Time For Some Real Legislative Action

Idaho’s 1999 Legislature was a miserable failure.

Lawmakers rejected every meaningful plan to help struggling school districts construct new buildings.

They paid only lip service to fixing dangerous U.S. Highway 95.

They didn’t solve two issues important to North Idaho: an equitable system for sales tax distribution and relief for North Idaho College property taxpayers.

Gov. Dirk Kempthorne failed to walk the talk after he established high expectations for addressing school needs during his first State of the State speech.

He didn’t even try to deliver on his promise to lower Idaho’s two-thirds supermajority to pass school bonds.

North Idaho can’t afford another do-nothing Legislature or more tall talk from Kempthorne. School buildings continue to crumble. Motorists continue to die on Highway 95.

Property taxpayers in Kootenai and Bonner counties continue to help pay for community college costs that are funded by the state almost everywhere else.

Fortunately, the Legislature will have a sword hanging over its head this year as it considers school building issues.

A lawsuit filed by a number of school districts demanding that the state provide an adequate education for all Idaho children will be heard immediately after the session ends.

A judge scheduled the hearing to give the Legislature one last chance to address this pressing need.

At best, the state should provide matching funds for school construction and help poor districts fix unsafe buildings. At least, the Legislature should lower the supermajority needed to pass school bonds.

Idaho remains the only state that requires a two-thirds supermajority while providing no funding for school construction.

On other matters, North Idaho lawmakers should line up behind state Sen. Jack Riggs, R-Coeur d’Alene, to press for more money to fix Highway 95. They should support the effort by state Rep. Don Pischner, R-Coeur d’Alene, to provide tax relief for North Idaho College patrons.

And they should back the attempt by state Rep. Hilde Kellogg, R-Post Falls, to change the archaic formula for sales-tax distribution that hurts growing counties, like Kootenai.

North Idaho legislators will be without excuse if they return empty-handed this year.

For the first time in decades, the region has four representatives on the powerful Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee: Pischner; Rep. Jim Clark, R-Hayden Lake; Rep. Marguerite McLaughlin, D-Orofino, and Sen. Clyde Boatright, R-Rathdrum. The committee controls the state purse strings.

Six years ago, Kootenai County voters bought the argument that it made no sense to send Democrats to a Legislature Republicans control. Now, it’s time for those local Republicans to deliver.