Editorial: Wasden win on cabins’ leases good for children

Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden won his lonely court fight with the state Board of Land Commissioners on Friday, to the detriment of a few hundred Idaho cabin leaseholders and the benefit of thousands of Idaho schoolchildren.

The Idaho Supreme Court agreed with Wasden’s contention that a 1990 law that protects cabin owners on Priest and Payette lakes from competitive bidding for the state-owned land beneath their buildings violates the state constitution. For decades, cabin owners have paid the Department of Lands preferential lease rates, depriving school, college and hospital endowments of revenues in the millions of dollars.

Cabin holders have fought against a change in lease terms, arguing that long-term family investments of money and memories would lose out to more well-heeled interests from outside the region who have no deep attachments to the properties or the lakefront communities. Though heartfelt, those arguments have no roots in the Idaho Constitution.

At statehood, the federal government allotted to Idaho 2.5 million acres to be held in trust for state schools and other public institutions. The Idaho Constitution requires the Board of Land Commissioners to manage those lands for the “maximum long term financial return.”

Not only had they failed to do that, a freeze on appraisals was holding lease rates so far below market that between 2003 and 2009 a total of 79 leaseholders sold their discounted lease interests for $23.6 million, pocketing $21 million that should have gone to schools and other beneficiaries.

The Land Board has taken steps toward meeting its constitutional responsibilities by authorizing, for example, surveys of the lots, but the process has been far too slow. Meanwhile, Payette cabin owners sued to get their 2001 leases renewed at 2.5 percent of appraised value for another 10 years, versus the 4 percent the state was seeking – still a bargain.

With the constitutional issue resolved, Idaho officials must decide how to go about auctioning the leases and how the cabins and other improvements will be conveyed to potential new owners. It will not be an easy process.

Most tenants will spend extraordinarily anxious days this summer wondering if their grandchildren will enjoy the lakes as they have.

But, as the court recognized, the lands are the birthright of all Idaho children, not the few fortunate enough to have lived or vacationed there. Any new revenues will be welcome in a state school system ranked 50th among 51, including the District of Columbia, for per-student spending.

It seems only Wasden recognized his real clients and was willing to live up to his constitutional responsibilities.

As the Supreme Court noted in its opinion: “It is passing strange that no school officials or endowment beneficiaries have stepped forward in this litigation.” Fellow Land Board member and Superintendent of Schools Tom Luna has been absent, along with the administrators and board members of Idaho’s 115 school districts.

Shame on them for not looking out for their students, and congratulations to Wasden for persevering in the face of so much political and institutional resistance.