ITD audit may mean fuel tax, fee increase

BOISE – The Legislature’s performance auditor was asked Friday by lawmakers to review the state Transportation Department’s operations as a first step to possibly raising Idaho’s gas tax and other transportation-related fees for highway construction.

The Office of Performance Evaluations would hire a consulting firm to scrutinize ITD, with the contract likely to run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, under the plan outlined by the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee.

In recent weeks, lawmakers and Gov. Butch Otter have broached the idea of raising the existing 25-cents-a-gallon fuel tax because Idaho likely won’t get enough federal money to cover its road-building needs.

Still, some want to make sure the Transportation Department is operating as efficiently as possible, including watching over big contracts such as the billion-dollar “Connecting Idaho” roads plan, before asking drivers to pay more at the pump.

The eight-member legislative oversight panel on Friday asked the auditing agency’s director, Rakesh Mohan, to draft an initial plan of what such a review would look like. Budget writers, as soon as next Wednesday, could set aside money to start the project.