Idaho House passes transportation budget by one vote
A $592 million budget for the Idaho Transportation Department squeaked through the Idaho House of Representatives by a single vote Wednesday.
The Idaho House voted 35-34 to pass House Bill 723, the enhanced fiscal year 2025 budget for the Idaho Transportation Department. The razor-thin vote came after legislators wrestled with budget language that revokes the $51 million sale of the department’s former headquarters on State Street in Boise.
The transportation budget also included an additional $200 million in new funding for local bridge repair and maintenance across the state, which was a priority that Gov. Brad Little called out in his State of the State address in January.
Divided over revoking sale of ITD headquarters
The budget revokes the state’s $51 million sale of the former Idaho Transportation Department headquarters located at 3311 State St. in Boise.
In November, state officials told members of the Idaho Legislature’s Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee, which writes the state’s budgets, that the state sold the building to a joint venture including Hawkins Companies, The Pacific Companies and FJ Management.
On Tuesday, a day before the House’s budget debate, the buyers of the property spoke out against the Idaho Legislature attempting to block the sale of the property. The buyers said they adhered to all state laws, submitted the highest bid for the property in a competitive, open bidding environment and are now weighing legal options.
Some members of the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee who worked to block the sale said providing the Idaho Transportation Department with $32.5 million to renovate the State Street property is more financially responsible to Idaho taxpayers than paying $56.3 million to relocate the headquarters to a different state-owned office park. The Idaho Transportation Department’s board voted to surplus and sell the State Street property after it flooded in January 2022 and was contaminated with asbestos, the Idaho Press reported.
Rep. Wendy Horman, an Idaho Falls Republican who serves as a co-chair of the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee, said legislators writing the state budget did their homework to determine that renovating the building was the most effective use of funding.
“It was determined that investing in rehabilitating the flooded building would represent tens of millions of (dollars in) savings to Idaho taxpayers rather than building a new building in a different location,” Horman said in her floor debate Wednesday at the Idaho State Capitol in Boise.
But Rep. Lance Clow, R-Twin Falls, said the state doesn’t know how much it will take to repair the flood damage and remove the asbestos.
“And we’re still guessing on whether or not $32 million will rehabilitate that flood-damaged building, which that’s a big question mark: What is the flood damage to that building?”
The day before the House’s vote on the transportation department budget, the buyers of the State Street property issued a written statement to the Idaho Capital Sun saying they felt they had a deal with the state.
“Upon being awarded this project months ago we believed we had a deal,” The Pacific Companies founder and CEO Caleb Roope said in a written statement. “We are excited to invest in Idaho, as we have many times before; however, to see the Idaho Legislature show the same big-government overreach is sad and disappointing. We don’t do business in Idaho this way and expect better from our government partners.”
Brian Huffaker, CEO of Hawkins Companies, said the buyers are weighing all of their options at this point, including legal action. On Wednesday, Huffaker said in a statement to the Sun that the buyers have delivered a copy of the purchase agreement to the state to be signed.
“We expect that the department will sign in its normal course and in accordance with the applicable statute,” Huffaker wrote. “We believe that only the Legislature’s attempts to interfere with the transaction would delay the department’s signature.”
Three-year investment in repairing Idaho’s aging bridges
The budget also includes the third tranche of funding for Little’s three-year plan to repair aging, deteriorating bridges across the state. The overall project totals $600 million, with the final $200 million included in the enhanced fiscal year 2025 transportation budget.
“Nine hundred bridges in Idaho have been rated poor or predate the moon landing,” Little said during the Jan. 8 State of the State address. “We have put $400 million into this effort in the past few years, and it’s time to buckle up and finish the job.”
Rep. Josh Tanner, R-Eagle, said saving money by renovating the headquarters leaves more money to fix roads and bridges.
“This was the better option,” Tanner said in his floor debate Wednesday. “This is where we were going to actually have the potential to save additional tax money, to make sure that money got applied correctly to the roads and not to just a waste in spending more money to relocate and losing a piece of state property that we would never gain back. So when you start breaking all the cost aspects down, this was actually the more effective cost means for the state.”
The transportation budget heads next to the Idaho Senate for consideration. Legislative leaders are working to attempt to wrap the legislative session for the year by the end of next week, meaning the transportation department could be taken up quickly in the Senate.
However, Senate President Pro Tem Chuck Winder, R-Boise, told reporters March 7 that the Idaho Legislature should not interfere with the sale. Winder is a former member of the Idaho Transportation Department board.