Idaho: First Day at the Capitol

By Jill Kuraitis, 1-08-07

The first session of the 59th Idaho Legislature kicked off at 1:00 with Governor Otter's State of the State speech, after which reporters, videographers, lobbyists and citizens mobbed up in the rotunda outside the doors of the House, asking questions, shooting news footage and chasing after legislators for their reactions to the speech. My report on the speech will follow.

NewWest.net/Boise will be in the Statehouse fulltime for the session. I’ll be writing several pieces a week under the column head “State of the Statehouse” – a roundup of current issues, happenings, mood and progress in the legislature, government agencies, nonprofit groups, lobbyists and citizens with bills they’re hoping to pass.

Once a week I’ll pick an issue and write more in depth about it, under the heading “Capitol Commentary.” I’d love to hear from New West readers. What do you particularly want to read about this session? Write to me at with your ideas.

Sharon Fisher will write about the state budget and the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee – JFAC – the most important and powerful committee in the statehouse.

Former Idaho Congressman Larry La Rocco will continue his column “Politics: LaRocco on Idaho,” which covers Western issues from a D.C. perspective. Larry will also comment on Statehouse issues from time to time.

Then there’s www.BoiseEvents.net, New West’s searchable calendar. We’ll be posting significant events at the Statehouse under the Politics category.

Boise editor Jennifer Gelband will hold down the fort with her lively and popular coverage of things nonpolitical around River City.

This is my second year in the basement press pool in the Capitol, and it’s great work and great fun. Most of the state’s major newspapers have a reporter in this room, along with Idaho Public Television, KBOI radio, and a freelancer or two. It’s a remarkably hideous grey room full of the worst cast-off furniture from the bowels of the Statehouse - gold shag rug room dividers, chairs left over from someone’s fit of buying insanity in the 1950s, and a gloriously offensive flocked orange loveseat which is the room’s icon.

Each reporter has their own desk and surroundings; some stark and impersonal, others festooned with photos, clippings, and stacks of directories and books. I have a quilt which I made in New West colors covering up one of the vile room dividers. Across from me, a reporter has hung a beautiful Indian bedspread over hers.

Despite the squalor, it’s a typical press room and nobody really cares. Some of us are even fond of it.

The smell of microwaved soup and burnt coffee provide atmosphere, and the room is sometimes a cacophony of sounds – TV news people marching through with equipment slung over their shoulders, radio reports being recorded, lobbyists bending someone’s ear about their project, and, sometimes, outrageous storytelling by reporters. Discussions over points of grammar and punctuation are common. At other times, there’s a hush broken only by the sound of laptops being pounded, everyone trying to meet their paper’s deadline.

Now, up four flights of marble stairs to find a legislator for a question. Tomorrow, more sensible shoes!

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