JFAC backs funding for new rape-kit testing law

After the House voted unanimously last week to back legislation requiring processing of sexual assault evidence kits – after reports surfaced that many have been going untested – JFAC today voted 15-4 to provide the necessary funding, $222,700 next year for the Idaho State Police, which will add two DNA forensic scientists and one forensic evidence specialist. The “no” votes on the funding came from Sens. Bair, Mortimer and Guthrie and Rep. Jason Monks, but Monks, R-Meridian, asked later to change his vote.

The vote already had been closed and the joint committee had moved on to other business; he tried a unanimous consent request, but there was an objection. Senate rules don’t allow a member to ask for reconsideration of a vote unless that member voted on the prevailing side; Monks didn’t. Monks then moved to change his vote, but JFAC Co-Chair Shawn, Keough, R-Sandpoint, told him she was reluctantly ruling the motion out of order. “My concern is the rules,” she said. JFAC, as a joint committee, follows Senate rules when a specific JFAC rule doesn’t apply.

Monks said afterward that he voted in favor of the bill in the House and fully supports it. When he initially saw the “trailer” appropriation bill, he didn’t realize it was the funding portion of the bill he’d already agreed to support – he just saw a new ongoing appropriation. Monks said he checked his notes, but was “a few seconds late” when he realized his error.

“I can support it on the floor,” he said of the trailer appropriation bill. “It would be very inappropriate for me to support the bill and not the appropriation to go with it.”

The three senators didn’t say why they opposed the funding; the rape kit testing bill, HB 528 , passed 70-0 in the House and cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee; it’s now awaiting a vote in the full Senate.