Statehouse Stories Friday December 8
Idaho House Democrats Walk Out of Session
By Jill Kuraitis, 12-08-06
The Associated Press and KTVB, Boise's NBC affiliate, just reported that Idaho House Democrats walked out of a floor session at the Statehouse this afternoon in protest over Speaker Lawerence Denney's failure to make a key committee appointment.
With six additional members of the House Democratic Caucus, a third seat on the key Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee (JFAC, called "Jay-fak"), which develops the state budget, seemed sure. But Denney did not appoint another Democrat when handing out committee assignments.
Updates to this story will be posted as they become available.
Photo courtesy of Julie Fanselow.
Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.
Next entry: Idaho House Democrats Walk Out of Session
Tags for this article
politics (1863),
idaho (1448),
boise (1019),
northern idaho (644),
idaho northern/panhandle (640),
idaho politics (500),
Tag cloud for all articles
missoula,
politics,
environment,
idaho,
colorado,
montana,
development,
bozeman,
salt lake city,
travel & outdoors,
utah,
boise,
western montana,
land use & development,
new mexico,
outdoor recreation,
northern idaho,
idaho northern/panhandle,
bend,
boulder,
wyoming,
flathead valley,
columbia gorge,
idaho politics,
montana politics,
real estate,
snow blog,
music,
community blogs,
wildlife,
public lands,
wildland fire,
jackson hole,
colorado politics,
technology,
oregon,
featured photo,
utah politics,
abq / santa fe,
wild bill,
tourism,
washington,
climate change,
bob wire blog,
outdoors,
books,
transportation,
demographics,
diary of a mad voter,
front range,
new mexico politics,
wyoming politics,
new west blog,
planning in the west,
fire updates,
panhandle,
satire,
sandpoint,
the new west magazine,
bob wire,
Comments
Add your comment below
To me, I'm less concerned about the number of Democrats on the committee than the new Republicans it has. It already had Sweet. Now it has Bastian and McGeachin and a couple more very conservative members. McGeachin, in particular, led a couple of conservative efforts last year to overturn decisions made by the Health and Welfare committee chair, and that just isn't done.
Also, frankly, it's important for people on JFAC to be *smart* and involved, and a bunch of the people who've left JFAC were some of the very smart, "Goldwater conservative" ones (I'm thinking of Bedke, in particular, but also McGee and a couple more) and I'm not particularly sanguine about the smartness of some of the new members. A warm body who misses a lot of the meetings (the Statesman did an article last year on Sweet's bad JFAC attendance record), never asks questions, and sleeps through the meetings they attend is not helpful to anyone regardless of their political leanings.
For example, last year Margaret Henbest and Kathy Skippen did a lot of very good, bipartisan work together on health and welfare issues. I don't see the same thing happening with McGeachin.