Members of a divided Idaho Senate on Thursday killed a major transportation budget, dashing any dwindling hopes of wrapping up the 2024 legislative session this week.
Legislators originally hoped to adjourn the annual legislative session on March 22. But after the Idaho House of Representatives got bogged down in budget debates and a leadership scrum, legislative leaders moved their adjournment target to March 29.
Now, adjournment is anybody’s guess.
The Idaho Senate voted 16-19 to kill House Bill 723, the enhanced fiscal year 2025 budget for the Idaho Transportation Department. It would have taken a simple majority vote to pass the budget.
One of the major sticking points in the transportation budget was language revoking the state’s authority to sell the Idaho Transportation Department’s flooded, former headquarters located at 3311 State St. in Boise.
State officials told the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee in November the state sold the State Street campus to Hawkings Companies, The Pacific Companies and FJ Management, for $51million, the Idaho Capitol Sun previously reported.
However, on March 1, the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee sought to block the sale of State Street campus. Supporters of blocking the sale said it was a more financially responsible use of taxpayer dollars to renovate the State Street campus rather than sell it and relocate the Idaho Transportation Department to a different state-owned office campus on Chinden Boulevard.
Reduced to the simplest terms, a vote against the transportation budget was also a vote against blocking the sale of the State Street campus. Likewise, a vote in favor of approving the budget also represented a vote in favor of blocking the sale.
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“The sale of the property followed all existing rules and was widely publicized,” Sen. Rick Just, D-Boise, said in his floor debate against the budget. “In effect, the state of Idaho made a decision to sell and selected a buyer. The buyer took that to the bank, literally.”
“If we overturn the board decision (to sell) with this budget, we are saying that you can’t trust the word of the state of Idaho,” Just added.
But Sen. Kevin Cook, R-Idaho Falls, said the deal has not been finalized because earnest money hasn’t changed hands and the state hasn’t signed the contract.
“There is no deal,” Cook said during his floor debate in support of the budget. “No money has exchanged hands.”
“We looked at what is best for Idaho, for Idaho taxpayers, that’s what we were interested in doing,” Cook added.
Transportation budget included funding for aging bridges across Idaho
Although the sale of the State Street campus dominated much of Thursday’s debate, the transaction was not the only noteworthy aspect of the transportation budget that died. House Bill 723 included $592 million in additional spending for the Idaho Transportation Department. Specifically, the budget included $200 million in new funding to pay for repair and replacement of aging bridges across the state, which Gov. Brad Little highlighted in his Jan. State of the State address. The $200 million was to be the third tranche of a three-year, $600 million effort to improve dilapidated bridges.
“We have put $400 million into this effort in the past few years, and it’s time to buckle up and finish the job,” Little said in the address.
Across the state, Idaho has 900 bridges that have been rated “poor” or predate the 1969 moon landing, Little told legislators.
It wasn’t immediately clear what the Idaho Legislature’s path toward adjournment looks like with the death of the transportation budget on Thursday. The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee may reconvene in the coming days to draft a new transportation budget. But the Idaho House and Idaho Senate may be at odds over how to proceed with the Idaho Transportation Department headquarters situation.
