Democrats positive about this year’s legislative session

Monday, Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter kicked off the session with his ninth State of the State address. Tuesday, Idaho’s Democrats responded in a positive light.

Eyewitness News anchor Todd Kunz spent the day in Boise with more reaction to this positive.

Kunz said the Democrats are an obvious smaller caucus, with 21 representing the state of Idaho. He talked to a lot of them and said they seemed very positive, very upbeat about what the governor had to say. They said they can get behind most of it, especially on his No. 1 issue, education.

“It’s sounds like something we’re all together on the same page. The governor did mention that. He’s put his single biggest budgetary item in his address being education. We’re pleased to see that. It’s a step. We’ll need to continue to make that investments and follow a plan we’ve plotted based on what the task force has told us. The other piece of it is some of the things he mentioned about the economy and what he plans on doing to create opportunity, whether it’s through vocational technical programs or whether its secondary education in general. That is something we have always advocated and it’s nice to see this about K-through-career and now also preschool-through-career. It’s also a portion of education we have advocated for quite a long time,” said Democrat Michelle Stennett, Senate Minority Leader from Ketchum.

Kunz said there were a couple other things they said they were excited to get behind: infrastructure, transportation, also wages in the state of Idaho. Their overall feeling of this session is it seemed strangely positive, like everyone is getting along. Something might get done.