The politics of fees…

Here’s some insight into the late-afternoon turnaround yesterday by the legislative task force on alternative funding for the Idaho State Police and state parks: In the current atmosphere - including yesterday’s House rejection of a small fee increase on criminal offenders to help fund the state police academy, on grounds that some lawmakers don’t want any fee increases - the panel’s earlier choice for replacing ISP’s gas tax funds, a $10 vehicle registration surcharge, became a non-starter. “Politics is the art of the possible,” said Sen. Dean Cameron, R-Rupert, task force co-chairman. “For now, we can’t proceed in the direction we wanted to proceed.”

So the panel, on a 6-1 vote, opted instead to just put ISP back on the gas tax permanently. That spells the end of a session-ending deal from two years ago, in which lawmakers and the governor came up with a last-minute plan to shift $21.2 million in gas tax funds that now go to help fund ISP and state parks trails programs over to road work. Neither worked out, however. Lawmakers already had acknowledged that the shift of the trail money, which reflects the amount of gas burned in off-road vehicles, snowmobiles and boats, was a mistake, and agreed to permanently reverse it. Now, they’re moving to permanently reverse the other piece as well.

The seven-member joint task force met five times over the past two years, and received extensive documentation and much testimony as it mulled how best to fund the two programs in the face of the proposed gas tax shift. Rep. Shirley Ringo, D-Moscow, who cast the sole “no” vote yesterday, said, “It just offended me to have what’s a normal process go that far, and not have the opportunity to have it heard and make a case for it. I think it’s a waste of time and money, and it’s not letting democracy work.”