Narrator: Presentation of Idaho Reports on Idaho Public Television is made possible through the generous support of the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the great state of Idaho.

By the Friends of Idaho Public Television and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Melissa Davlin: The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare has made reforming Idaho's foster care system its top priority.

And when it comes to child welfare, the stakes are high.

Tonight, we hear from someone who aged out of foster care about the problems she faced in the system.

I'm Melissa Devlin.

Idaho reports starts now.

Davlin: Hello and welcome to Idaho Reports.

This week, Dan Day of Boise Dev catches us up on the proposed Kroger Albertsons merger that fell through this week and how it might affect Idahoans.

Producer Ruth Brown talks to a woman who recently aged out of foster care about her concerns with Idaho's foster system.

Finally, Representative Lance Clow of Twin Falls and John Robison of Idaho Conservation League discuss the Bureau of Land Management approval of the Lava Ridge Wind Project in Magic Valley.

But first, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments Tuesday on a case over Idaho's abortion ban, which prohibits all abortions except in cases of reported rape, incest or to save the life of the mother.

You may remember that the U.S. Supreme Court sent this case to the Court of Appeals earlier this year.

The DOJ claims that the state law violates the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA.

That law mandates that all hospitals that receive Medicare funds must provide necessary stabilizing treatments to emergency room patients.

The federal government argues that in some emergency cases, an abortion is stabilizing care even if the patient's life isn't immediately in danger.

And that Idaho's law prevents physicians from doing just that.

The state disagreed, saying Idaho's law wouldn't affect physicians acting in good faith and that the state also has a duty to protect the fetus.

The court will issue its opinion at a later date and could send the case back to the U.S. District Court.

If you shop for groceries or read the news or talk to just about anyone, you've probably noticed the cost of food has gone up in recent years.

A proposed merger between two grocery giants, Kroger and Idaho based Albertsons, would almost certainly have affected how much we pay to put food on the table.

But this week, a judge put a halt to that plan.

Dan Day, managing editor of Boise Dev, joined me to discuss what happened and how it may affect Idahoans moving forward.

Melissa Davlin: Don, thanks so much for joining us.

Remind us, what was the proposed deal between Albertsons and Kroger?

Don Day: Cincinnati based Kroger wanted to buy Boise based Albertsons and about a $25 billion deal that would have taken and combined the two companies with about 5000 stores across the US.

In Idaho you know, Kroger as Fred Meyer and in the Magic Valley, Smith's.

Albertsons, of course, operates as Albertsons, and also there's some Safeway stores.

The deal would have also spun off roughly 500 stores to a third party called CN's Wholesale Grocers.

And it would have actually meant a new brand for some of the Albertsons stores in Idaho.

We say all that, but it's not to be and isn't going to happen after a court decision this week.

Davlin: Right.

What happened this week?

Day: Yeah.

So we have been waiting and waiting and waiting, for a set of three, trials.

The first started in August, if you can believe it, in Oregon.

A federal judge heard the Federal Trade Commission's complaint that this deal was anti-competitive.

Trial ran more than three weeks in front of judge, Adrian Nelson, who was a Biden appointee and the two sides hash it out.

The attorneys for the FTC and the attorneys for Albertsons and Kroger said, hey, here's our points of view.

And ultimately, the FTC prevailed in that action.

It took a long time, in fact, talking to sources at Kroger and Albertsons and unions and all over the place.

Everybody was surprised it took this long.

There were two other trials I mentioned, one in Colorado and one in Washington.

Those states attorneys general argued that it was also illegal in their states.

And so on Tuesday.

Davlin: Basically that the merger would would mean that there wasn't enough competition.

Day: Anti-competitive.

Davlin: Right.

Day: Yeah, too.

Too much control of the grocery market saying, hey, this is going to raise grocery prices for consumers.

We've seen this happen in Baker City, Oregon, for instance.

Albertsons owns both the Albertsons and the Safeway.

They're right across the street from each other.

Their prices are identical.

There's no competition they're both decided on in lockstep.

Albertsons and Kroger said, wait a second.

It's not just grocery stores that compete.

We compete against Costco.

Walmart.

If you go to the Jackson store and pick up bananas, that's grocery too.

But ultimately, these judges, both at the federal level and in the state of Washington, said, yeah, this is anti-competitive.

The next day, Albertsons said, we're out.

No more deal.

Deal's off.

And furthermore, law filed suit against Kroger in Chancery Court in Delaware.

Lots of states to this in Delaware, where the two companies are incorporated and said, Kroger didn't do what it said it was going to do.

It was trying to make insufficient divestiture deals, and didn't work hard enough to get this deal done and injured Albertsons because the company had to kind of sit for two years waiting for this deal to happen.

Davlin: Some really good corporate drama there.

Ultimately, how might this affect the thousands of Idahoans who are employed by Albertsons?

Day: It is a big unknown.

It's easy to say that this is good for the workers.

But we really don't know that Albertsons employs about 5000 people in Idaho.

Many of those are frontline stores.

The people you see at the checkout stands and helping you in the produce department.

But also a lot of those are corporate headquarters in Boise.

We tried multiple times to get Kroger to say, hey, what's this mean for Boise?

And they wouldn't.

In fact, they said they set up an interview, about a year and a half ago with, Kroger CEO with us, and then pulled it back and never would answer questions on what this meant meant for Boise.

The reason it's a question mark is in court, in Portland in in September.

We were there and we watched Albertsons CEO Vivek Sankaran, lay out the case for why this merger had to happen.

And one of the striking things was he said, we have to have this.

We're okay right now.

But in 2 to 3 years, we're going to face tough choices.

We're going to have to we may have to lay off people.

We may have to exit markets.

We may have to close stores.

Both Albertsons and Kroger made the case that Albertsons couldn't compete on price.

Not with Kroger, not with, Walmart.

And their prices are so much higher because they didn't have these economies of scale.

Now, with the deal done, Albertsons says we've got a great plan.

We're going to tackle this.

It's all going to be okay.

We're going to talk about next week on Boise.

Dev, what's the truth?

Under oath, the CEO in September said, we're in a lot of trouble.

And then in news releases and comments this week said it's all going to be fine.

Both of those are pretty serious things.

One is under oath.

Another one is filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

So we're going to try and get into some granular detail and look at that and see what might be next for this, you know, standard Idaho company.

When you think of business in Idaho, you think of Albertsons and Micron and Simplot.

So this is one of the biggest.

Davlin: And ultimately all of this comes down to the cost of groceries, which and that affects every single idahoan.

Do we know yet how this merger not happening might affect grocery prices?

Day: Look we don't.

One of the cases that Kroger made is we're going to invest $1 billion in prices in the Albertsons stores starting on day one of this merger being approved.

It wasn't.

But as you dug into that, we did some analysis.

We found that's about $0.04 a shopping trip.

Not only that, the day one was 16 items.

They were no lower prices on 16 things.

The average store, Albertsons store carries 30,000 items.

So they made these big, flashy promises of billion dollars in, but it really didn't amount to a whole lot.

One of the things that was most striking is a very detailed look at pricing in the industry.

It doesn't surprise anybody who goes grocery shopping that Walmart is the market leader in pricing.

They have the lowest prices because of their scale, which is honestly the argument that Kroger and Albertsons were making.

But the government ultimately won on the argument that taking a competitor, a very significant competitor off the board, would have caused prices to rise.

I'm not an economist.

I'm smart enough to know what has happened, what would happen.

I've listened to both sides, and what I will tell you is we're not going to see a big change in the direction of prices right now, and what will happen over time is influenced by so many things inflation, supply chains, and we're just not going to know for a long time.

But I don't think you're going to see a huge improvement in Albertsons prices because they don't have the scale that a Walmart does.

Davlin: All right.

Dan, Dave Boise, Dave, thanks so much for joining us.

Day: Thanks.

us.

Davlin: Since his appointment this summer, Health and Welfare Director Alex Adams has made it clear that fixing problems with Idaho's foster care system is his top priority.

After budget requests and shakeups in the administration, the department has already enacted some big changes.

But the stakes are high when it comes to child welfare.

Producer Ruth Brown sat down with a woman who recently aged out of foster care about her experiences with the system, as well as health and welfare’s Monty Prow to discuss future plans for change.

Ruth Brown: Cadence Wright first went into foster care at age 9 and again at age 14.

The second time she was removed from her home, she never returned.

She's seen different group homes, different schools, and felt the frustration that comes with the lack of stability.

Now 18, Wright feels the need to share her story.

Cadence Wright: They started with a psychiatric hospital because they did not have any placements for me.

And after that it was a group home and then a foster family.

Brown: The instability continued for years.

Wright: I have had 18 different placements.

Three of them were foster families.

The rest of my placements were shorter term group homes and, like Airbnbs and psychiatric hospitals, and occasionally some respite homes.

Brown: The Idaho Legislature passed a bill to stop the use of Airbnbs or temporary homes to house foster kids.

It█s something health and welfare began using due to a shortage of foster parents.

Wright was familiar with that when she stayed in an Airbnb for six weeks.

Wright: It was a mess.

It, there was 15 kids in at one point with two bedrooms.

And, there was kids sleeping on couches on the floor, on air mattresses.

There was hardly any food.

The staff there were not, informed, like trauma informed at all.

I can give you examples of them being not trauma informed by, like, busting down bathroom doors because you're taking too long in the bathroom.

That█s just like, that should not be allowed.

Health and welfare couldn't speak to specific claims from Cadence, but stressed the importance of safety as a priority.

Monty Prow: Certainly, the youth's needs are the very most important, for us, obviously.

You're talking about food and clothes, a comfortable place to sleep.

Medications, all of those things come into play.

So, we talked about short term rentals and about getting out of that temporary housing.

That's sort of a synonym for for the short term rentals, temporary housing.

And that's the ideal location, similar to the Payette assessment center as where we, if a community based setting isn't available, where we need these kids to be safe.

Brown: Prow is referring to the new facility that opened in May with 16 beds for kids in foster care.

On average, the facility has 12 to 14 kids awaiting placement, with a new director at health and welfare and a new leadership team.

The agency has stressed that it is hyper focused on improving the foster system for kids in care.

Prow: At times, there might be a need to support kids in a temporary housing scenario.

At one point we had eight temporary housing locations in the state of Idaho.

Brown: The department announced in November that it had closed all of the temporary housing locations and increased the number of available foster family homes.

While improving foster care is vital.

Preventing children from entering the system at all is also a priority for health and welfare.

Prow: Prevention, Intervention is a space that has proven nationally and in the state to be effective.

It's oftentimes the least expensive option if you think about what happens potentially afterwards.

So we are we are wholly invested in prevention intervention to keep that family unit whole.

So what that looks like practically on a day to day basis is it could be one of our workers providing direct, direct delivery of services to bio-mom or dad.

Let's say they have their own maybe substance use issue or behavioral health challenge.

Maybe it's direct direct delivery of services to the youth.

Maybe they have their own, trauma based needs that we need to address.

Sometimes that looks like brokerage of services to the community to maybe do family counseling together.

So it's sort of a multi-pronged approach to prevent and intervene, ultimately to avoid any kind of ongoing safety issue.

Because keeping that family whole is so critical to the success of not only that youth, but the family as a whole, and honestly the community, because it starts at home.

Brown: Idaho, like other states, does have a disproportionate number of children of color taken into foster care.

Prow hopes to address the issue through prevention.

Prow: It's absolutely important and critical that our workers meet the families where they are.

Both in issues surrounding culture and race, and certainly issues surrounding, safety of their of their youth.

And so, our staff are trained in, in, meeting those needs and meeting those families where they're at.

And that's what we would look towards to continue on.

And Prevention Intervention spaces.

We█ll then look towards those numbers and you'll see those numbers look a little different as we move closer and closer and farther upstream from the removal and keeping those families whole.

Brown: Increasing the number of foster parents in Idaho has been successful, but more are always needed.

Prow: Foster families are critical in making sure we have the right placements for kiddos.

We were excited to share that July was our highest licensing month in the last couple of years.

Starts with training of course, after you license the home to make sure it's, to make sure it's safe, you also want to make sure that the foster families are trained, the reasonable parent, prudent standard.

And then we've also layered on trainings for foster families who may want to take additional types of kids.

So let's say, they want a kiddo that has maybe some JJ experience, or juvenile justice experience.

Or some trauma background.

There's trainings we offer for those foster families to make sure before they get those kiddos, and before those types of kids are placed in their home, that they are prepared for that.

Brown: Recent efforts to recruit foster parents included a new foster parent Bill of rights issued by executive order from the governor, as well as free parks passes for foster families.

Cadence worries the foster Parent Bill of rights gives foster parents more rights than foster children.

Wright: I see it as something that is going to be absolutely detrimental to kids in the future.

Brown: There is an Idaho Youth in Care Bill of Rights for foster children, but Cadence says she only remembers signing something once when she came in to care at 14.

She didn't always know her rights when she was in care.

The legislature did establish a new state office of the Ombudsman, who would operate independently of the courts and of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.

The office would establish a procedure for receiving, examining and resolving complaints regarding children under state supervision.

Complaints could come from foster parents, or biological parents, or teenagers, or others involved in the state foster care system.

Wright: I think that is going to be a huge step towards assisting and giving, foster youth a little bit more of a voice.

Brown: Today, Cadence is working on a degree from the College of Western Idaho using funds she's entitled to through the extended foster care program established in 2021.

She doesn't want to be just another societal stereotype about foster kids.

Wright: We've had our life taken away from us, and then we're thrown into foster care with the expectation that it's going to get better, but it's doing more damage than good.

Earlier this month, the Bureau of Land Management announced its final approval of the Lava Ridge Wind Project in Idaho's Magic Valley.

The project will include 241 wind turbines and related infrastructure on BLM and state land in Jerome, Lincoln and Minidoka counties.

The project could power as many as 500,000 homes, but it has not come without controversy.

Joining me to discuss the project is John Robinson from the Idaho Conservation League and Representative Lance Clow from Twin Falls, representative Clow.

This plan has had widespread opposition since its first proposal.

Walk me through the concerns in Magic Valley.

Lance Clow: Well, there's a lot of concerns in the Magic Valley.

Some of the groups that have gotten a lot of attention include the Friends of Minidoka, which is the Japanese internment camp and its facility, and how close this was going to be come to their facility, and the importance of maintaining that facility so that when people visit, they can get a feel for what was it like to have been interned there?

And I've had a recent conversation with one of the leaders of that group to find out how they feel about this change, but that's one of the groups.

But the others aren't necessarily all groups.

They're just citizens that were concerned, and everything from the hunting community worried about what's going to happen out there to the water community, the people with the have groundwater.

This has been built over the aquifer, which is the main source of groundwater for the Magic Valley.

And what happens when you start blasting and, during the construction phase, or if it's ever eliminated, what happens when you blast to remove all of this, construction, to the potential damage to aquifers?

Maybe not the major aquifer, but that's always at risk.

But the individual personal wells that are spread out around the area.

One of the main concerns that, I always questioned was, why would we do this in Idaho, even though it's on federal land?

Why would we do this in Idaho when most of the power is planned to go to Nevada and California?

They have plenty of open lands in Nevada and California.

If they want to put in a wind project for their purposes.

Go down there.

Why should we get all the negative impacts of that?

So, I mean, we can go down a long list and you can prompt me with other ideas, but, those are some of the major issues that I have.

Davlin: Several different concerns, several different groups.

And a lot of those concerns intersect with what the Idaho Conservation League is concerned with.

When we're talking about sage grouse habitat and water conservation and public lands.

Ultimately, I feel supported.

The revised plan this summer, down from 600 turbines to the 241, in this final version, calling it not perfect, but necessary.

What got you on board?

John Robison: Well, I think that the leverage project is something that that was just, frankly, a really, exhausting process for so many people because so many people care about that landscape.

And and really, I have to say it, in all my years working at the Idaho Conservation League on public lands advocacy, it was really heartening to see so many people come out for sage grouse and for their wildlife, the recreation opportunities out there.

And finally, you know, the BLM had kind of looked at this as a blank spot on the map that was open for for development.

And really, what came from so many people was that there are special places that needed to be protected.

Including 13,000 acres around that Minidoka National Historic Site, as well as the wildlife corridor for pronghorn coming down that a Windsor pronghorn corridor.

And so, at first we didn't see any alternatives that neither conservationist liked.

But ultimately, after so many people spoke out about the project and their values there, we were it was at the 11th hour.

But the BLM, finally, from our perspective, really took those concerns to heart, basically dropped almost half the project and not only dropped the project and set aside the place for, our renewable project, probably about the right size, where it should have been from the start if they had listened.

But also they actually are enacting protections for those other places.

And so from our perspective, given the crucial role that renewable and renewable energy is going to play, we thought it was, worth to support the project, to advance the conversation.

Davlin: You know, you mentioned that this was not the first version of the project that they submitted to the public.

The BLM reduced the general project area by about half.

They reduced the ground disturbance by 50%, reduced access roads by about 50%.

It's still a big project.

And you said it seems like they looked at a spot on the map and said, that looks empty.

Without realizing the proximity to the Minidoka Internment Camp historical site.

They did reduce it.

There's still opposition.

There are still major concerns.

Was there any version of this project that you or your peers in the legislature or Magic Valley would have found more palatable?

Clow: Well, my answer is no.

I don't think so, because, it's still a huge project and it, will have major impacts, whether you're blasting for 240, turbines or 600 turbines.

There's still a risk to our aquifer.

There's still risk to the the wildlife, as you mentioned, whether or not it's pronghorn or a sage grouse.

And it's fascinating to me because when I first joined the legislature and elected into 2012, the big issue was China mountain, which was south of Twin Falls and up in the mountains away from a lot of people, not over our aquifer.

And the big question is, what do we do with, the sage grouse impact their sage grouse all over the west there.

Sage grouse everywhere, it seems.

And, so that seemed to be the big, conservation fight at that time.

We got to protect the sage grouse.

Well, that project was denied, and that was 170 some wind turbines.

And most people that I was aware of in the Magic Valley felt comfortable with that project.

So, they turn that down because of the conservation issues.

But then they approved, this project, which has tremendous risk to our aquifer.

And you take away our aquifer and damage our aquifer.

That's a problem.

And when I first joined the city council, the big fight was over the INL and the disposal of their waste over our aquifer.

And the conservation, groups were all opposed to that.

So suddenly this aquifer is not important, you know, and there's a lot of other reasons why people oppose it, but that's one of my concerns.

Robison: One thing we know is that water is life, and that protecting Idaho's clean water is one of, that of conservation is core values.

And so we took a very hard look and pressed the BLM really, really hard on the aquifer.

And we found that they largely had addressed our concerns.

So we looked at that and the sage grouse issues and sage grouse populations have plummeted recently.

And so it is of a concern.

We do want to protect our sage grouse and our core habitat.

We think the project does a better job.

One of the issues with aquifers that we're really concerned about, is basically drought caused by climate change.

And so we've seen this with in the last ten years, nine of the last ten years have been the hottest in recorded history.

We have seen droughts, wildfire seasons have extended 60 to 80 years, 80 days longer every year.

We've seen this on the Boise National Forest was one of the biggest fire seasons here.

So climate change is here, it's coming.

And we really need to, upgrade our energy system to basically try to address that and protect our quality of life.

But I agree, we need to do it in a way that, works with the community and listens to their concerns first rather than afterwards.

Davlin: I love the China mountain throwback because I was in Twin Falls in 2012, and an ICL Idaho Conservation League opposed that project.

Looking at things like rising global temperatures and sage grouse habitat and the need for renewable energy.

How does that calculus change?

Project proposal by project proposal.

How do you determine what you support and what you don't?

Robison: Right.

Clow: Well, I, I look at this whole project is fascinating.

Worried about climate change.

These are not, fans that are going to cool us down.

These are fans that are taking the energy out of the the wind.

And, so it's, weather impacts, global warming or whatever.

That, to me was never a major concern.

And there is a and one group I didn't mention, there's a lot of people that are concerned with any, continuing investment by the federal government to make these projects economically feasible.

So, and, and so that, that groups out there as well.

Davlin: opposing the federal government involved in this at all.

Clow: So they're people that would say, why should we be building all these, wind turbines, to generate green energy for conservation purposes when the impact of mining and construction and movement to build these things is a tremendous impact on greenhouse gases.

So what's the trade off?

Do we break even?

Yeah.

And, is it worth the risk?

Robison: We've actually taken a really hard look at that.

And one of the things is that if we keep our coal fired power plants and our, massive, extensive oil and gas on public lands as well, that every time we turn on the lights or turn our cars, we are mining basically, they're using mined materials.

Dirty fossil fuel is going into our atmosphere.

It does take materials to mine to build the infrastructure for renewable energy projects.

But once it's built, the wind blows and the sun shines and you have geothermal coming up, and so that you're not mining every time you go and not basically overheating our planet and actually putting our quality of life and our, our just community health and the viability of our of our economy at risk.

Davlin: We have much more with John and Representative Clow online.

For our full conversation, visit IdahoReports.org Before we go, I wanted to share something fun.

The state Department of Education last week announced its winners for the annual holiday card contest.

Fifth grader Emersyn Hanks of Rock Creek Elementary in Twin Falls won the K through six division, and 11th grader Izzy Davidson of the Lake Pend Orielle School District won the 7th through 12th grade division.

The Department of Education will feature the winners on their holiday card, so you can find the winners of each grade at sde.idaho.gov.

There are some cute ones on there.

Thanks so much for watching.

We're off the air for the holidays, but we'll be back on January 3rd.

Narrator: Presentation of Idaho Reports on Idaho Public Television is made possible through the generous support of the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the great state of Idaho.

By the Friends of Idaho Public Television and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.