Otter, GOP leaders discuss Capitol renovation

BOISE – Republican leaders from the state House and Senate met Tuesday with Gov. Butch Otter over the embattled proposal to add underground wings to the Capitol but failed to resolve an impasse that’s put renovation and expansion of the 100-year-old building on hold.

Their meeting lasted 45 minutes. There will be further meetings later this week, likely Thursday or Friday.

Otter last Friday ordered the $130 million project stopped in its tracks, fulfilling a campaign promise to seek an alternative to adding two, 50,000-square-foot wings he believes are too expensive. The wings would cost about $45 million, and Otter would rather renovate two nearby state buildings: the old Ada County courthouse and the Borah Post Office.

At the meeting, “I don’t think either side presented things in a way that changed the other’s mind, but we’ve agreed to continue discussions,” said Sen. Joe Stegner, R-Lewiston, the lawmaker who originally proposed the wings. They would be modeled after a similar expansion at the Texas Capitol.

Participants included Stegner, Senate President Pro Tem Bob Geddes, House Speaker Lawerence Denney, who last year voted against the project, and House Majority Leader Mike Moyle.

Otter spokesman Jon Hanian didn’t immediately return phone calls seeking comment.

The project last year passed the Senate 33-2 and the House 40-28. Supporters contend the wings are the most economical alternative to adding space to the sandstone Capitol, where public hearings often fill to overflowing and state officials have met in cloakrooms just to find privacy in the cramped space.

A September report by the state’s Legislative Services office concluded that remodeling the vacant Ada County courthouse and Borah building would cost at least $46.2 million, about $1 million more than the wings.

Minority Democratic lawmakers say they weren’t in on Tuesday’s talks in what’s shaping up as an internecine battle that’s jarred the relationship between GOP Senate leaders and the Republican governor just days into his first term.

Stegner said both sides are likely to bring support staff, including representatives of the construction companies involved in the project, to the meeting later this week to help reach a consensus.

Work crews, including those from McAlvain Construction Inc. of Boise, are now idle. They had expected to be drilling around the Capitol’s east portico to test conditions beneath the stairs.

State building officials are assessing how the delay could affect the start of actual construction work. It had been slated to begin in late February with the start of the underground wings’ foundation.

This isn’t the first time a delay in the Capitol project has affected Idaho’s private-sector partners.

CSHQA, a Boise architecture and design firm, has been involved for five years. In 2002, the company waited out an economic downturn that forced Idaho to delay what was then estimated to be a $64 million renovation.

“We don’t know what the current game plan is,” company president Jeff Shneider said, adding that such hang-ups aren’t unheard of in long-term public projects where decision makers come and go. “The fact is, new people get elected.”

The Capitol is scheduled to be vacated in April after the Legislature ends its session. For the next two years, lawmakers will meet in the Ada County Courthouse before the Capitol’s planned reopening in 2010.

Though bonds to finance the project were sold in September, the Legislature still must set aside money from Idaho’s cigarette tax to repay the debt.