Kootenai County Commissioner Dick Panabaker may be a lame duck, but he isn’t acting like one. Rather than hand off tough issues to the two other commissioners, Panabaker is forging ahead with an intriguing plan to preserve one of the region’s natural treasures – the Rathdrum Prairie. In a recent meeting with 40 elected officials and citizens, Panabaker unveiled his big, green dream that could transform the remaining 10,000 acres of the prairie into a county-owned open space, protecting the aquifer below and providing visual relief from encroaching suburbia. Better yet, he had a way to pay for his proposal, too – the local-option sales tax. “Central Park was started with a little deal, so was Seward’s Folly – Alaska,” Panabaker told the assembled group. “We have the opportunity to make this the showplace of the West.” In this space last week, The Spokesman-Review editorial board called for immediate action to protect what’s left of the vanishing prairie, for a buffer between prairie cities and for possible future use for land application of treated wastewater. With development gobbling 1,000 acres each year, the prairie’s days are numbered. Panabaker’s proposal is bold. And it could be what’s needed to save what’s left of the prairie. It’s easy to click off the benefits of public ownership of 10,000 acres of prairie: The aquifer, which serves 400,000 people in Kootenai and Spokane counties, would be protected from domestic pollution. Fewer septic systems would be needed. Muncipalities would have acreage for land application of treated wastewater. The county could move the fairgrounds from congested Government Way in Coeur d’Alene to a prairie location – and possibly offer North Idaho College land for expansion. The amount of acreage committed to grass fields and field burning would decrease. And land would be available for golfing, trails and other recreational uses. Before he can move ahead with his plan, Panabaker faces one major problem: the Idaho Legislature. Now, Idaho’s half-cent sales tax can be used only for paying off bonds from a jail expansion and for property tax relief. The 2003 Legislature limited the scope of the local-option tax after a bitter struggle in which the tax was on life support for most of the time. As a concession to anti-tax ultraconservatives on the House Revenue and Taxation Committee, legislators ruled the half-cent sales tax could be used only for jails, and they required a two-thirds vote for approval. Kootenai County easily met the supermajority standard in reinstituting the tax. Panabaker’s plan would be dead on arrival in most years, except the city of Boise also wants to expand the use of the local-option tax, to help pay for a mass transit system. Also, Southern Idaho legislators should be sympathetic to an argument that the tax would protect Kootenai County’s water supply. Panabaker would like to put his proposal on the November ballot as an advisory vote to gauge public support. And if the public doesn’t like the plan? Quipped Panabaker, who lost a bid for re-election, “I guess the worst thing that could happen to me is I don’t get elected again.” Panabaker has nothing to lose. But Kootenai County has much to gain with his imaginative proposal.