury for a trial large or small, the biggest conflict she faced was losing at least a week’s pay. While employers are bound by law to allow an employee time away from the job to serve on jury duty, they’re not obligated to provide them with a paycheck while they serve.

As it turns out, it was a moot question for our daughter because her panel was excused from service. I just find it ironic and skewed that in our state’s jury process, the citizens who pay the biggest price often are jurors who are employed, sacrificing a paycheck. We all have the constitutional right to be judged by a jury of our peers. Unfortunately for most of us, our peers become those who can afford to serve.

Last week I mentioned the Idaho Quest Card, which is available to the recipients of child support payments. A friend had received one recently and told of not easily finding retailers who would accept it. As good fortune would have it, Steve McKenna of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare e-mailed and said he was a reader of this column.

He writes, “For a little over two years, cash assistance and Food Stamp benefits have been available electronically. A few months ago, this same process was extended to Child Support payments. Electronic Payment Transfer has many advantages over the mailing of checks. This process allows a customer to have the child support benefits available within 48 hours of the time we receive it.”

Steve also explained that customers are encouraged to take advantage of the direct deposit option in which the child support is deposited into his/her personal account, with no costs or fees assessed to the customer. He also says that all large and most smaller retailers (typically grocers) in Idaho accept the Quest card similarly to a debit card.

Steve or Jennifer Kaufman at IDHW can answer your questions if you call 769-1515.

On a lighter note - pun intended - Labor Day signals the fashion calendar date to put away those white shoes. They can be worn again after Memorial Day with no fear of a Fashion Police citation. I imagine that when this decades-old dictum was decreed, women didn’t often wear athletic shoes. So I’ll take the responsibility for officially exempting running and workout shoes from the “no white shoes after Labor Day” rule.

We took in the North Idaho Fair and were again impressed with the facility, the cleanliness of the grounds and the friendliness of all of the staff. Because it’s an election year, I must give points for advertising novelties to the Republicans’ fair booth display. While the Democrats had a good supply of printed material and brochures, they lost points for not having any Gore-Lieberman bumper stickers. The Republicans had everything from Hilde Kellogg nail files, John Goedde patriotic color-on magnets and Bush-Cheney bumper stickers galore.

The big winner, though, has got to be Sheriff Rocky Watson. He may not have cornered the billboard market like opponent Ted Pulver, but he was handing out tried-and-true campaign buttons and novel plastic whistles. Don’t you just love an election year?