I have been a nurse for 39 years, 26 of those as an RN and the last 12 as a nurse practitioner. I graduated with my associate’s degree at the age of 20, my bachelor’s degree at the age of 22, and I worked as an RN for Syringa Hospital for 23 years and at St. Mary’s Health for the past 12 yea…

The Idaho North Central District of Public Health reported last Friday that the Delta variant of COVID-19 is in fact in Idaho County*. Numbers of COVID have surged throughout the country the past few weeks, with Idaho’s positive cases being no exception. Because of the current state of the p…

BOISE — As cities and counties begin to set budgets for the coming year, it is important to understand the recent changes implemented by the state legislature, as well as the impact of the huge allocation of federal rescue funds sent to local governments. Your local officials are setting bud…

BOISE — Idaho students are back to their classrooms — a welcome transition for students and families across our state.

The Local Journalism Sustainability Act was recently introduced in both the U.S. House and Senate. It is an innovative piece of legislation that could solve the problem of dwindling local journalism.

Whenever I visit a small business around Idaho, I ask them, “What is the greatest challenge you face?”

This year, I’m thrilled to help celebrate the 20th anniversary of IDeal, Idaho’s official 529 College Savings Program. It’s remarkable to see how far we’ve come and exciting to imagine how we can keep growing to help enable the professional and educational hopes and dreams of Idahoans.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — America’s biopharmaceutical innovation recently brought life-saving vaccines to combat the COVID-19 pandemic in under one year. This same medical ingenuity is leading the world in bringing life-saving therapies to patients and discovering cures for the future. However, acc…

WASHINGTON, D.C. — More than 355,000 Idahoans — approximately 19 percent of Idaho’s population — are enrolled in Medicare, according to April 2021 data from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. To maintain the promises made to protect current Idaho Medicare recipients, while str…

There is no better place to live, work, and raise a family than Idaho. As a proud Idaho native who believes, promotes and lives our conservative ideals, I have known this my whole life. Now others from all over the country are discovering what we’ve always known. We are seeing unprecedented …

We know the Smokey Bear saying by heart: Only you can prevent forest fires. But every year, nationally, around 80 percent of wildfires are caused by humans. That jumps to more than 90 percent of fires when you look at what the Idaho Department of Lands has responded to this year. It could be…

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Telehealth services have been especially useful during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the Idaho Department of Insurance, telemedicine visits went from 200 appointments per month to 28,000 visits in April 2020 alone. We can use lessons learned from the expansion of tel…

COVID-19 is the super virus world health officials warned us would someday come and just over a year later, it was everywhere, including Idaho. During the pandemic, over 192,000 Idahoans tested positive for COVID-19, another 2,097 have lost their lives, there is not a single person that COVI…

You will be receiving your property assessments in the mail the first part of June. You will notice that property values have increased. In my 26-plus years of working for the Idaho County Assessor’s Office, I have never seen values like this.

Welcome to the new BPC-VRFD.

Warm weather is coming soon, and we are busy planning for our summer operations at the swimming pool. We are excited to open with our full schedule beginning June 9 as a free swim day for all! Days begin early for our lifeguards, preparing for our 7 a.m. morning lap swim, continuing with swi…

When I was 21, I became a Jane Doe. As an Army recruit, I was subjected to harassment and sexual assault by men who were my superiors.

When my daughter was a high school senior, I was a stay-at-home mom. There were significant changes to the SAT that year that we didn’t fully understand, so I spent hours scouring the Internet for information that would help us determine the score she needed to get into the college she wante…

As a citizen of the Nez Perce, or Nimíipuu, which means the People, I look at gold mining as a symbol of broken promises.

Here we go again.

Recently I was told that someone complained that I should resign, as I didn’t live up to my title of “trustee.” They believed that the title meant to be trusted to unquestionably support the administration. With that, I looked the up the word. Trustee — “An individual person or member of a b…

The past 13 months have presented enormous challenges for students, parents, teachers, and school administrators. The sudden changes in work life, home life, and social life, along with new ways of learning and instructing, have firmly placed the COVID-19 pandemic as one of our most difficul…

It’s no secret that the last year has been a time of great challenge for crime victims and their families. The pandemic has resulted in more social isolation, economic uncertainty, and anxiety that experts say has triggered an increase in domestic violence, sexual assault and child and elder abuse.

Mr. Cornforth, before you throw your bricks at the Republican Party [regarding April 14 issue guest opinion], maybe you should look at how your party is destroying the foundation our founders laid. It does not matter what type of bricks you use; it is the foundation on which you build that i…

Dear Legislators,

As the 117th Congress is now in full swing, legislation is being reintroduced and work is under way on needed policy changes. Following is a brief overview of important legislation I am working with fellow senators to reintroduce this Congress.

For 31 years, my grandfather, Arthur Davis, worked around Boise on a road crew fixing roads. He knew the city well. An observation he shared with me, that I’ve thought a lot about since, was that there once were two area companies making bricks: one made good bricks, the other made cheap bri…

We need better roads and bridges in Idaho to support and sustain our economy and our Idaho way of life. Transportation is the lifeblood of our economy and is necessary in order to move goods and people to and through our state. Our legislation, House Bill 342, is a comprehensive solution to …

Idaho has an opportunity to improve our children’s ability to read and write, support working mothers and create an early childhood education system we in Idaho are sorely missing. This year, Idaho received a $6M grant from the Trump administration to improve our early childhood education sy…

My fellow Idahoans,

The left decried President Trump’s “America First” immigration policies and charged Republicans with being inhumane for seeking to uphold the laws of our country. Now, it seems these “humanitarians” have disappeared as we watch the Biden Administration’s approach play out in real-time.

Supporters of privatizing education are about to change the Idaho Constitution and 130 years of education policy without going to a vote of the people. Instead, those who want taxpayers to fund private schools should take their case to the people and let them decide as the Constitution requires.

For those who know me, there are few things in this world which I feel more passionate about than Idaho agriculture and water. Both have been cornerstones of my life since I first drew breath and the political career that has largely defined the second half of my life.

Rep. Mike Simpson is a conservative Republican from Idaho, whose concept of wildness in the 1990s was going into the rough at a golf course.

Prior to the recent passage of the American Rescue Plan, Congress came together five times to pass bipartisan bills totaling roughly $4 trillion to help Americans weather the pandemic. Recent economic projections from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) provide proof of their effectiveness…

Senator Crabtree’s recent statement about my energy and salmon concept is emotional. I get that. I am proposing to do things very differently—to make a proactive, rather than reactive change. That is very hard. But Senator Crabtree might not be so upset if he understood a little bit more abo…

My little town has a big heart for salmon and steelhead. These fish make the identity of Riggins and are the lifeblood of our economy in this canyon along the Salmon River. If these fish disappear, my town loses its fight to keep our sense of community.

It has taken me a moment to come up with words that are print-approved after learning that Congressman Mike Simpson is spewing rhetoric to remove dams in the Northwest. Congressman Simpson asked elected officials from around the northwest to stand with him, and as of today I am here to say t…

Last week, Idaho Senator Steve Vick proposed a bill that would make it nearly impossible for Idaho citizens to qualify an initiative for the ballot.

First, I would like to thank the people who actually took the time and have reached out to get information about why we did not adopt a 2nd Amendment Sanctuary Ordinance. Unfortunately, I have been made aware that there are some folks who have not reached out, asking for signatures on a peti…

Planning for the COVID pandemic by the Syringa Hospital and Clinic staff took a great many hours and much energy. All the work was done behind the scenes while still serving the community and attending to their medical needs.

It turns out that Idaho’s Medicaid Expansion program arrived just in time.

While many words have been used to describe 2020—unprecedented, historic, apocalyptic—I believe the best word to describe 2020 is “humbling.”

This past year has been nothing, if not unbelievable! The world was set on edge by a global pandemic. This impacted lives, worldwide, and continues to do so. It has impacted your life and mine.

We have all likely heard some variation of the famous saying that nothing is certain but death and taxes. Given the preeminent inevitability of taxes, we must make certain that the federal agency tasked with administering this responsibility operates with just and up-to-date guidelines. Sinc…

When Tom Mueller grew up in St. Maries, his logger father hoped his son would follow in his footsteps. A guidance counselor urged him to become an airplane mechanic. But his math teacher asked if he was going to become an engineer.

Each year, the fewer hours of sunlight, stormy weather, isolation, and holiday season brings stress to many in our region, nation and the world. Many people become overwhelmed, depressed, anxious and sometimes suicidal during stressful holiday seasons. The Regional Behavioral Health Board (B…

Since the beginning of the pandemic, many residents of nursing homes and assisted living centers have been isolated in their rooms. Despite the incredible efforts of staff to provide stimulating activities, life is not the same, and loneliness is real.