Day-care safety rules rejected
With some lawmakers saying mothers should stay home with their children, members of a House committee Monday killed legislation to require minimum safety standards and criminal history checks for Idaho day cares.
“It’s gut-wrenching for me,” Rep. Tom Loertscher, R-Iona, said before the 6-5 vote against the bill. “What can we do to keep Mom at home?”
Loertscher said he “cannot imagine” ever taking a child to a day-care center and said, “There is no substitute, there is absolutely no substitute for families taking care of children.”
Rep. Steven Thayn, R-Emmett, said, “Being separate from your mother … there’s reason to believe this could be harmful.”
A stunned Cathy Kowalski, a Coeur d’Alene early childhood consultant who has worked on the bill for three years, said, “I think it is a committee whose members are definitely out of touch with the needs of their constituents, and I think the working families in their districts need to let them know.”
Abortion restrictions: The Idaho Senate voted 23-12 on Monday in favor of Senate Bill 1082, a proposal from Sen. Russ Fulcher, of Meridian, to require parental consent for a minor to have an abortion.
Fulcher, a Republican, said he thought the bill would decrease the number of abortions in Idaho.
Teen driving: The same day that five Idaho children died in a teen-driven car, a state Senate committee gave its blessing to a bill to restrict teen drivers.
Among other things, the bill proposed by two Panhandle lawmakers would limit drivers younger than 17 to no more than one unrelated teenage passenger for their first six months of unsupervised driving. Teen drivers are far more likely to be involved in collisions than older drivers, research shows.
More nurses: Lawmakers approved a substantial investment in new nursing faculty at the state’s colleges and universities Tuesday in response to a statewide nursing shortage.
The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee set budgets Tuesday for the state’s two community colleges and its four-year colleges and universities. In both budgets, the committee added nursing faculty positions, creating slots for 200 additional nursing students.
Staff and wire reports