State May Bail On Flood Help
If a city or county gives someone a permit to build in a flood plain, it shouldn’t expect the state to help out later when the property is flooded, Gov. Phil Batt said Wednesday.
“Local entities that issue permits for building in these flood plains should take responsibility,” the governor said.
Idaho spent $10 million in the past year to cover the local match for federal disaster funds, after calamitous floods across the state. The federal government paid about $160 million for flood-related relief in Idaho.
Batt said the state should set a policy on when it will - and won’t - pay. “I’ve been doing it by the seat of my pants,” he said.
North Idaho lawmakers who heard Batt’s speech at the Associated Taxpayers of Idaho annual conference said they are uncertain about how such a policy would play out.
“On principle, I agree with the governor,” said Sen. Gordon Crow, R-Hayden. “I don’t think it’s prudent use of the government’s dollars to subsidize somebody living someplace where you know they shouldn’t.”
But there’s some confusion about just where flood areas lie, Crow said, and whether flood areas should be defined as land likely to be flooded every 60 years, every 100 years or something else.
Rep. Don Pischner, R-Coeur d’Alene, said some people in his district got permits to build, and then flood areas were revised. “Someplace the guidelines changed,” he said.
Rep. June Judd, D-St. Maries, said, “I know there’s a lot of resentment by people who year after year are having to see tax money go to people who year after year ignore the rules.”
But, she said, if the state doesn’t pay, local residents will have to pay through their property taxes.
Rep. Larry Watson, D-Wallace, said, “It’d hurt us. We get some damage every eight or nine years.”
There are guidelines and procedures for building in flood plains, and people who comply with those shouldn’t be penalized, Watson said.
“I think we ought to sit down and look at that. … It should not be just a blanket policy.”
, DataTimes