Legislative Panels To Study Liquor Laws, Taxes Committees Will Gather Information For Next Session

Special legislative committees will look at state liquor laws, government impact on property values, local government revenue sharing and the state’s environmental regulatory structure this summer and fall.

The four panels were set up in the closing days of the 1998 session.

They will make recommendations to lawmakers next January.

The analysis of Idaho’s restrictive liquor laws will be the latest in a series of reviews of the system that many believe should be dramatically revised. The problem is no one has been able to come up with an acceptable plan to do it.

Local government impact on private property values is a continuing concern of a Legislature with a large number of members firmly committed to the sanctity of private property.

The assessment of state revenue sharing with local governments comes in the wake of the Legislature’s decision to appropriate the money needed to finance the 1995 property tax relief law. That law, pushed by retiring Gov. Phil Batt, picked up a quarter of the basic property tax levy schools impose for operating funds and repealed the school districts’ ability to continue levying the tax.

Since approving the relief, the drain on the state treasury has jumped from $40 million to $55 million a year, and lawmakers have gotten no credit for the contribution.

Subjecting the cash to appropriation is intended to give them that credit and inflate the percentage of state money going to schools.

Advocates justified it as full disclosure of state spending. But there is no appropriation for the other $108 million in state tax revenue that is going to local governments under other tax relief programs.

The committee on the status of the Division of Environmental Quality was set up after water users torpedoed Batt’s proposal to elevate the agency to full department status.

Batt said on Tuesday that it was a misunderstanding he hoped the interim review would clear up.

But while he said he believed making the committee a department was the best management scheme, the fate of the state would be unaffected either way.