Kootenai County appreciates the local-option sales tax so much that residents have voted for it twice.

After the 1996 Legislature created the tax, 61 percent of Kootenai County voted to increase the sales tax a half cent to pay for an expanded jail and to provide property tax relief. In 2003, after the Idaho Supreme Court pronounced the first version unconstitutional and the Legislature fixed the law, Kootenai County voters gave nearly 70 percent supermajority approval for a new one.

The tax has been so popular that community boosters, like Commissioner Dick Panabaker and car dealer John Robideaux, want to use it to fund important projects. Panabaker would use the sales tax to preserve the Rathdrum Prairie by converting 8,000 to 10,000 acres into parks, trails, golf courses and agricultural land irrigated with treated wastewater. Robideaux would prefer to earmark the half penny for building a $32 million recreational and cultural center, with a pool, ice rink, conferment and performing arts space.

Unfortunately, the plans of both men are premature.

Standing in the way of their dreams is state Rep. Dolores Crow, R-Nampa, chairwoman of the House Revenue and Taxation Committee. And she’s announced she’ll do everything possible to stop an expansion of the local-option tax. That’s no idle threat. Crow’s committee is known as the place where tax bills go to die. A Herculean effort by state Rep. Wayne Meyer, R-Rathdrum, and other North Idaho lawmakers was needed in 2003 to overcome Crow’s opposition to a new local-option tax. More of the same will be needed next year.

Kootenai County visionaries should put aside their differences and work together to win overwhelming approval for an advisory vote this fall to expand the half-cent sales tax. Then, they should seek support for their cause from their legislators, the Idaho Association of Counties and the state cities group. They’ll have time to work out the details once current legislation is amended. If it is.

Crow, who seems to have never met a tax bill she likes, will be waiting for them in the committee room. During the record 2003 session, local tax supporters circumvented Crow and her committee after they’d twice killed new legislation by taking their bill to Meyer’s leadership-dominated Ways and Means Committee. Over Crow’s objection, the measure was sent to the House floor, where it passed 38-32.

Now, Meyer is gone, having been defeated in a GOP primary bid for re-election, and Crow is back, after she’d flirted with retirement. After she lost the 2003 showdown, she declared: “It is poor tax policy … when you have a checkerboard tax policy across the state.” Never mind that Kootenai County voters don’t agree with her. In the best of all worlds, Crow would have followed through with her plans to retire or House Speaker Bruce Newcomb and Republican leadership would assign her to a different committee.

Short of that, local sales tax advocates face an uphill battle for which they’d better be marching in step.