No Quick Fix For Schools Panel Cautious In Creating Plan To Repair Buildings

Idaho should not put any state money into building or renovating schools even if they’re plagued by serious safety problems.

That was the verdict Wednesday of a 25-member committee pulled together by Gov. Dirk Kempthorne to figure out how Idaho can fix its ailing school buildings.

“The system that funds our schools is really not flawed - not fatally flawed, anyway,” said Sen. Darrel Deide, R-Caldwell, a panel member and retired school superintendent.

“I do not think the communities are doing enough to help their schools,” said committee member Raul Labrador, a Boise attorney. “Now they’re asking the state to do it for them. I think that’s outrageous.”

Idaho is the toughest state in the nation in which to build a school because it’s the only state that both requires a two-thirds majority to pass a school bond and puts no state funds into building schools. That leaves local property taxpayers with the whole bill.

The committee also rejected Kempthorne’s proposal to lower the two-thirds supermajority to 60 percent for passing bonds in a primary or general election.

Sen. Gary Schroeder, R-Moscow, chairman of the Senate Education Committee and an advocate of changing the way Idaho finances schools, was outvoted repeatedly on the committee.

“What I’m concerned about is more and more I hear: `Well, the Legislature’s not going to do anything until we have a disaster happen somewhere,”’ Schroeder said.

“That’s exactly what we should be trying to prevent. We shouldn’t wait until a disaster happens and some children and staff are hurt or killed before we do something.”

Schroeder has proposed lowering the supermajority, setting up a state commission to fix schools, and holding an advisory vote on raising the sales tax to make the repairs. He said he’ll be back with the proposals.

“I’m not apologizing for the patrons who won’t pass the bonds - I wish they would,” he told the panel. “The bottom line is, it’s still the Legislature’s responsibility if the system they set up fails.”

A group of school districts has sued the state over the building situation, saying the Legislature hasn’t lived up to its constitutional duty to ensure safe schools where students can learn. The lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial this spring as soon as the Legislature leaves town, because a judge agreed to give lawmakers one last chance to act in their coming session before the court forces their hand.

Judy Meyer, a Hayden Lake businesswoman and former state Board of Education member, said, “The courts have been real clear. They’ve told us this is not going to come as a surprise.” Meyer proposed a plan to help the neediest districts with state matching funds, but only after they’ve exhausted all their other taxing options.

“When a district’s done everything it could, does the state need to step in? This committee wasn’t ready to do that,” she said. “That’s Round 1. Let’s see what comes next.”

State Sen. Deide said hundreds of millions of dollars in bonds have passed since a state study put Idaho’s school construction backlog at $700 million in 1992. The new committee had an updated study done that set the backlog at only $274 million, then asked consultants to pare the estimate further to $251 million.

Of that amount, between $38 million and $48 million was identified Wednesday as needed to fix safety problems in schools.

But Schroeder said the figures were hastily pulled together. Although some of the problems high-lighted in the 1992 study have been fixed, new ones have come up, he said.

Kempthorne appointed business people, educators, politicians and others to the panel, hoping they would craft a compromise to school funding.

But after months of work, the committee voted Wednesday to support just five proposals, two of which wouldn’t change current law and two of which are versions of bills that failed in the House last year.

Here’s the committee’s plan:

Encourage school districts to use the existing supplemental levy, a tax override vote that needs only majority support to pass. The levy, however, does not fund long-term debts such as construction bonds.

Widely disseminate inspection reports that show school safety problems, sending them to the district, the school board, the principal, local legislators and the public.

Enact a uniform statewide building code for schools. Committee members said codes now vary from one area to another.

Pass a modified version of legislation proposed last year by Zions Bank of Utah, which expands the current school plant facilities levy. That type of property tax levy - which is now used for short-term repairs and does not require a twothirds vote to pass - could be bigger and stretched over more years to allow it to pay off a bank loan to build a school.

Pass a new version of last year’s unsuccessful Emergency Safe Schools Act, which would allow districts that have unsuccessfully tried every other option to enact a no-vote property tax increase to fix critical health and safety problems. The new version would require a vote first on a plant facility levy, and an advisory vote on the emergency safety levy.

Frank Priestley, president of the Idaho Farm Bureau, voted against that proposal and said his group would continue to oppose it because of the no-vote tax increase. The bureau lobbied hard against the bill last year.

Mike Gilmore, the deputy attorney general handling the lawsuit, said the measure would likely free the state from the lawsuit.

Milford Terrell, a plumbing contractor who chaired the committee, said he was disappointed the governor’s 60 percent plan didn’t win support, and doubted that the no-vote levy would pass the Legislature.

“I don’t think it’ll fly,” he said, “but that’s just my plumber’s judgment.”

This sidebar appeared with the story: AT A GLANCE What’s next The committee’s recommendations will now go to Kempthorne, who has said he hopes to use them to formulate his administration’s approach to the issue in the next legislative session. Kempthorne campaigned on the idea of lowering the two-thirds supermajority, but the issue has been a non-starter so far among Republicans in the Legislature.