Swim at your own risk: Idaho gets out of the public safety business | Opinion

Come July 1, the state will no longer be conducting inspections of public swimming pools.

What’s next? No more restaurant inspections? No more food inspections? No more inspections of workplaces?

According to a story in the Idaho Statesman, a new Idaho law has removed a requirement that the state enforce “minimum standards” of health, safety and sanitation for public swimming pools.

Sen. Julie VanOrden, R-Pingree, who co-sponsored the bill, told her fellow legislators in March, “Big swimming pools in communities really are not being built that much anymore,” according to Boise State Public Radio, which first reported this story.

Perhaps VanOrden’s unincorporated community of Pingree, population 511, doesn’t have a public pool, but plenty of cities around her certainly do, including Shelley, Pocatello and Idaho Falls.

In fact, Idaho is home to dozens of public pools, in big cities such as Boise, Meridian and Nampa, but especially in small towns all over the state, such as Payette, Cascade, Rupert, Burley, Oakley, Wendell, Twin Falls, Filer, Glenns Ferry and Homedale.

Russ Duke, the director of the Boise area’s Central District Health, said his department alone conducts 36 pool inspections per year.

Seems like there’s still plenty of demand.

Are pool inspections ‘obsolete’

VanOrden told the Statesman the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare requested the change because it viewed the inspections as “obsolete.” Many pool operators, including cities, she said, already perform their own pool inspections to comply with insurance requirements or local ordinances.

But by that logic, we could simply get rid of inspections of restaurants, grocery stores and workplaces.

It’s hard to argue that public safety isn’t a proper role of government.

Leaving entities to their own devices to keep the public safe is a pretty naive way to govern.

To wit, Duke told the Statesman that when the health district does its annual inspections, “we do find issues,” which is proof enough for us that operators’ or municipalities’ own inspections are not always sufficient.

“We have had some pretty significant outbreaks in our health district” of water-borne illness, he said.

There’s a good reason those inspections exist.

Idaho obsession with deregulation

We also share Duke’s suspicion that too many legislators didn’t read the bill, given the fact that the bill passed the House unanimously and passed the Senate with just one “no” vote, from Sen. Melissa Wintrow, D-Boise, who told the Statesman that she voted no after receiving emails from Boise expressing concern about the change.

At least someone read the bill and voted accordingly.

We get Idaho’s obsession with cutting regulations, and we don’t always disagree with cuts, but some regulations need to be kept.

One government inspection per year doesn’t seem like an onerous regulation to us.

And if it keeps kids and adults alike from getting sick, it’s well worth the effort.

As soon as legislators get back to Boise next session, they need to fix this foolish bill and keep state pool inspections on the books.