Idaho Task Force Will Consider Transportation Impasse

By Jill Kuraitis, 6-24-09

After a miserable legislative session dominated by fruitless disagreements over transportation issues, Idaho Gov. Butch Otter has appointed a 15-member task force to consider how to resolve them. The task force was a provision of the agreement between Otter and legislative leadership which finally ended the second-longest legislative session in state history.

Lt. Gov. Brad Little will preside over the group, and meetings, starting in August, will be open to the public.

The governor’s press release describes the groups goals as “developing recommendations by December 2010 for sustainable road and bridge funding for the next 20 years. Task force members will study everything from fuel tax increases and registration fees to truck fees, targeted transportation-related sales taxes and other alternatives.”

A state budget backlog now over $100 million and possibly several times that is needed for road and bridge repairs and maintenance and road improvements. The governor and the state legislature have disagreed over the best way to raise the money for several years, with Otter favoring a gas tax and the legislature firmly opposed. The Republican-dominated legislature is so opposed to fuel taxes that they have established a different task force to determine by the 2010 legislative session whether the share of funding from the state’s 25-cents-per-gallon fuel tax that now goes to the Idaho State Police and the Department of Parks and Recreation should be replaced with some other form of user fee.

Members of the Governor’s task force named today are:  Lieutenant Governor Brad Little, chairman; Senate Transportation Committee Chairman John McGee of Caldwell; House Transportation and Defense Committee Chairman JoAn Wood of Rigby; Senator Bert Brackett of Rogerson; Senator Shawn Keough of Sandpoint; Senator Chuck Winder of Boise; Senator Edgar Malepeai of Pocatello; Representative Marv Hagedorn of Meridian; Representative Dennis Lake of Blackfoot; Representative Leon Smith of Twin Falls; Representative Bill Killen of Boise; Jim Kempton, president of the Idaho Public Utilities Commission; Mark Bowen, chairman of the Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce; Valley County Commissioner Gordon Cruickshank; and Jim Riley, president of the Intermountain Forest Association.