School repair ‘special master’ a state expense, court rules

BOISE – The Idaho Supreme Court ruled Friday that the state must pay $11,000 in fees for a “special master” that an Ada County judge hired to gauge the cost of needed school repairs as part of a long-running lawsuit. The court also repeated its finding from last December that Idaho’s system for paying for school construction is unconstitutional.

The state had refused to pay the bill and appealed to the Supreme Court, saying a court couldn’t force the state to spend money if lawmakers hadn’t passed an appropriation bill. The Supreme Court disagreed.

“The state’s constitutional arguments are misplaced,” the court wrote in a 4-1 decision written by Justice Linda Copple Trout. “The statute expressly addresses this situation.”

Idaho state law says that when costs are awarded against the state by courts, “they must be paid out of the state treasury,” and the state controller is required to draw them from the state’s general fund. “Because (the law) … directs that costs awarded against the state be paid out of the general fund, it is not necessary for the court to identify a specific source of funds,” the high court found.

The issue was the last remaining piece of a lawsuit that has been in the courts for the past decade and a half, in which school districts, students and parents sued the state, charging that the school-funding system is unconstitutional because it doesn’t provide safe schoolhouses for kids in poor school districts. Idaho requires local voters to vote by a two-thirds supermajority to raise their own property taxes in order to build a school and provides little state help.

The state lost the lawsuit at every turn, including this final issue.

“It appears the court’s written the final chapter,” said Bob Cooper, spokesman for the Idaho attorney general’s office.

But former Supreme Court Justice Robert Huntley, attorney for the school districts, disagreed. Though justices had hinted earlier that this ruling on the fee issue would clarify where the whole case stands, he said it still leaves the case “in limbo, unless the Legislature wants to, out of the goodness of their hearts, act.”

After the school districts won the case last December and the system was declared unconstitutional, both sides expected the courts to begin a “remedy” phase in which they would examine whether the Legislature has fixed the system. But instead, the Supreme Court left that up to the Legislature, essentially ending the court case.

Huntley has now filed an appeal to the Idaho Supreme Court of another, earlier ruling from 4th District Judge Deborah Bail, in which she said she couldn’t take further action on the case because it was still at the Supreme Court level.

Huntley’s appeal asks the Idaho Supreme Court to either say Bail can go ahead with the “remedy” phase of the case or declare that the Supreme Court itself is still retaining jurisdiction and waiting for the 2007 Legislature to take action to fix the problems in the school funding system.

The state argued that legislation it passed last year took care of the problem, but Huntley argued it only worsened it. That legislation included some matching funds for construction in some poor school districts; a requirement for school districts to spend specified amounts of their budgets on building maintenance; and a $25 million loan fund for fixing unsafe school buildings. However, to access the loan fund, a school district would have to be taken over by the state, have an overseer appointed who could fire its superintendent, and have no-vote property tax increases imposed on its patrons after they’ve twice voted to reject them, in order to pay back the state.

No one has applied for any loans from that fund, lawmakers learned this week. “It’s still sitting there,” legislative budget analyst Jason Hancock told the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee on Thursday.

“No school district would ever apply for it,” Huntley said. “It doesn’t fix the schools, and it’s just a phony charade.”

The state has argued in court that since the courts haven’t ordered the Legislature to do anything in particular to fix the system, it doesn’t need to do anything. But Judge Bail said in court last fall that that argument would result in a “constitutional crisis,” because lawmakers can’t continue to violate the constitution once a court has ruled that’s what they’re doing.

Cooper said with Huntley’s appeal, “I would imagine that we’ll get some instruction from the court as to how to proceed.”