Leave it to Idaho Sen. Bob Nonini, R-Coeur d'Alene, to spill the beans.

When it came to last week's Senate vote to open northern Idaho's highways to city-block-long, double-trailer trucks weighing 12 tons more than the current legal limit, Nonini made it clear who has his ear.

"On one side of the scales we have government entities, and for the most part they're in opposition," Nonini said. "On the other side we have industry, and they're supporting this. As I weigh those comments, tipping the scales towards government or industry, my scale tips toward industry. We need to help them."

The people Nonini discounts answer to voters.

They listen to taxpayers.

They're county commissioners, highway district officials and city leaders.

They know what roads and bridges cost. They have more than a vague sense of what 129,000 pounds will do to bridges and road surfaces.

These are the people who employ and pay the bills for first-responders - the cops, firefighters and ambulance crews - who respond to accidents on the roads.

Last week, the sole northern Idaho Republican senator to oppose the big truck bill, Sandpoint's Shawn Keough, read a list of officials who agree with her: Individuals who run the cities, counties, highway districts, sheriffs' offices and fire departments.

"And these are just the ones that I have heard from," Keough said.

Here's what they're saying.

Before lawmakers agreed to open southern Idaho's lanes to these big trucks, they implemented a decade-long pilot study. Idaho's AAA says the outcome is inconclusive, but at least the review was attempted.

Northern Idaho will get no such examination, even though the region is stitched together by two-lane highways and a series of bridges and culverts that will bear the full brunt of 129,000-pound trucks.

Whatever the southern Idaho study revealed, its findings can't be extrapolated to an area with different soils, wetter weather and different topography. Nor does the southern region have anything to compare with the Lewiston grade or White Bird Hill.

And wouldn't now - when trucking is asking for concessions - be a good time to address the inequity that has ordinary motorists subsidizing the industry? Gov. C.L. (Butch) Otter's 2010 highway task force concluded that truckers pay 14 percent less in taxes and fees than it costs to repair the road and bridge damage their rigs cause. Passenger car drivers are paying 8 percent more than their share.

Nope. No discussions on inequities. Maybe later. Not now.

The megaload controversy gave northern Idaho an education about the politics of trucking. Skeptics of the big truck bill question whether any local entity can block this kind of traffic - short of appealing the decision at an administrative hearing or in the courts.

But only Keough, Moscow's Dan Schmidt and 11 other state senators - including, notably, Boise's Chuck Winder, a former Idaho Transportation Board chairman - listened to the local officials' concerns.

Instead, 23 senators - including five of northern Idaho's seven voices in the Senate such as Dan Johnson, R-Lewiston, and Sheryl Nuxoll, R-Cottonwood - followed Nonini's line.

They chose to listen to industry.

To them, it's profits, not taxpayers.

They put shareholders - many, if not most who live out of state - ahead of voters.

For them, it's campaign contributors before constituents.

And it's the corporate lobbyist, not the local elected official, whose voice is heard loudest.

Not that any of this should come as a shock. Private gain trumps the common good in the state Capitol.

But subtlety is not a Nonini trait. His impulsive candor lets you know exactly where you rate. - M.T.