Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna and Gov. Butch Otter at Tuesday's announcement. Meridian School Superintendent Linda Clark and Hewlett-Packard Vice President Von Hansen are also pictured.
There are the limits the laws impose on teachers’ unions, and the potential effects on teachers’ job security.
Now there’s something more to consider: local tech jobs. This week Hewlett-Packard won a $180 million contract to provide computers, maintenance and technical support to every high school student and teacher in Idaho.
To hear StateImpact‘s story about what this agreement means for HP, click on the audio player below.
Southwest Airlines will drop its direct Boise-to-Portland flights this spring. The Idaho Press-Tribunereports the airline says fuel costs were the deciding factor.
Here’s more from the Idaho Press-Tribune:
“The current fuel environment doesn’t allow us to continue operating that market with nonstop service,” Southwest spokesman Brad Hawkins said over email. Continue Reading →
State Sen. Nicole LeFavour talks with volunteers at Polo's Restaurant in Burley, Idaho.
Burley, Idaho is farm country. About 10,000 people live in the eastern Idaho town, that for many is just a stop off I-84 to gas up.
This is Republican Congressman Mike Simpson’s home turf. He was born in here. But now, Boise Democrat Nicole LeFavour is making one of the most serious runs at his seat in recent history.
On a late October evening, state Senator LeFavour gathered a group of volunteers to canvass the neighborhoods near downtown Burley.
Idaho’s 2nd Congressional District covers about 40,000 square miles of southern and eastern Idaho. It includes all of Boise, and everything along I-84 to the Montana border. For almost 15 years, Republican Mike Simpson has represented the district.
LeFavour’s field campaign manager Tom Hamilton shows a handful of volunteers how to work an iPhone app that identifies which doors to knock on. Continue Reading →
The governor's panel on Medicaid expansion met for the first time back in August.
The Department of Health and Welfare says it’s rescheduling it’s next Medicaid work group meeting on November 9.
Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter created the panel to study whether Idaho should allow more low income Idahoans on the health care program. Currently, nearly 240,000 Idahoans are on Medicaid. An expansion would add up to 110,000 more people.
The department says it’s waiting on more data to be collected and that’s why its Oct. 23 meeting has been pushed back to Nov. 9.
That meeting will be at the State Capitol from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., and will be streamed live online.
The panel created to look at the feasibility of Idaho creating a health insurance exchange has met four times since August, spending more than $15,000 on supplies and consultants.
Information obtained through Idaho’s public records law, shows Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter’s health insurance exchange work group has spent the majority of that money on an independent contractor.
Valerie Fend-Boehm has invoiced the state for $12,686.25 as of October 15, 2012, and that doesn’t include her contract work for the first half of this month. Fend-Boehm contracted with Idaho’s Department of Insurance for $85 an hour. Continue Reading →
Upfront, it’s good: unemployment dropped by three tenths of a percent in September, falling to 7.1 percent. The rate “plunged,” as Department of Labor spokesman Bob Fick puts it, and reached its lowest level since May of 2009.
Also in the positive column: there were 1,200 more Idaho workers on the job in September than in August. That made for a faster August-to-September payroll growth rate than the state saw in any of its pre-recession boom years. With that gain, the number of working Idahoans hit 720,600 last month, the largest number of people with jobs the state has seen in the last four years. Continue Reading →
In a February appearance, President Barack Obama called on Congress to extend unemployment insurance through the end of this year.
About 150 Idahoans are exhausting their unemployment insurance benefits each week without finding work, according to the state Department of Labor. In addition, the department this week notified more than 6,000 Idahoans that their unemployment insurance benefits will expire at the end of the year.
Congress has so far chosen not to extend the emergency benefits, but an extension still could happen. “Right now it appears to be off the table, but I believe it will come back on the table,” says Chad Stone, chief economist at the Washington, D.C.-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “It’s been a fight every time it’s had to be renewed.” Continue Reading →
Idaho's Congressional candidates, top left Jimmy Farris, Raul Labrador, Nicole LeFavour, Mike Simpson
A record amount of money is flowing into this year’s election in states across the country. Idaho, it seems, is not one of them.
Idaho doesn’t have a high-stakes gubernatorial race on the ballot, or a critical senate seat up for grabs. But both of Idaho’s seats in the U.S. House of Representatives are on the ballot.
Wyoming's Jim Bridger Power Plant is a significant source of electricity for Idaho Power.
Idaho utilities and wind developers are squaring off over the wind industry’s future in the state, as StateImpactexplained last month. As part of that reporting, we’ve rolled out stories on Idaho’s electricity supply, including this one on in-state electricity sources.
Hydroelectricity accounts for nearly 80 percent of in-state electricity generation, it shows. While that’s true, it prompted the Idaho Conservation League’s Ben Otto to send the email equivalent of a friendly finger wag. I’d left out part of the story, he said.
Which part? Well, the significant detail that not all of the electricity consumed in Idaho comes from in-state sources. Continue Reading →
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