Idaho Legislature to extend session

BOISE – Late-session bickering between the House, Senate and Gov. Butch Otter delayed the end of the Legislature for a second year, as lawmakers likely won’t adjourn until Tuesday, at the earliest.

Last year, it was the unresolved $1 billion “Connecting Idaho” roads project that helped add five days.

This time, transportation is at issue again, with the meltdown of efforts to fill a $240 million roads funding shortfall. Otter’s veto of substance abuse treatment funding, as well as a series of other unresolved issues including personal property tax reform, will also keep lawmakers in Boise.

Though Idaho’s Republican-dominated Legislature is among the most homogenous in America, a three-quarters majority is no guarantee for harmony.

“I’m very disappointed,” said Senate Majority Leader Bart Davis, R-Idaho Falls, on Friday. He’d hoped to be gone last week. “The issues continue every year to be more complicated and more difficult. We’re growing as a state, and that puts more pressure on us.”

So far, the biggest victims of the 2008 Legislature have been efforts to secure additional transportation money that Idaho Transportation Department director Pam Lowe says is needed for road and bridge maintenance. A compromise was in the works this week, when the House pitched a $68.5 million plan to raise car and truck registration fees and boost the gas tax.

Otter said Friday that deal collapsed, in part because he refused to back something with no provisions for significant increases in future years to come up with the $240 million he says Idaho needs. Differences between the House and the Senate over the final amount also appeared irreconcilable, he said.

“The best you could expect was a stalemate,” Otter said. “You might as well get out of town.”

House Speaker Lawerence Denney, R-Midvale, said there’s little chance a transportation plan will be resurrected when the Legislature returns on Monday with so many other issues still to be resolved. Lawmakers will simply need more convincing before they’re willing to spring for big transportation-fee increases, Denney said.

“Sometimes the problems have to get larger before you can solve them,” Denney said. “We can still drive around the potholes, so they must not be big enough.”

Democrats were disappointed, too. Senate Minority Leader Clint Stennett, D-Ketchum, said Otter has to continue to lead on the issue and have frank discussions with lawmakers about what it will take to find a solution.

“I don’t think he’s ever had to figure out how to put together a coalition,” Stennett said. “I’m hoping he will learn from this and spend the summer building a coalition to figure out how we’re going to build roads for the future.”

With transportation now off the table, Davis said the biggest “going-home issue” to solve is Otter’s veto of a $16.8 million drug treatment plan. The Senate has voted to override; the House opted to negotiate with Otter.

The money, about half of the 2009 state-funded treatment budget for Idaho, is part of lawmakers’ push to seek alternatives to prison for a wave of drug addicts.

Otter said he agreed with the goal, but demanded more data showing drug courts and other services the money would pay for are effective. Late Friday morning, Assistant Majority Leader Scott Bedke, R-Oakley, said a compromise is in the works giving the Department of Health and Welfare and the Office of Drug Policy “about 90 percent” of the original amount, while still paying tribute to Otter’s demand for accountability.

“All the good things they would have been able to do are not in jeopardy,” Bedke said of the new plan.

Sen. Dean Cameron, R-Rupert and chairman of the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee, wasn’t so certain. He was one of the chief advocates of overriding Otter’s veto.

“I’ve heard rumors,” Cameron said. “They haven’t reached a compromise with me.”

Other bills whose futures are uncertain include:

“A scaled-back version of a personal property tax relief bill for business. It’s unclear whether the House is willing to accept Senate amendments passed 30-5 Thursday that exempt just the first $75,000 in taxable valuation. The House had supported a plan to dump the full $120 million tax by 2015.

“An effort to trim state employee retirement medical benefits to reduce Idaho’s current $442 million unfunded insurance liability. The measure passed the Senate 23-10, but House lawmakers were still undecided, said Rep. Bob Schaefer, R-Nampa. An interim committee to study the matter further is very likely, he said.

“The House also hasn’t weighed in on a Senate measure to amend the Idaho Constitution to make it easier for cities, counties and publicly owned hospitals to sell bonds as long as the debt is repaid by fees, not taxpayer money. The bill is a response to a 2006 Idaho Supreme Court ruling that kept the city of Boise from expanding its airport parking lot.

“The Senate expects to vote Monday or Tuesday on a constitutional amendment to require two-thirds voter support for new local option sales taxes. Groups such as Valley Regional Transit, the Boise-Nampa bus service, and Idaho chambers of commerce now support it.

Still, to be placed before voters in November, the measure needs two-thirds Senate support, and backers were still short of that Friday, according to an informal tally by the Associated Press.