Raises may depend on a state surplus

Boise State employees will have to wait another year for a pay raise – but only if the state pulls in $22 million more from taxpayers than expected, Republican lawmakers on the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee said Friday.

But even under the most optimistic financial outlook, Idaho faces a deficit of about $7 million in 2007. That’s assuming lawmakers approve an extension of the 2003 cigarette tax scheduled to sunset this year.

It also assumes tax revenue will come in faster than expected and that lawmakers can pass a bare-bones budget next year.

The state’s year-end surplus would have to be $124 million for employees to get the pay raises, but the Idaho is only counting on $101.7 million. Surplus money will avoid a deficit once the temporary penny sales tax increase expires this summer.

Skiing ends today at Silver Mountain

Today will be the last day to hit the slopes at Silver Mountain in Kellogg.

That may leave one area resort open. Lookout Pass Ski Area near Mullan, Idaho, may open next weekend, according to its Web site.

Lower-than-normal snowfall has shortened the ski seasons across the area. Schweitzer Mountain Resort and 49 Degrees North Mountain Resort near Chewelah closed early this month. Mt. Spokane Ski & Snowboard Park stopped operations in January.

Prosecutor helping felon try to stay in U.S.

Menan, Idaho Bulmaro Lopez’ wife gave birth to their third son last week – just days after the convicted felon was deported back to Mexico.

Lopez’s deportation came despite a plea from Jefferson County Deputy Prosecutor Steven Clark to let the convicted child rapist stay in the United States.

“Bulmaro never hesitated in admitting what happened,” wrote Clark, who prosecuted Lopez for the incident with the 12-year-old girl. “He has served his sentence and I have no doubt about his place in society. I have never written a letter such as this before, and I doubt I ever will again.”

Clark said it was the first – and probably only – time he had written such a letter.

But Carl Rusnok, a spokesman for the immigration department, said Lopez has no regard for American laws, and his criminal patterns will not change because he is not a miscreant juvenile, and must stay in Mexico.

While his family admits Lopez’s checkered past is his responsibility, they say he has changed.