Otter vetoes Snake River park funding

BOISE – Gov. Butch Otter used his line-item veto Thursday to kill funding for a new $3 million state park along the Snake River in eastern Idaho.

It was his sixth veto of the legislative session, though one – a ban on smoking in bowling alleys – was overridden.

Known as Rising River, the site near Blackfoot includes wetlands along 4.5 miles of shoreline. It was chosen last year by a panel that included lawmakers, county officials and eastern Idaho business and civic leaders.

The park was part of former Gov. Dirk Kempthorne’s proposed “Experience Idaho” plan to improve and expand the 30 parks currently overseen by the state Department of Parks and Recreation. Kempthorne said growing eastern Idaho didn’t have enough state parks, compared with other regions.

But Otter said the new park was problematic for several reasons. The cost of developing it was prohibitive, at a time when the state already had a multimillion-dollar repair backlog at its existing parks, he said.

In addition, Rising River includes a stand of black cottonwoods that requires regular flooding for the trees to survive. Improvements could endanger the trees, which are one of the site’s chief attractions.

“We’re not doing a good enough job of taking care of the parks we have,” Otter told the Associated Press. “All the area we’re buying is in the flood plain. If you do anything to stop the flooding, then the cottonwoods die. Then the eagles go away.”

In his veto, Otter killed a $760,000 line item meant to purchase the property, from the total $42.5 million Parks and Recreation budget. He also told Parks and Recreation Director Bob Meinen not to spend an additional $2.14 million that budget writers set aside.

Meinen said the state has a parks maintenance and repair backlog of about $20 million.

“The governor would like to see us buy that down, and I think that’s a good idea,” Meinen said, adding he thought a new park in the region may be considered again.

“The question was raised, ‘Was there a need for another park in eastern Idaho?’ ” he said. “If the support is not there, and it doesn’t happen, I still think the area will grow. Sometime in the future, maybe it’s something we’ll consider again.”

Otter didn’t touch $3 million set aside for a bridge at Eagle Island State Park west of Boise, also part of Kempthorne’s “Experience Idaho” plan. Parks officials said the bridge is needed to help mine millions of dollars worth of gravel.

The state wants to sell the gravel to create “water features” and to fund additional improvements at Eagle Island, on the Boise River.

Though he didn’t originally recommend that money in his budget, Otter on Thursday praised the gravel scheme as an “innovative plan” that could be copied by other state parks.

Rep. Elaine Smith, D-Pocatello and a member of the park selection committee who supported the Rising River project, said she was disappointed by Otter’s veto. The purchase of the land would have protected an important stretch of riverfront that’s under pressure from private vacation-home development, she said.

“It would have been a plus for us to have done this,” Smith said. “This access to the Snake River will be lost to the public.”

Still, Rep. Mack Shirley, R-Rexburg and another committee member, said he soured on the Rising River plan after initially voting for it in October. He said concerns over protecting the cottonwoods, the cost of building a four-mile road to get to the site and other issues emerged that the committee hadn’t originally considered.

Idaho should dedicate scarce resources to fixing the facilities it already has, Shirley said.

“A large number of people in eastern Idaho feel it’s necessary to take care of (the region’s) existing parks rather than create a new one,” he said.