In the Great Room of the 1912 Center, district five legislators gave summaries of their sessions and answered questions about the bills they worked on.
Susan Ripley, co-president of the League of Women Voters, said the league puts this event on after every session to give district five voters a chance to talk to their representatives.
The topics of questions included a hemp bill, Medicaid expansion and transportation.
“First of all the biggest highlight for me was the Medicaid expansion was funded and passed this session and is the law of the land now,” said State Sen. David Nelson, a Democrat.
Nelson said restrictions put on Medicaid were written in a way so when the restrictions are either ruled to be illegal or the waivers will be granted Medicaid will float on.
Nelson said a low point during the session was the revenge on voter’s ac,t which would have raised the number of signatures required from 6% of registered voters to 10% of registered voters, if not vetoed by Little.
“This bill severely restricted our ability to run a citizen’s initiative,” Nelson said.
On the hemp bill, State Rep. Caroline Nilsson Troy, a Republican, said it was “disappointing” it was not passed.
“I think hemp became the victim of some bad politics. And that was disappointing, but we at least started the conversation. Although now Idaho is one of only two states in the United States of America that does not allow for hemp production,” she said.
Nilsson Troy said she worked with law enforcement to come up with changes to the current hemp legislation to match it federal laws.
Education was a big topic for both Nelson and State Rep. Bill Goesling, a Republican.
Nelson said the legislature was able to increase funding to help increase literacy across the kindergarten to third grade level.
Another highlight in education was increasing base teacher pay to $40,000 a year, Nelson said.
Goesling said the first bill he initiated that was able to successfully pass was to improve school safety.
“Which is a direct relationship to what happened here in Moscow, when an individual made a threat to a school district,” Goesling said.
Goesling said officers now can arrest anyone who makes a creditable threat against a school, before action happens.
Another project Goesling said he worked on was helping to come up with definitions to some of the terms used in the laws.
“But what they failed to do was come up with some basic definitions and basic data which we need to make this decision. So we basically stopped the process and rewrote a bill,” Goesling said.
Caroline Nilsson Troy said she also worked on a project to the 611 number federally reserved as a suicide prevention hotline.
“I’ve served the last four years on the Idaho Suicide Prevention Council and one of the things we tried to do was make it simple for people to ask for help,” Nilsson Troy said.
Nilsson Troy said there is currently an effort to get the Federal Communications Commission to release the 611 number for suicide prevention, which would work much like the 911 hotline.
She also worked on a bill to ban female genital mutilation, and a bill on crime victim funding.
The bill on crime victim funding, Nilsson Troy said, would allow the courts to award up to $5,000 to people who may be victims of domestic violence.
Kali Nelson can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @kalinelson6