State lawmakers come up with a lot of bills

Published by admin on Wed, 02/26/2020 - 4:02pm
By: 
Steve Lyon
For nine months out of the year,
state lawmakers are in their home
districts and we’re all safe, right?
It’s those three months from January
to March when the Legislature is in session
in Boise that, as the Irish
would say, shenanigans can
take place.
Granted, we are a society
of laws that are needed
to maintain the civil order.
Many laws are of the utmost
importance and necessity.
Some, though, are of dubious
merit.
I check up on the Legislature
frequently while it’s in
session to see what our lawmakers
are up to. It’s pretty
easy to scroll through the
House and Senate bills and
see what they are all about.
The list grows longer every time I
check as proposed bills continue to be
introduced in Legislature.
I came across a few bills that seemed
odd or humorous or both. This is but a
small sampling, and I will continue to
dig up bills of dubious merit in a followup
installment.
HB 414 would allow alcohol tastings
to take place at state-owned liquor
stores. Evidently, it’s a chance to sample
that aged-in-an-oak-barrel whiskey before
you buy a pint.
The proposed legislation
would set limits on servings.
But is that a good idea
to serve booze to customers
and then sell them more
booze? No doubt there will
be a guy who shows up for
the tasting and won’t leave.
This question has been
asked before: Why is the
state in the alcohol business
in the first place? The state
created the “liquor dispensary”
many decades ago as
a way to control the hours
and location of alcohol sales.
Don’t the free-market politicians in
the state want to see private enterprise
take over the state’s booze business?
SB 1282 falls under “it must have
seemed important at the time.” The bill
would do away with the board of cemeterians.
The licensing board was created
30 years ago by the Legislature but nobody
was ever appointed and the board
never met.
SB 1252 is a bill that really should not
be needed, but here it is in writing. The
bill would require that “the injection of a
cosmetic treatment into a person’s head
or neck should only be done by certain
trained medical professional.”
I cringe to think this bill came up due
to someone’s misfortune in receiving a
cosmetic treatment from someone who
didn’t know what they were doing.
As convenient as it may sound, getting
Botox shots when you get your oil
changed is probably not good medical
practice.
SB 1286 is a bill that other pundits
have commented on. It gets rid of a
100-year-old law that required anyone
who claims a trespassing hog to provide
notice “in three conspicuous places in
the precinct in which said hog was taken
up.”
Ridding the books of that law really
is getting rid of red tape and pork.
Steve Lyon is the editor of the Weiser
Signal American. Contact him at

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