Bill Requires Local Elections To Add Debt Existing Law Used To Fund Several High-Cost Projects

A law allowing Idaho cities and counties to take on debt without an election would be killed by a bill introduced in the House Wednesday.

A dozen citizens from Sandpoint, Boise, Twin Falls and Jerome urged the House Judiciary and Rules Committee to introduce the legislation, which is being sponsored by Rep. Tom Dorr, R-Post Falls.

But rather than present the bill himself, Dorr deferred to Bill Denman, head of a Sandpoint-based taxpayers’ group.

“He’s really the expert,” Dorr said of Denman. “I know enough to know that there’s a problem that needs to be looked at.”

The committee agreed to schedule a full hearing on Dorr’s bill in coming weeks.

Denman said few people in Idaho know about the “judicial confirmation” process. It allows a government agency to go to a judge, and ask for certification that the debt it’s eyeing is an “ordinary and necessary” expense of government.

If the judge signs off, the agency can borrow the money without having a bond election.

“I find this a very, very dangerous code,” Denman told the committee.

It’s a common North Idaho funding tool. Kootenai County used it a few years ago to build a multimillion dollar landfill. Bonner County used it in 1993 to cover the $1 million cost of closing a few landfill sites. Sandpoint used it last year for $2.4 million in water treatment plant improvements.

Bonner County Commissioners Steve Klatt, who is currently struggling to sell voters on a bond issue to enlarge the county jail, is not concerned about losing the funding tool.

“It’s an option I wouldn’t look to unless absolutely necessary,” he said. “It doesn’t really stir fires in my soul either way.”

Other local officials said it saved the time and cost of going to voters for improvements the law requires them to make.

For us “it was a good option,” said Sandpoint Public Works Director Clyde Van Dyke. “We were under an order from the state; we had to do it. We didn’t have a choice in the matter.”

If the city had gone to voters who had then objected to the project, the state could have fined the city $10,000 a day, he said.

Besides, he said, “it didn’t raise anybody’s hackles up here.”

Sometimes, however, it has. A judge originally rejected Bonner County’s project, so county leaders came back with a scaled back version.

Thomas E. Clark of Sandpoint drove down with Denman and other board members of Denman’s Taxpayers United for Freedom, which members refer to by the acronym TUFF.

Clark, owner of Carousel Action Wear, said the trip was worth it because he’s concerned about taxes. “We’re going to have a judge tell us we can afford more money? Only the voter knows how much he can afford,” Clark said.

Diane Adams of Jerome set a teapot on the committee’s lectern with a clunk, and said it was a reminder of the Boston Tea Party. “Judicial confirmation I feel turns us back 200 years to where we really had taxation without representation,” she said.

Paul Votava of Sandpoint told the committee, “It’s a bad law that isn’t going to get any better with any amendments.”

A Twin Falls lawmaker has introduced another measure to amend and limit the judicial confirmation law.

Dorr’s bill is simpler: It would delete the entire section.

A similar measure was introduced in the Senate last year, but “the committee just brushed it off,” Denman said in an interview.

He anticipates more success this year because more people are aware of the issue.

Denman said the law was enacted in 1988 and amended in 1994.

It echoes a reference in the Idaho Constitution to borrowing for “ordinary and necessary” government expenses.

Dorr said the law had led to “a train of abuses.”

“I don’t think it’s worked for the good of the people,” he said.

“We should just pull it.”

Kootenai County Administrator Tom Taggart disagreed.

“Maybe in some cases it was used in places it shouldn’t have been,” he said.

But “to eliminate it entirely shows that people just don’t understand.”

, DataTimes