Samantha Wright

Idaho’s State Controller has stepped down. Donna Jones sent a letter to Idaho Governor Butch Otter over the weekend announcing her retirement. She's been recovering from injuries she received in a car accident in May.  

Otter appointed her replacement today.  Brandon Woolf has been Acting State Controller for several months.   

Wildfires around Idaho kept air tanker bases around the state busy. Airplanes dropped more than a million gallons of fire retardant on fires this year.

The Boise Air Tanker Base is one of seven such bases in Idaho.  Les Dixon manages the Boise base. The job there is to load airplanes up with fire retardant and send them out to the front line of the wildfires.  “Our base alone, we’ve done 1,500,000 gallons for a total, we’ve done 752 loads have been flown out of the Boise base.”

Idaho Congressman Raul Labrador and his Republican colleagues took on the State Department and the White House Wednesday.   The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee held a hearing into the attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya last month that killed four American officials, including a U-S Ambassador.  

An Eastern Idaho man has come down with fungal meningitis that has sickened 138 people across the country. 

Not much is known about the man.  He’s over sixty and he's being treated for his illness.  State Epidemiologist Doctor Christine Hahn says the man is the first in Idaho to get sick from the drug outbreak.  People in 11 states have become ill and 12 have died.  The injectable steroid comes from a company in Massachusetts which has recalled the drug. 

Mountain Home, southeast of Boise is a microcosm of a military town.  Many of the 14,500 people who live there are connected to Mountain Home Air Force Base.  Four-thousand military serve there and some of them come to Grinde's Diner in Mountain Home to eat and talk politics.

The windows at Grinde’s are covered in patriotic paintings like the statue of liberty, a bald eagle and the liberty bell. 

Snow will soon fall in Idaho's mountains, getting skiers excited for the winter. Already ski resorts in Sun Valley are making snow. But it will be at least until Thanksgiving before one of Idaho's popular resorts in McCall opens. Brundage Mountain has roots that go back to the 1920s. 

Two Idaho medical facilities received the steroid injections believed to be responsible for a deadly meningitis outbreak.  Nationally, 47 people have been diagnosed with the illness and five people have died.  No one in Idaho has reported getting sick. 

UPDATE 10:45a.m.:

The mountain lion’s future is uncertain.  Evin Oneale is with Idaho Fish and Game.  He says it will all depend on the situation.  He says cougars come into the city all the time, but usually they pass through and are never seen by people. 

He says this lion may be young and looking for territory.  It may also have followed deer which have been pushed into the area thanks to a dry summer and fall.

Between 97,000 and 111,000 additional Idahoans would be eligible for Medicaid if the state chooses to expand eligibility.  But where would those people come from?  Close to half would migrate from four other state programs already in place to help low-income residents with medical needs.

Last Friday was a big day for county clerks in Idaho.  They mailed out the first round of absentee ballots for the November general election. 

In Ada County, 9,274 absentee ballots were mailed to voters last week.  Chief Deputy Clerk Phil McGrane calls it the kickoff to the November election.  “We’ve received close to 500 absentee requests each day in the recent days, absentee ballots are pushing themselves pretty hard for this election.”

The Karney Fire has burned more than 400 acres 10 miles northeast of Boise.  Many in the Wilderness Ranch subdivision have been advised to evacuate their homes as the fire gets closer.  Residents there live close to nature, close enough that wildfires are a threat they try to guard against. 

Wilderness Ranch bills itself as the best of both worlds. Mother Nature in the back yard. The city, in this case Boise, a short drive away.  But living in nature means living with the risk of wildfires. 

Firefighters say they made good progress on the Karney fire last night.  The 300 acre fire is burning in the Robie Creek area between Boise and Idaho City. 

Idaho Senator Mike Crapo says U-S security is being threatened by the ongoing attacks on American embassies in the Middle East and around the world. 

The Republican condemned the violence during a conference call with reporters this morning. “The attacks heighten and give emphasis to the fact that the United States must continue to maintain its defense posture and its intelligence system in a way that will help us to defend our national security interests abroad.” 

Even though it’s several weeks away, voting officials are gearing up for the November 6 election.  Today  marks the last day for county clerks to print absentee ballots.  Soon, they’ll be in the mail for anyone who wants to vote early. 

Boo Boo the bear has been moved to a rehabilitation area outside McCall. The Snowdon Wildlife Sanctuary takes care of injured and orphaned wildlife.

Boo Boo made headlines last month when he was found by firefighters working on the Mustang Fire north of Salmon. He was alone, hiding up a tree, with second degree burns on all four paws.

In the 1960’s, America began to take the mentally ill out of institutions. This led to consequences, especially for those who weren't ready or able to be de-institutionalized. 

While family members gathered at Ground Zero in New York this morning to remember the September 11 terror attacks in 2001, another group gathered in Boise at the new Idaho Fallen Soldier Memorial.

Who will be eligible for Medicaid if Idaho expands its program under the Affordable Care Act?  That’s the question lawmakers asked Monday of state Health & Welfare Director Dick Armstrong.  He’s part of a 15 member panel studying the option. 

Armstrong says the panel has gathered a lot of information so far.  But he says the federal government has not set some of the guidelines that will determine who would get to sign up for the expanded plan.  That means officials are left to guess how many residents would eligible.  

The black bear cub - known as Boo Boo - is expected to make a full recovery. The bear was burned in the Mustang Fire north of Salmon. 

Boo Boo could be ready to leave the Idaho Humane Society, where he’s been recovering from his burns, in as little as two weeks.  The three-to-four month old cub has 2nd degree burns on all four of his paws.