The Idaho Legislature won’t have to wait long for a chance to save the state hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe millions. It will be waiting for them when they convene in Boise next month – and the hard work will have been done.

All the lawmakers have to do is sign off on a set of agreements reached between Gov. Butch Otter’s office and four Indian tribes involving gasoline taxes. The savings won’t be achieved by raising revenues, but by avoiding more years of expensive legal battles.

Questions of who gets to collect taxes on gasoline sold at tribal filling stations – as well as the rate of the tax and the way the revenues are spent – have fueled a dispute that goes back years and is complicated by contradictory rulings in the federal courts. The state of Idaho is estimated to have spent more than $1.5 million in the fray so far, and tribes have incurred additional costs of their own.

Now, although the agreements, which were signed on Friday, do relatively little to alter the status quo (with one exception in eastern Idaho), they nail down some certainty for parties to the dispute and they clarify expectations that previously were subject to hazy interpretation. And they head off more years in court.

Essentially, here’s what was accomplished: The tribal tax will be the same as the state tax – 25 cents a gallon – and the tribes will use what is collected to cover the same kind of transportation needs on the reservations that the state funds with its own tax elsewhere. The tribes say that’s what they’ve been doing, but the deal reassures those legislators who insisted on preventing the money from being spent on other purposes.

Both the tribes and Otter deserve credit for resolving this issue, especially under the pressure imposed by a law passed last spring that set a Dec. 1 deadline for talks to work. If negotiators had missed the deadline (and they made it with only a day to spare) the Legislature would have taken over. That could have been disastrous.

By maintaining government-to-government talks with four separate entities – the Coeur d’Alenes, the Nez Perce, the Kootenais and the Shoshone-Bannocks – Otter’s office showed its respect for the tribes’ sovereignty. A unilateral solution dictated by the Legislature would have insulted the tribes and prolonged the legal wrangling which has gone on too long.

To give an idea of the good faith that was demonstrated in recent months, the Kootenai tribe, which has no tribal stations on its reservation at present, approached the state and asked to be included in the talks.

Financially, the biggest impact of the agreement focuses on the Shoshone-Bannocks’ Fort Hall Reservation where, under a complicated federal law, the state reimburses interstate truckers for taxes they pay to the tribe. In the future, the state will recoup 85 percent of that – from $850,000 to $1.5 million a year.

The tribe’s willingness to forgo those funds, plus raising its reservation tax level to match the 25-cent state assessment, is another encouraging move.

Numerous other issues, including water rights, still could benefit from state-tribal discussions in an Idaho marked by trust and good will. The fuel tax deal could pay dividends we haven’t yet identified.