It would cost each resident of Idaho 3 cents a year to set up a mortality review team to examine all unexpected child deaths. Three cents, that’s all. But the Idaho Legislature – made up primarily of conservative lawmakers who pride themselves on traditional family values – decided it won’t happen this year.

Idaho is now the only state in the union that doesn’t have a professional team of doctors, law enforcement workers and child advocates figuring out what happened when a child dies unexpectedly.

Nevaeh Miller died March 22 in Spokane. Washington has a mortality review team. Her mother’s boyfriend, Jereme J. Bassett, has been charged with second-degree murder. Nevaeh was just 7 months old, a dark-eyed beauty. Child advocates and researchers have long tried to understand the higher abuse risk when mothers leave their babies with boyfriends who did not father them.

How do you educate mothers about this reality? These are the challenges Washington review teams uncover. The presence of these mortality review teams says as much about the value of children as early education and child care. How did Idaho leaders not understand this?

The Idaho House passed the bill establishing the review teams by a 63-5 vote. Good for them. But then Senate Health and Welfare Chairwoman Patti Anne Lodge, R-Huston, asked the Senate to send the bill back to her committee. This action killed it. Lodge worried that a review team could somehow usurp the freedom of parents whose children die accidentally.

Another Republican legislator and the vice chairwoman of the committee, Sen. Joyce Broadsword, of Sagle, was surprised when the bill was returned to committee by Lodge. “But she’s my chairman and I follow her lead,” Broadsword said.

She also said the state didn’t need to “spend a large amount of money” to research children’s deaths through a formal review process. The annual estimated cost for the review team: $43,250. Which, to repeat, translates to just 3 cents a person.

Those who fought for the mortality review legislation said they were “frustrated” and “disappointed” that it died under Lodge’s watch. Stronger words seem more appropriate: outrage, disgust, shame.

How many children will die unexpectedly in the next 12 months in Idaho? How many Nevaehs will be baptized in a hurry as they die in hospitals, broken in body? Would it be worth 3 cents a person in Idaho to uncover the reasons why children die? Of course. But it won’t happen now. Not this year in Idaho.