Today's headlines:
- Kootenai County considers more nuanced restrictions on kratom than Eastern Washington neighbors.
- The public will get the chance to weigh in on dissolving the Kootenai Health District.
- Spokane Long Term Recovery Group looks to build 24 new houses in the next two years for families who lost homes in the Oregon Road and Gray fires.
- Providence increases training requirements for psych triage.
- Let's Go Washington launches initiative signature gather with less than two months until submission deadline after the state rebuffed a referendum attempt.
Plus, the race for North Idaho's District 1 senate seat continues. Following yesterday's interview with incumbent Jim Woodward, SPR's Owen Henderson gives challenger and previous state Senator Scott Herndon his turn to talk about his priorities for Bonner and Boundary counties.
Woodward and Herndon's fourth face-off is drawing attention not just because it's the most expensive senate race in the state, but also because it exemplifies the question of what it means to be Republican.
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SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting was contributed by Eliza Billingham, Doug Nadvornick and Owen Henderson.
Owen Henderson hosts and produces the show. Eliza Billingham provides digital support.
TRANSCRIPT
[THEME MUSIC]
OWEN HENDERSON: From Spokane Public Radio, it’s SPR News Today.
I’m Owen Henderson. It’s Wednesday, May 13, 2026.
On today’s show, more Inland Northwest leaders are considering kratom regulations. But the Kootenai County Commissioners aren’t moving to totally ban selling the substance.
Plus, Spokane County officials are doling out relief funds for the 2023 Oregon Road and Gray Fires.
And the race to represent Bonner and Boundary Counties in the Idaho Senate is one of the most expensive races in the state. Yesterday, we brought you a conversation with incumbent Jim Woodward. Today, we’ll hear from his challenger, former Senator Scott Herndon.
Those stories and more, coming up on SPR News Today.
[FADE OUT THEME]
Kootenai County is considering restricting the sale of some kratom products.
But it’s taking a more nuanced approach than its neighbors in Eastern Washington.
SPR’s Eliza Billingham reports.
ELIZA BILLINGHAM: Kellogg was the first city in Idaho to ban kratom, a federally unregulated substance catching local and national attention.
The naturally occurring leaf is prized by some for managing chronic pain or addiction withdrawal symptoms.
But if concentrated or synthetic, the compound 7-OH in kratom can have strong opioid-like effects.
Many cities in Eastern Washington, including Spokane, Spokane Valley, Cheney and Medical Lake, have also banned the sale or distribution of kratom, mainly to avoid sales to children.
Leslie Duncan and the other Kootenai County Commissioners are also considering restrictions, but so far, not an outright ban.
LESLIE DUNCAN: “At this point, I'm just looking at sales and being able to restrict the natural kratom to 21 and over and then take the OH off the market—the 7-OH.”
EB: The Kootenai County sheriff told commissioners that natural kratom is not an issue, and synthetic kratom products are specifically labeled.
The federal Food and Drug Administration has warned that the 7-O-H concentrations listed on kratom labels are not always accurate.
I’m Eliza Billingham, reporting.
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OH: It’s been two years since the Kootenai Health District transitioned its hospital into a nonprofit organization.
But Kootenai County Commissioners are hesitant to disband the public hospital district.
The district’s chief legal officer says it’s essentially nonfunctioning and hasn’t taxed anyone since 1994.
So he says there is a chance for “mischief,” mentioning a health district in East Shoshone in the 1950s that continued levying taxes for a few years after it stopped functioning.
But Commissioner Leslie Duncan says if there’s currently no tax, there’s no urgency to dissolve the district without public input—especially when the transition to nonprofit sparked some controversy.
LD: “I think there's a lot of people in our community who were not happy the way it went down and they didn't feel like there was enough public input.”
OH: Duncan suggested holding a public hearing before making a decision.
The board is now working to schedule that hearing in the coming weeks.
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Twenty-four new homes could be built in the next two years to help rehouse those who lost homes to the Oregon Road and Gray fires in 2023.
Spokane County is deciding how to spend the disaster grant it received from the U-S Department of Housing and Urban Development last year.
Housing and Community Development administrator George Dahl told commissioners yesterday the Spokane Long Term Recovery Group is the only group bidding for those dollars.
GEORGE DAHL: “They're requesting just short of $8.4 million for the next four years to construct homes. They anticipate that they'll be able to build 12 homes per year.”
OH: Dahl says the county has about $22 million from the HUD grant to put toward new housing.
He suggests granting the group about $4.5 million for the next two years to see if they can build as expected before allocating the other half of the requested money.
The group anticipates spending between $180,000 and $200,000 per home.
GD: “So that’s supplies, operations, salaries. What it does not include are the volunteer hours that they have from Mennonite Disaster Recovery Services, as well as Christian Disaster Recovery Services. So they've got great, great partners there that are saving them a tremendous amount of cost to construct these homes.”
OH: The board is expected to finalize its decision next week.
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Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center is increasing educational standards for its psychiatric care staff—meaning 40 staff members will have to find new jobs.
The hospital says it is seeing more elderly, medically fragile people in its psychiatric unit.
Providence officials say the new requirements will mean better care for those patients.
Tamara Sheehan is the provider’s senior director of behavioral health in Spokane.
She says to be eligible for the psychiatric triage team, providers will have to be licensed therapists.
SHEEHAN: “Now we're having people who are trained in the emergency room. They've had the education. They can diagnose. They can create treatment plans based on those diagnostics and provide accurate recommendations to partner with the ED physician in a more educated way than we have before.”
OH: Sheehan says Providence will try to move the 40 affected staff into other roles within the system or help them find positions with other organizations.
The changes will take effect in mid-July.
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Let’s Go Washington has less than two months to get the signatures it needs to challenge the state’s new income tax for high earners.
The conservative political action committee officially launched its initiative efforts yesterday.
To qualify for the November ballot, organizers will need to submit more than 300,000 valid signatures, and they have 51 days to do it.
This comes after the state supreme court affirmed that the so-called “millionaires’ tax” cannot be challenged via voter referendum.
That would’ve required half as many signatures as an initiative to get on the ballot.
Multiple polls show a majority of Washington voters support the tax.
[SHORT MUSIC BED]
With the Gem State’s primaries next week, we’re bringing you perspectives from one north Idaho contest drawing attention statewide: The race between Jim Woodward and Scott Herndon to represent Bonner and Boundary Counties in the state senate.
The repeat contest is one of several around the state where hardline conservatives, like Herndon, are clashing with Republicans who call themselves more mainstream, like Woodward.
The race is also attracting a lot of money.
Woodward and Herndon hold the top two spots for contributions of any state senate candidates, according to Idaho’s campaign finance database.
Woodward has raised more than 116 thousand dollars, and Herndon has garnered near 105 thousand.
Yesterday, you heard from Woodward, the incumbent.
Today you’ll hear from the man who’s challenged him four times now—and who unseated Woodward in 2022 for one term.
Scott Herndon is a 58-year-old custom home builder who, like Woodward, lives in Sagle.
We spoke yesterday by phone.
You build homes when you're not in Boise. So how has that shaped your approach to legislating policy and even campaigning?
SCOTT HERNDON: So as a custom home builder, I do employ several men, especially young men. And so it makes me hyper aware of the challenges facing our young people and especially the affordability here in Bonner County. So I would say that actually leads right into my primary goal for returning to the Senate, and that would be to reduce the cost of state government and the property tax burden.
I think both of those things are going to be a great help to young people and to improving affordability here in Bonner and Boundary Counties.
OH: Speaking of that property tax, you've also talked about wanting to make sure that tax levies to fund things like school districts do have to be brought back to voters every two years. I'm curious how you're thinking about funding education if we're reducing that property tax burden.
SH: So our public schools receive about 79 percent of their funding from the state government and not from local tax levies. The Idaho Constitution suggests that we're supposed to be essentially funding 100 percent of it from the state governmental level.
And my preference would be that we eliminate the tax levy fights so that we're not pitching neighbor against neighbor and that we actually fund 100 percent of public education with state revenues.
I think that would actually stabilize funding across all of our school districts, and it would mean that we're not asking our neighbors, who may not be able to afford extra funding for something a school needs, to take on that burden, especially fixed income seniors.
They could be priced out of their homes pretty easily and the affordability of their homes pretty easily by just one levy vote.
OH: The funding question, both for schools and then the entire state budget, took up a lot of time this past session, given the constraints facing the state. So I'm curious how you would have liked to see the state approach the issue.
SH: I don't support the broad-based budget cuts that they did, because what happened was where the growth happened was in Medicaid and Medicaid expansion, and everybody else took hits, including disabled people. I would have preferred a much more targeted approach.
We grew the budget overall, but we're going to have to contain health care expenses so that we don't harm every other budget category. And that would have been my preference, which requires a lot more time and attention spent in the budget process.
OH: You've been very vocal on social media about issues on a range of topics, from votes that have been taken in Boise to more local events, like an incident involving a transgender woman in a YMCA locker room in Sandpoint.
And the backlash from that incident ended up with the city adopting a less expansive non-discrimination ordinance in line with state policy. So what kind of role do you think state government should be playing in North Idaho's specific affairs?
SH: Well, it really depends on the topic. So in some cases, I think state preemption is highly appropriate, and in other cases it's not. I think we should have uniform criminal laws, which is basically what we did with House Bill 752 and that issue related to the Sandpoint YMCA.
I mean, that's a common issue as far as the common application of criminal laws across the entire state. Where we want to retain local control really has most application in my mind is all local governance tends to be more administrative in nature.
Land use planning, roads, annexations, and those sorts of things, I think all should be managed locally and the state shouldn't try to create a one-size-fits-all solution, since communities are different across the entire state on those issues.
OH: We spoke with your opponent, Senator Jim Woodward, and he's referred to some of your actions previously, like telling the Bonners Ferry City Council they need to be disciplined for continuing to fly a Canadian flag after a new flag ordinance had passed in Boise. He called that authoritarian.
You call yourself a “constitutional conservative.” So tell me what that descriptor, “constitutional conservative,” means to you.
SH: Well, actually, so he's completely misrepresenting what I told the Bonners Ferry City Council, and it's the same thing I would tell the Boise City Council.
If a state law tells municipal corporations how to do their business, then my opinion is that local government should follow state law, because that's entirely where they get their authority is from Idaho Code, and that's also where they get their direction.
And then if they don't like the state law, then their job is to seek to change the state law through their representatives. And they did.
The Canadian flag is now legal to fly in North Idaho, but I think it was improper for state government to ignore what the actual law says and then subvert that by telling their citizens that it's okay to ignore Idaho Code.
The proper remedy, and this is constitutional governance, is to recognize how our governmental structure works. In this case, municipal corporations or cities are created by the Idaho Code, which is managed by the legislature.
And so if you don't like Idaho Code, you don't actually ignore it, you seek to change it. And that's all I ever told Bonners Ferry is make a good presentation to your constituency, to the people living in Bonners Ferry, by following Idaho law. Set a good role model by following Idaho law.
And then if we don't like Idaho law, we seek to change it through the proper channels. That's constitutional governance.
OH: That was former Senator Scott Herndon. He’s running to return to the state senate, representing District 1.
You can hear from his opponent, incumbent Sen. Jim Woodward, and find more information about next week’s primaries on our website: Spokane Public Radio dot org.
[SHORT MUSIC BED]
OH: SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting today was contributed by Eliza Billingham, Doug Nadvornick and me, Owen Henderson.
I’m also your host and producer. Eliza Billingham provides digital support.
Thanks for listening.
It’s SPR.
