It’s legislative season again!
We would like to welcome everyone to the first session of the 65th Legislature. With a new governor and 24 new legislators, it’s important that the voices of everyday Idahoans like you share why it’s important to protect our quality of life for future generations. Below are the resources, including links to two weekly updates, to help you stay informed and involved with legislative policy over the next few months.
Conversations in the Capitol: On Mondays, we will send out email updates from our Conversations in the Capitol Series so you can stay up to date and find opportunities for involvement. You can sign up for Legislative Updates and Alerts here: https://secure.everyaction.com/HWL6P-QkkU-S6is0KKHuKw2
Facebook Live Updates: On Fridays at 1pm, we will post Legislative Updates to the Conservation Voters for Idaho Facebook page. You can find our Week One Legislative Update, as well as all future updates here: https://www.facebook.com/pg/ConservationVotersforIdaho/videos/?ref=page_internal
Bill Tracker: This session, we will be using BillTracker50 to track bills, resolutions, and administrative rules reviews. You can see each piece of legislation, where it stands in the legislative process, and where CVI stands on the issue here: https://cvidaho.org/bill-tracker/
Calendar: While the Legislative sessions start slowly, it will quickly ramp up. To learn more about the schedule, check out the Legislative Session Key Dates Blog Post: https://cvidaho.org/2019-legislative-session-key-dates/
Policy Priorities: For more information on our 2019 Policy Priorities, check our In the Statehouse page here: https://cvidaho.org/in-the-statehouse/
Watch: If you are interested in watching conservation bill debates either in committee or on the floor, you can stream the live feed here through Idaho Public Television: http://idahoptv.org/insession/leg.cfm
Committees: The majority of Conservation related policy will be introduced in three committees: The House Resources and Conservation Committee, the House Environment, Energy and Technology Committee, and the Senate Resources and Environment Committee. All three committees have multiple new members, so check in to see if your Senator or Representative is on one of the committees.
Senate committee information is available here: https://legislature.idaho.gov/committees/senatecommittees/House committee information is available here: https://legislature.idaho.gov/committees/housecommittees/
House and Senate Floor: If you are interested in attending a Legislative Floor Session in either the House or Senate, you can find the schedule here: https://legislature.idaho.gov/sessioninfo/agenda/
Legislative Directory: The Legislature puts out a Legislative Directory handbook with information about floor and committee calendars, district maps, committee membership, individual legislators, and more. An online copy of the Directory is available here: https://legislature.idaho.gov/wp-content/uploads/sessioninfo/2019/directory/Legislative_Directory.pdf
The Legislative session will continue to pick up steam over the next few weeks, and it will take all of us working together to protect the clean water we drink, clean air we breathe and have the chance to grow up wild and free, roaming our public lands. Please sign up for our Conversations in the Capitol and Facebook Live Updates to find out how to stay involved.