Of the House, the Senate, and ‘nap time’…

Rep. Joe Palmer, R-Meridian, sponsored a bill about the Idaho plumbing code in the House this afternoon, and told the House that last year, the bill, proposed by the state Division of Building Safety, passed the House 69-1, but “it got over to the Senate in the afternoon when it was nap time,” and ended up getting killed amid some confusion over a motion in a Senate committee. This time, the bill, HB 466, passed the House on a 61-0 vote; that means nine House members were absent for the after-lunch vote.

Earlier today, U.S. Sen. Mike Crapo, a former Idaho Senate president pro-tem, was asked what it was like to address the Idaho House as a former Idaho senator. Crapo responded diplomatically that when he served, there was little or no rift between the House and Senate, in part because in both, “There’s so much common sense.” Crapo served in the Idaho Senate from 1984 to 1992, when he was elected to Congress; he then served three terms in the U.S. House and is now a third-term U.S. senator.