Risch plans CdA, Idaho Falls offices

Idaho will shut down its office in Washington, D.C., and instead open constituent-service offices in Coeur d’Alene and Idaho Falls, Gov. Jim Risch announced Thursday.

“I know the feeling of disconnect between North Idaho and Southern Idaho in the Capitol,” Risch said at a Coeur d’Alene news conference Thursday.

“I’m going to try to do something about that right now,” he declared.

He named Luke Malek, a Post Falls native and former chief development and communications officer for the Dirne Community Health Clinic in Coeur d’Alene, to staff the new North Idaho office.

The office, located in the Harbor Center at 1000 W. Hubbard Ave., will allow North Idahoans who want to contact the governor’s office to call a local number or just drop by – even though the state Capitol is 400 miles away.

“I want to provide easier access to my office for citizens who are not in the Boise area,” Risch said.

Risch’s opponent in the November election for lieutenant governor was sharply critical of the move. Former Congressman Larry LaRocco said Risch was “raiding the Idaho treasury to set up state-funded campaign offices,” and added, “This is really unprecedented to be so blatant.”

Risch’s predecessor, former Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, pushed for opening the Washington, D.C., office in his first legislative session in 1999.

The proposal was controversial – so much so that the Legislature’s joint budget committee at one point killed the funding for the new one-person office on a tied vote.

Kempthorne argued that the additional presence in the nation’s capital would help Idaho compete – 34 other states had such offices at the time.

Today, according to the National Governors Association, it’s 36 states.

Risch said he had no criticism of the D.C. office, which cost the state about $120,000 a year, including a $65,000-plus salary and $2,000 a month for rent in the prestigious Hall of States.

He said he just has different priorities.

“There’s going to be no increased cost to taxpayers,” Risch said.

His budget director, Brad Foltman, confirmed that assertion. The new Coeur d’Alene office is expected to cost about half as much in salary as the D.C. office, Foltman said, and rent and other expenses will total a fraction of the D.C. costs.

Assuming costs for a similar office in Idaho Falls, which Risch said he plans to open in the near future, are about the same, Foltman said. “I think it’s really safe to say we can staff and perform the function in both of those offices for less than what we were paying to have a presence in Washington, D.C.”

The current staffer in D.C., Ryan Fitzgerald, is planning to return to Boise for a job opportunity there after his job ends June 23.

Previous staffers in the Washington, D.C., office included Jeremy Chou, who ran the office for its first year and a half; former Idaho Republican Party Chairman Ron McMurray, who ran it from September 2000 to January 2003; and longtime Kempthorne aide Gary Smith, who ran the office from January 2003 to October 2004, when he became Kempthorne’s Department of Insurance director.

Smith is now leaving that post to work for Kempthorne at the Interior Department in Washington, D.C.

Both of the leading candidates for governor in the November election, Republican Congressman Butch Otter and Idaho Falls Democrat Jerry Brady, applauded Risch’s move.

“It’s about time he got with the program,” said Brady, who noted that he’s been calling for opening Coeur d’Alene and Idaho Falls offices since four years ago, when he ran against Kempthorne.

Otter “feels it is a great idea and the kind of thing that will help ensure that the governor’s office is closer to the people it serves,” said his spokesman, Mark Warbis.

He added that Otter also thinks Idaho’s four-member congressional delegation gives Idaho enough presence in the nation’s capital “without spending additional money on a state office back there.”