Urban renewal districts bill fails

BOISE – Two North Idaho lawmakers’ attempt to sharply limit urban renewal districts was stopped in a House committee Friday.

“It would appear that this is a situation where a feud in Coeur d’Alene has escalated to the state level,” said Rep. Leon Smith, R-Twin Falls.

Rep. Jim Clark and Sen. Mike Jorgenson, both Hayden Lake Republicans, sponsored two measures to change urban renewal districts to countywide elected boards and to limit the scope of their operations. But mayors and urban renewal advocates from around the state decried the bills.

“This legislation is either unnecessary or it serves to hamper the use of the only viable economic development tool available in Idaho to local government,” Phil Kushlan, head of the Capitol City Development Corp., Boise’s urban renewal agency, told the House Revenue and Taxation Committee.

Post Falls Mayor Clay Larkin, testifying against the board-election bill, said, “I would urge this bill go down in flames.”

Under the measure, HB 47, Larkin said his seven-member urban renewal board – made up of economic development and finance experts appointed by the mayor and City Council – could be replaced by a small group of elected officials from elsewhere in the county who then would be in charge of urban renewal in Post Falls.

“What happened to local control?” the mayor said.

Clark said, “All I was looking for was some accountability. … The people have the right to vote on those individuals who cause their property taxes to go one way or the other.”

The committee did vote unanimously to pass HB 79, a measure offered by Rep. Mike Moyle, R-Star, to make administrative changes that backers said would ensure urban renewal districts don’t cause property tax increases elsewhere by the way they account for new construction. That measure now moves to the full House for a vote.

Paul Anderson, a longtime board member of the Lake City Development Corp., Coeur d’Alene’s urban renewal agency, told the panel, “I believe strongly in what the urban renewal commission stands for. … I think the innuendos that have been coming out from the people who proposed this legislation have impugned the integrity of nine people who I consider to be among the best people in the Coeur d’Alene area.”

Coeur d’Alene resident Dan Gookin told the lawmakers, “If there was a stick poked in a hornet’s nest, I was the stick.”

Gookin compared mayors and city councils appointing urban renewal commissioners to arguments “from Caesar to Napoleon on down to King George III … (that) the king can appoint the best ministers.”

But committee members noted that mayors and city councils are elected.

Skip Smyser, lobbyist for the Greater Boise Auditorium District, told the lawmakers that HB 47 violated a fundamental principle of representative government by holding countywide elections on city urban renewal districts. “You would think that they would be elected from the district from which they intend to govern,” he said.

John Watts, lobbyist for the new statewide Idaho Chamber Alliance, also spoke out against the bill.

Rep. Ken Roberts, R-Donnelly, said he opposed the bill, but he wanted to put all urban renewal agencies on notice that “the Legislature is watching.” All must comply with open meeting and open records laws and other state requirements, he noted.

Rep. George Sayler, D-Coeur d’Alene, said, “Everything has been, as far as I know, completely above board.”

He said urban renewal agencies have helped North Idaho attract employers and jobs, and warned that harming them would amount to “killing … the goose that’s laying the golden eggs.”

Clark offered several amendments to HB 47 in an attempt to save it – including raising the number of elected board members from three to five – but the bill failed on a 10-8 vote. He then asked the committee to kill the second bill, HB 48, as well, and it did so unanimously.

In the 10-8 vote, Sayler was the only North Idaho committee member to vote with the majority to kill the bill. Reps. Clark; Dick Harwood, R-St. Maries; and Phil Hart, R-Athol, supported the legislation.

Opponents of the bill compared the current system for urban renewal commissioners to the state’s system of having elected officials set policy, then appoint boards of experts – like the Transportation Board and the Board of Education – to carry out those policies.

Rep. Dell Raybould, R-Rexburg, said he thought HB 47 opened the door to demanding elections for anyone involved in spending tax money, from police chiefs and their officers to street supervisors to garbage collection superintendents. “I think we have a good system,” Raybould said. “We have elected officials that are accountable to the taxpayers.”