Statehouse expansion clears committee
BOISE – Idaho Legislative Services director Carl Bianchi was approached last week by an employee who wanted to discuss a confidential legal matter. A compulsory search for a spare conference room in the cramped Statehouse in Boise turned up nowhere to meet, forcing Bianchi to improvise.
“The only place we could find was the House cloakroom,” Bianchi said.
A $115 million plan to remedy this dearth of meeting space, as well as renovate the 100-year-old Statehouse structure, was approved Tuesday by the House State Affairs Committee. Lawmakers on the panel voted 15-3 in favor of adding a pair of two-story, 50,000-square-foot underground wings on the east and west sides of the existing sandstone building.
Proponents hope the full House and Senate approve the plan quickly, clearing the way for work on the Capitol to begin in April 2007 after the conclusion of next year’s legislative session.
The work would be done in time for the 2010 Legislature.
Currently, the state estimates it needs an additional 30,000 square feet of meeting and hearing rooms – up from just 6,500 in the Statehouse now – and 25,000 square feet of new offices, to help move agencies to more central locations.
Building more than is needed now could save millions of dollars on future construction costs, lawmakers said.
“It’s sad when we have committee meetings in here, and we can’t get people in,” said Rep. Clete Edmunson, R-Council. “Our family is growing, and we want to make sure we can accommodate everybody. If you have four or five kids, you don’t build just one bedroom.” The wings would cost about $40 million, the state estimates. Renovations of the Statehouse would cost an additional $75 million.
Four years ago, the renovations costs were estimated at just $64 million, but a plan to begin work then fell through, as an economic downturn left Idaho strapped for tax revenue. Now, officials including Gov. Dirk Kempthorne want to make up for lost time, using money from the state’s cigarette tax that will bring in an estimated $25 million to $30 million annually through 2015.
“There should be ample revenue from the cigarette tax to accomplish what the governor wants,” said Eric Milstead, an analyst with Legislative Services.
Not all lawmakers favored the plan for the two two-story wings, due to be about 35 feet deep in the ground and modeled after an expansion at the Texas Capitol in Austin
Rep. Anne Pasley-Stuart, D-Boise, suggested the state pursue an alternative that called for just a single underground level, arguing that a $24 million, 66,000-square-foot option would provide ample space, in conjunction with using the state-owned Ada County Courthouse and the nearby Borah Building, built in 1905 and named after Sen. William Borah.
Rep. Bill Deal, R-Nampa and chairman of the panel, agreed to put that plan on ice for now, saying it could be resurrected should the more expansive version encounter opposition in the Senate and House and force lawmakers back to the drawing board.