Local legislators to start session on sideline

COEUR d'ALENE - Two local legislators will start the 2014 legislative session on Monday with substitutes while they recover from unrelated medical issues.

Sen. Bob Nonini, R-Coeur d'Alene, was hospitalized in November after developing complications from the flu, family friends said.

"I am doing better now," Nonini said on Friday. "But I still need a couple of weeks."

The first-term senator said his wife, Cathyanne Nonini, will stand in for him until the middle of this month. Nonini previously served four terms in the house.

"I am still wearing an IV bag, and it's a little hard to tuck in my shirt with this on," he said, declining to elaborate on the nature of his illness.

Rep. Frank Henderson, R-Post Falls, told The Press earlier this week that he is also sending a substitute for the first weeks of this session, while he recovers from a broken hip he sustained during an early December vacation in Hawaii.

"I'll miss the first two weeks of the upcoming session, but I'm appointing John Chambers to take my place for that period of time," Henderson said earlier this week. "John has been sort of semi-retired from Ground Force Manufacturing, and he's very well qualified to participate in the legislation that will come up in the first two weeks or so."

Henderson, Idaho's oldest legislator at age 91, is serving his fifth term in the House.