Category — Daily Newsrack

Olmstead picks up the immigration football. Idaho Business Coalition for Immigration Reform gets racist flood after launch of education campaign. Spokesman Brent Olmstead: Employers want to hire a legal workforce. Prentice interviews Olmstead on Boise State Radio . Hopkins in Ag Weekly. Popkey. Coalition wants a new guest worker program (at least?).

Lawyers say talks to keep Tamarack running past March “challenging.” Just 27,000 skier visits this year; $304,000 deficit. Swiss bank attorney: “The operative part of the ski hill has proven to be more of a loss than the lender previously anticipated.” AP in IBR.

City of Boise facing ‘09, ‘10 shortfalls. $3.4 million in 2009 and looking like $9 million next year. Layoffs possible. Spokesman Adam Park: “In the months ahead, you probably will hear of cuts that we’re going to have to make. Dryden in the Idaho Statesman
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Obama tips hat to nonbelievers in inaugural Paleo did not even notice, but Lloyd Lowe did in theThe Arbiter. “Obama said: “… We know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus – and non-believers.” Sorry Sikhs, Pagans, and Buddhists. Better luck next time.”

Does cutting tax collectors cost the state more? Carlson asks the question in the IBR.

Community mental health crisis center victim of budget cuts. citydesk on http://www.boiseweekly.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=320091">pre-closure. 17 laid off, IDHW has a plan: “Franklin House closing is difficult for all of us, but I don’t want to paint a picture of it as a catastrophe.” Docs not so sure: “Essentially, they are going to shift a bunch of costs to the hospitals’ charity and bad-debt services.” LeMay in the Statesman
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Senate panel approves administrative cuts to state worker leave. Sagness tried to stop it: “Don’t strike it. Redefine it.” Hopkins at Magicvalley.com.

Sen. Mike Crapo, who told us last week he is skeptical of federal stimulus spending, tells the Associated Press he likes fed money for nuke cleanup. Crapo in Seattle P-I: “This is exactly the kind of thing a stimulus package should be composed of.” Crapo to Hoffman in yet unpublished interview: “My belief is that the notion that we can spend ourselves into prosperity is one that is not valid.” $6 billion is on the table for cleanup spending as part of stimulus package; Crapo and Sen. Jim Risch are signed on. H to the T.

Idaho shells out $450,000 to state the obvious: roads need more care. Senate transportation chairman John McGee: “It reiterates what the governor’s been saying for the last two years-our roads are falling apart … You pay a little bit now, or you pay a heck of a lot later.” ITD does not even know what it needs to maintain. But the study may bear fruit: JoAn Wood: “I thought it was very well done – it was exactly what we wanted. We were so concerned last year that we were not able to get the information we felt like we needed. We couldn’t justify to our public any increase where it was not clearly beneficial to the whole state.” Russell at Spokesman.com.

But Wood, who runs the House Transportation Committee, told the AP she wants to see changes in the department before it gets new funding. Read the full report here.

Spokesman review revisits run on guns in face of Democrat administration. Gus sales at pawn shops in Washington have doubled in a year. No data for Idaho. Alison Boggs at
Spokesman.com
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