North Idaho College is one of the region’s treasures.

If a major employer or job recruitment specialist needs help in training prospective employees, NIC finds a way to be involved. If space is available in the hinterlands of the far-flung northern panhandle, the community college is ready to provide teachers and material, so students don’t have to travel to Coeur d’Alene. If the Coeur d’Alene Indian Tribe wants to promote secondary education for members, NIC reaches out to them.

NIC has expanded beyond its primary goal of providing inexpensive, quality education because it’s run by locally elected trustees. The current board represents the best and brightest of Kootenai County, including former state Board of Education member Judy Meyer. She and other trustees are in a position to assess community educational needs because they’re an integral part of the community. They also help pay the property taxes that support the college.

As Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne and other state leaders push for a statewide community college system, local control remains the crucial issue to NIC and College of Southern Idaho in Twin Falls. The two institutions have accomplished much in preparing high school graduates for four-year colleges. Additionally, NIC has enabled nontraditional students to make the transition in a local economy that has changed from reliance on natural resource industries to tourism and high technology. They have done so by responding quickly to new educational challenges instead of relying on a Boise-based board.

The two colleges should remain in local hands no matter what transpires during the 2006 Idaho Legislature.

Some property taxpayers in Idaho’s two community college taxing districts, of course, would cede local control, if they could receive the $9.2 million or more a year in combined property tax relief. But their communities would relinquish the control necessary to have a dynamic college. If the state controlled the purse strings of NIC and CSI, the two colleges would become bigger pawns in the political game played between the executive and legislative branches of state government each year. The state’s tendency to scrimp on higher education funding should serve as a warning to all.

Gov. Kempthorne’s proposal is a noble one, otherwise.

He has asked the Legislature to appropriate $5 million to help expand community college offerings into areas where there currently are none. Surprisingly, Boise is one of those areas. Originally, Boise State University was supposed to provide community college services to the Boise-Nampa area. But it lacks the affordability and open-enrollment policies that characterize two-year colleges. Kempthorne told The Spokesman-Review he’d prefer to use the money in his proposal to expand community college offerings by using existing public school classrooms and community rooms rather than for bricks and mortar.

That approach is a good one.