Posts published in “Idaho column”

Years after the fact, Phil Batt would recall that when he became Idaho’s governor In 1995, “the nuclear waste issue hit me right between the eyes.”

It sure did. He was taking over the office and the issue from Cecil Andrus, who had gone to court and taken other action blocking shipments of nuclear waste from entering the state, primarily around the Idaho National Laboratory (as it’s now called) site. That status was unstable and untenable for long, the legal and political case eventually likely would have been decided against the state, and Batt spent several of his early months in office figuring out how to deal with it.

The situation was not simple, and Batt understood that. He said in his memoir that he was persuaded national military capabilities were implicated, and “I believe Congress would have soon dictated our acceptance of this small amount of spent fuel rather than to idle any ships or submarines. However, I admired Governor Andrus’ actions that got the attention of both the Navy and the Department of Energy, and that generated almost universal support among Idahoans.”

What Batt negotiated over a period of months - recognizing that INL was already home to significant amounts of waste - was a complex deal intended to minimize the volume of nuclear waste in Idaho. He maintained that the agreement was the best he could get at the time, and that may be true. It was not a clean-cut or easily described decision even then, and Batt pragmatically would say of it, “I got every ounce of flesh I could get.”

That’s the backdrop to the news last week that the state agreed to a waiver of key elements of that 1995 deal. It allows for shipping a nuclear fuel cask from Virginia to the INL, and for research at the site on nuclear waste.

On the surface, the new agreement sounds reasonable, and it may turn out to be.

There’s plenty of nuclear waste in the country and we still don’t fully understand (as well as we should) what we can or should do with it. INL is a logical place to research the question, or rather continue researching it.

No one wants to store nuclear waste, and no state including Idaho wants to be known as a dumping ground, but there’s an increasing amount of it that has to go somewhere. A new study on the subject from Ohio noted, “Around the U.S., about 90,000 tons of nuclear waste is stored at over 100 sites in 39 states, in a range of different structures and containers. For decades, the nation has been trying to send it all to one secure location.”

Andrus got sideways with the federal government over nuclear waste in large part because he sensed a tendency by federal agencies to roll over the state, and concluded a sharp response was called for. After Batt negotiated his deal, he concluded that the state’s best posture was to keep an eagle eye on the proceedings. And in fact, over the 30 years since, the feds have from time to time pressed against the envelope, sometimes, possibly, breaching the agreement.

But a steady watch from all parties has averted what Andrus and Batt were most trying to avoid, the turning of eastern Idaho into a nuclear waste junkyard. It hasn’t been perfect, but it’s more or less worked.

So might this new agreement, probably the most significant development in the field for quite a few years. Only a limited amount of waste is supposed to be imported, and its purpose is supposed to involve research.

What Andrus and Batt also knew was that such agreements have to be closely monitored so they don’t become the proverbial camel’s nose under the tent.

Idaho state officials may have been right to sign off on the latest deal, but they should not take their eyes off the bottom of the tent, lest more of the camel try to ease inside.

For all the change Idaho has seen in its larger metro areas there’s been little or none in most of the state, and you can find no more dramatic example of that than the great empty of the 35 or so desert miles between Boise and Mountain Home.

For the half-century I have driven I-84 between those communities, there’s been some change in the city of Mountain Home (sometimes up, sometimes down) and strong - sometimes explosive - growth on the other end at Boise. In between, except for some barely-settled windswept ranch country and the Boise Stage Stop center partway through, there’s been and still is only open landscape. At times through the years someone would come up with a big development idea, but nothing ever came of it.

That may be about to change.

The catalyst would be a planned new casino being developed by the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes (which are based at the Duck Valley Reservation on the Nevada-Idaho border) together with the Coeur d’Alene Tribe in northern Idaho, which has decades of experience successfully running their casino near Worley. The Sho-Pai bought 557 acres along the Ada-Canyon border, located not far from the Stage Stop, and about 40 acres of it would be used for the casino.

The tribe said, “The fully envisioned project may include: Luxury hotel, Gaming floor with the latest tribal gaming machines, Spa and fitness center, Fine dining restaurants, Food hall with multiple vendors, Event and entertainment center.” The project also would give them a link to off-reservation lands associated historically with the tribes.

Since less than a tenth of the land area presumably would be occupied by the casino, there would be space for other developments too. If this project - which still needs federal approval, a sign-off from the Idaho governor’s office and local government okays - does go forward, the large desert area east of Boise could be transformed.

There are obstacles: One of the big problems blocking major development in the area up to now has been water, which locally is in short supply;This is dry country. Services generally have been limited too.

And there could be another challenge. The Shoshone-Bannock Tribes of eastern Idaho (between Pocatello and Blackfoot) have proposed another casino project, a $300 million center located in Mountain Home. They have been working on economic development in the area ever since buying the land in 2020, and appear ready to make a major investment in it. Federal review of that project is already underway. (And the Sho-Bans too point to historical links to the land where they plan to build.)

While that one probably would lead to some economic expansion at Mountain Home, it probably wouldn’t change the territory between that city and Boise. Probably.

Some opposition to any of this also could materialize. Certainly not everyone in Idaho likes gaming or its expansion. And the Nevada operators at Jackpot and Elko are sure to militate against the developments; they currently get a lot of traffic from fast-growing southwest Idaho.

But it could happen. The Duck Valley Reservation has had a challenging history, and the Sho-Pais have a compelling and sympathetic story to tell. The Coeur d’Alenes, with their background in developing highly successful operations up north (and a history of developing smart leadership) could be an excellent partner for steering the project through difficult paths.

If it does happen, there’s a real chance the landscape and the use of it between Boise and Mountain Home could change significantly. Casino developments most often do not spin off large numbers of nearby start-ups, but the long-standing interest in developing housing and business operations out in the desert - and away from Boise’s high prices and regulation - could be irresistible for people who have given up on, or been interested in, earlier ideas for the area. A whole new community - even a city? - might be the result.

The announcement of this new casino project didn’t get the top-rank headlines around the region it should have. But in time to come, there’s a good chance it will.

Boise City Hall is located on Capitol Boulevard, which is the sort-of grand entrance road leading to the front steps of the Idaho Statehouse, and only about two blocks away from the capitol. You can see the Statehouse from the city hall. You can almost see two units of government glaring at each other.

The Statehouse is dominated by Republicans, in its executive and legislative offices, and the city hall (notwithstanding that elected city offices are non-partisan) by Democrats, in the mayor’s office and strongly on the council. A clue to the latter reality shows up in one of the flags - there are several - typically aloft in front of the building, visible from the right angle from the Statehouse.

It is a Pride flag - one of those with rainbow colors, adopted most specifically by gender and sexual minority groups but also by others as well.

That’s the flag which implicitly though not specifically was targeted by House Bill 96, recently passed by the legislature and signed into law. The new law says that, “A governmental entity shall not display a flag on its property other than the following,” listing several exceptions which do not include the Pride flag.

Boise city hall’s Pride flag has not come down. Attorney General Raul Labrador and the Ada County sheriff’s office both contacted the office of Mayor Lauren McLean about it. At this writing, there’s been no change.

And there’s no real reason why there has to be. The new state law doesn’t say what happens if a city, or any other government entity decides to fly it anyway. There’s no fine, no penalty, certainly no prison time. Failure to comply is not declared to be either a misdemeanor or felony. (It did declare that an emergency was found to exist, though you really have to stretch the meaning of “emergency” to include the flying of a long-standing flag.)

This is really the legislature saying: This is what we want.

On that level, with no statement indicating a compelling state interest in the policy, and no consequences for flouting it … well, if you’re a city government (or for that matter a city) that doesn’t much like what the legislature does anyway, why comply?

The Substack Political Potatoes opined “Neither McLean nor Labrador is being subtle here. This is political virtue signaling, pure and simple. McLean is playing to her left-leaning base with the added bonus of triggering the far-right, and Labrador’s letter is designed to give his base something to post on X and Truth Social. It’s all the same playbook — pick a political hot potato, rally the base, and make it go viral.”

The symbolism for both sides plays out just fine.

Presumably, then, both sides benefit from an ongoing rhetorical shadow war, for which there’s really no incentive for either side to specifically prevail. While you’d never necessarily want to predict a hot-button topic will never go to court, my guess is that this one doesn’t.

The only problem here is for the people of Idaho, whose law books are being cluttered with statutes that have no practical purpose, no real benefit to the public, and intended only to fire ideological missiles over at the other side.

A point to ponder: Will those on the right start to wave a flag of their own? Representative Heather Scott, who was the originator of HB 96, is well known for a picture posing alongside a Confederate battle flag. Maybe that would suit their purposes in places where people like the backers of the flag law could mark their territory. (If you wanted to get creative, one category of allowed flags - “Official flags of countries other than the United States to commemorate special occasions” - might be made to squeeze in.)

No doubt it would make clear where certain Idahoans are coming from. Warnings, after all, may be needed.

Put these in the category of gifts that keep on giving - at least for commentators: Idaho legislation from the just-completed session that (mostly) generated some news coverage, but are not done with us yet.

Or with the legislature, which likely will be revisiting these subjects again.

(This list incidentally, is drawn from a rundown of “key actions” of the last legislative session prepared by legislative staff, available online. It’s worth your perusal.)

This isn’t strictly a rundown of bad ideas. I think at least one was well worth passing, potential uproar notwithstanding.

That is Senate Bill 1032, which requires school districts and charter schools to set a policy on student use of smartphones (the bill language is a little broader) during school hours. It does not dictate specifics but does “emphasize that student use of electronic communications devices be as limited as possible in school buildings and on school grounds or premises during school hours; and reduce distractions ...” Its combination of direction with flexibility makes it better than some comparable bills in other states.

Opinions on school day smartphone use are all over the map, and the debate will rage. Fine: It’s the sort of policy discussion people and their representatives should hash out.

But other bills carry different lessons.

House Bill 7, setting a minimum $300 fine for first time convictions of marijuana possession of three ounces, or less, has an open bottom end: No limit on how much is enough to run afoul of Idaho criminal law. A seed might be enough. Or less: A fiber of the offending plant presumably would qualify to place an unwitting person in violation of the law. You think it couldn’t happen? Famous last words.

Precision and definition matter. House Bill 270 is billed as covering indecent exposure, expanding on earlier law to cover exposure of certain breasts. And which are those? The bill does sort of define them (and I wouldn’t dare try to paraphrase any of this): “developed female breasts, including the areola and nipple; to expose adult male breasts, including the areola and nipple, that have been medically or hormonally altered to appear like developing or developed female breasts; to expose artificial breasts, including the areola and nipple, intended to resemble female breasts.”

Sympathies to the law officers trying to enforce that one. Either the law will be essentially ignored, or it will generate more culture war headlines for Idaho, bouncing the subject back to the legislature.

Extensive definition may bring to court Senate Bill 1198a, which ostensibly aims to “to ensure freedom of inquiry in higher education.” Except that it contains a long list of subjects and ideas intended to be banned from instruction (good-bye freedom of inquiry) in Idaho colleges and universities as too DEI: “any trainings, programs, activities, or instruction that is derived from or that promotes the tenets or concepts of critical theory, including but not limited to the concepts of unconscious or implicit bias, microaggressions, internalized racism, cultural appropriation, structural equity, settler colonialism, group marginalization, systemic oppression, social justice, institutional or systemic racism, white fragility, racial privilege, disparate impact, intersectionality, sexual privilege, patriarchy, gender theory, queer theory, neopronouns, transgender ideology, misgendering, othering, deadnaming, heteronormativity, allyship, or any other related formulation of these tenets or concepts.” None of these are defined, so good luck trying to follow the law.

Senate Bill 1210a, the “Idaho Medical Freedom Act,” likewise consists of a bunch of state-imposed prohibitions - this time on Idaho businesses. Building on a law aimed at battling efforts to combat the Covid-19 pandemic (what can you say?), this one says a business “shall not refuse to provide any service, product, admission to a venue, or transportation to a person because that person has or has not received or used a medical intervention.” A medical intervention “means a medical procedure, treatment, device, drug, injection, medication, or medical action taken to diagnose, prevent, or cure a disease or alter the health or biological function of a person.”

That’ll just thrill not only medical providers and places like restaurants that have to monitor their sites for health concerns, but anyone concerned with spreading contagious illness. Ebola, anyone?

Senate Bill 1012, creating a new wildlife depredations appeals board, exempts it from open meeting requirements. Shutting the public out is over time bound to create significant issues.

Check out the list of passed legislation for yourself, and have fun adding to this list ...

You can’t manage if you can’t measure it, goes to the old management theory. But it doesn’t work smoothly in some places.

Like the Idaho Legislature.

If you’re inside the legislative bubble, one of the most common and persistent questions - and this is true going back generations, and probably in legislatures all over - is: When do we get out of here? For several decades, the Idaho Legislature has set, long before the session ever begins, a target date for adjournment (sine die, in the jargon). That’s the point by which, leaders figure, lawmakers should be able to wrap up business. This year the target was March 21.

You may have noticed that they didn’t hit that mark, and at this writing they’re still going strong. Odds are they have another week or more left to go. Last year the target was March 22; they didn’t hit that one either. In fact, they usually don’t.

There’s usually some self-flagellation and talk by critics about wasting money on a too-long session. I don’t see it that way. True, the legislature sometimes  has wasted some money - not large amounts, in the statewide scheme of things - in the course of hanging around longer than they really needed to. But I see the “targets” as a term of art, a calendar notation to indicate simply that things should be winding down around then.

Legislatures should keep after their work as long as they need to get it done properly. Efficiency is a virtue, but not at the expense of rushing to hasty and poorly thought-out decisions. (Which they nonetheless … well, that’s a subject for another time.) So I won’t knock them for taking a few more days than they might have planned.

There’s another oft-noted area of measure you can apply to legislatures: Volume of legislation. For whatever reason, many state legislatures (Oregon is another example) this year have been producing larger than usual numbers of measures: Bills, resolutions, memorials and so on.

In Idaho, the legislature as of March 28 (date of the most recent report on totals as this is written) showed that 1,003 new pieces of legislation have been formally prepared through the state system. That’s a little staggering. From most decades past, the number seemed to habitually run in the 600s and 700s. Four years ago, that number was 803, so in the last four years the number of new pieces of legislation pushed through into introductable format (run through legislative staff who put it in proper legal format) has increased by a quarter.

That number doesn’t include other pieces of legislature - “changes, amendments. and engrossments” - which also are prepared, and when they’re added, the number for this year for all new legislation rises to 1,323. That compares to 976 from four years ago, also a really large increase.

Little wonder there seems to be more discussion about putting ceilings on the number of measures that can be drafted and introduced in a session. (Many other states do have such practical limitations; some restrict individual legislators to introducing no more than a specific number of measures.)

If that happens, it wouldn’t necessarily affect the volume of new laws the public sees and actually has to live with. As of March 28, the legislature had actually passed (approved in both chambers and sent to the governor) just 250 bills, which is fewer than in any of the three previous sessions. Actual productivity, then, as opposed to generating a lot of paper on the front end, might be down a bit this year.

Does any of that matter?

I would say, not much. What’s important about the legislature’s work, or at least what ought to be considered most important, is not the quantity of the work but rather the quality. How well considered is the legislation?

More on that soon.

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Higher education got a couple of messages in the last few days about where it stands in Idaho, and hints of where it might go. Taken together, the meaning is unmistakable.

One data point came in an obvious place: the legislature, and more specifically the budget-writing Joint Finance Appropriations Committee. On March 25 the committee was considering its final round (the procedure has gotten more complex the last couple of years) of budgeting for higher education, at a time when - it should be reminded - the state is flush with revenue and student populations and other activities at the institutions are expanding.

The committee has approved, more or less, a sliver of an increase for higher education generally. But on March 25, some of the members argued for dropping the ongoing funding for the University of Idaho and Boise State University by $2 million. (Back in the day, JFAC carefully avoided budgeting for individual institutions to avoid regional conflicts; but never mind.)

That $2 million is only a small piece of either university’s budget. Senator Codi Galloway of Boise, who opposed the move, accurately said, “The money here is not very important.” Galloway continued: “$2 million, when you take the balance out, the money is small. A message we send is big. If we ask our agencies to make changes, they make significant changes and we refuse to change course with them, then our power of the purse is no longer relevant.”

Well, accurate except maybe for the last few words, because ...

What was the problem the legislature was trying to telegraph here? One of the cut backers, Representative Josh Tanner of Eagle, said  “I’ve had a real tough time with universities. The more I dig in, the more frustrated I actually get. The more I actually look into – whether you look into the DEI aspects, critical race theory, the actual professors and some of the classes that are actually being taught – it saddens me to see the direction that our universities have taken.”

The one specific he mentioned here was DEI. But Galloway and others pointed out that the legislature has already acted against DEI, while the state board of education and the institutions have acted to cut it back even before being required to. (Obeying in advance, in other words.) Messaging on that subject was received and has been acted upon some time ago. As, quite reasonably, per Galloway: “We cannot ask people to make change, watch them make change and then continue to punish them.”

JFAC was deeply split on the cuts, which (because of the way one co-chair but apparently not the other interprets the now-complicated voting rules) was then sent to the Senate floor for action. Whatever the floor does, what you’re seeing here is something way short of a full-throated endorsement of higher education in Idaho - in fact, quite the opposite.

Now, the second recent news item, from March 20: The hiring of the new president of the University of Vermont - Marlene Tromp, who since 2019 has held the counterpart job at Boise State University.

She has an overall good track record at BSU, probably excellent if you consider the political environment she has faced, but people I’ve talked with were less surprised that she left than that she stayed so long. In many places (Vermont for example), and in the Idaho of years ago, the college and universities were seen as crown jewels in the state. Now they’re viewed - in many halls of power at least - as objects of disgust to be kicked at and hacked apart.

What does that suggest about the applicants to replace Tromp at BSU? For all Boise State’s recent growth and variety of successes, who would want the grief, or the risk that the institution might be wrecked under a DOGE-style administration?

Says a lot about the future, for a while at least, of higher education in Idaho.

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I don’t do a lot of predictions. But odds are good for a particular news story happening in Idaho soon, and with a reasonable set of probability about where it will happen.

Though it could happen anywhere - or to anyone.

This thought grows out of a pile of recent news stories around the country about activity by federal (and sometimes state or local level) immigration forces. A wrapup by Pro Publica said “Federal immigration authorities have a history of wrongfully detaining U.S. citizens. Advocates warn that the Trump administration’s immigration policies mean that more citizens will get caught up in raids and sweeps.”

It’s not that prior administrations never grabbed citizens and treated them, in the immigration system, as they shouldn’t have. It’s happened before. (If you’ve never seen the Cheech Marin movie comedy Born in East LA, it’s not a bad introduction - informative as well as entertaining.)

But things are moving into a whole new level under the Trump Administration.

The agencies even have been given arrest quotas; the pressure is coming on to ramp up those numbers. There seems to be less concern about making mistakes than about failing to hit the targets.

In making its assessment, Pro Publica of course had receipts. They cited a Philadelphia car wash employee who was handcuffed and facing the business side of a gun before he could demonstrate that he was, in fact, a citizen.

The news site went on: “In Utah, agents pulled over and detained a 20-year-old American after he honked at them. In New Mexico, a member of the Mescalero Apache nation more than two hours from the border was questioned by agents who demanded to see their passport. Earlier this month, a Trump voter in Virginia was pulled over and handcuffed by gun-wielding immigration agents. In Texas, a 10-year-old citizen recovering from brain cancer was detained at a Border Patrol checkpoint and eventually deported to Mexico with her undocumented parents and other citizen siblings in February.”

As a side indicator, there’s the case of an academic from France headed to a professional conference in Houston who was detained by customs, his phone seized and himself deported to France - because messages critical of Donald Trump were found on his phone.

Much of the recent activity has been happening toward the southern border states. But not all of it, and more will be coming north.

Won’t be long before Idaho sees some of this action - meaning I think it highly likely it will show up in news reports - if it hasn’t already. When large-scale “sweeps” happen, their agents tend to be not especially picky about who is seized.

Is this likely to happen more in some parts of Idaho than in others? Probably.

If I were to bet on the next Idaho occurrence, I’d go for Canyon County. About 26% of its population (more than 50,000 people) is Hispanic, according to census information, and Caldwell is thought to be the third most Hispanic city in the state, with Nampa coming in seventh. That could put a major bullseye on that area.

But consider too the northern Magic Valley. Here are the other cities topping that list of Hispanic populations: Rupert, Jerome, Burley and Hailey. Jerome County’s population is about 38% Hispanic - the closest in Idaho to a majority-Hispanic county.

It’s immediately followed (at 37.5%) by Clark County, which is Idaho’s smallest-population county, but might be attractive to immigration forces looking to simply swamp an area.

The point there is that if large numbers of people are swept up in these areas, they easily can include citizens as well as non-citizens.

If you’re thinking to yourself: I’m a citizen, I have every right to be here, or even ‘I’m not Hispanic’ - don’t get too comfortable. If you’re caught up in a sweep, none of that may matter until after your life already has been turned upside down.

You’re not safe now. None of us are.