OpinionJuly 13, 2003

Idaho, as a state not known for generosity with public finances, is used to being compared to Mississippi and other cheap states. Now, thanks to the backroom dealings that resulted in the University of Idaho's Idaho Place property development debacle in Boise,

another comparison comes to mind.

Think Louisiana. Or maybe Arkansas.

The difference is significant, especially for taxpayers. The project, now aborted except for one building known as the Idaho Water Center, is costing the UI valuable resources at a time it is already reeling from reduced legislative appropriations. But it will also cost taxpayers $139 million over the next 40 years.

Some of those costs will of course go to a useable, but expensive, building, the Water Center. But some, such as for planning and designing other buildings, has been shot to hell.

It did not have to be that way, and it would not have been that way if normal procedures had been followed. But a group of powerful UI alumni inside and outside government succeeded in circumventing those procedures, essentially gambling with the public's money. They lost, and the public will now pick up the tab.

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The story of how they did that, best told in columnist Dan Popkey's 6,000-word report in the June 29 Idaho Statesman, is a tale of how a handful of powerful Republicans pressured bureaucrats, legislators and State Board of Education members to authorize a development that began as a done deal.

As just one example of how done it was, in April 2001, five months before the state issued a request for proposals for new office space for the state Department of Water Resources, the UI announced its building project with Water Resources as a partner.

The UI originally planned to bypass the required competitive bidding process through an act of the Legislature. But the Legislature's budget committee refused to go along. After it did, the state weighted the bids to ensure that the UI won, although there were eight lower bids to provide space. House Speaker Bruce Newcomb also summoned committee members to his office to meet with him and Roy Eiguren, a lawyer-lobbyist and former UI student president who acted as a go-between on the project, and collected $500,000 in fees for his law firm.

Others central to the dealings included Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, also a former UI student president; his then chief of staff, Phil Reberger, who also served as a director of the UI Foundation, the State Building Authority that issued bonds for the building and Capital City Development Corp. that arranged tax-subsidized parking; and Bob Hoover, the UI president who resigned after the deal imploded "Enron-style," as a UI official previously warned Hoover it could.

Aside from Hoover, those involved in the various fixes that kept the project alive are acting as if the scandal will blow over, and leave them untouched. And the deal's complexity and public apathy will contribute to that.

Idaho, however, is no longer the cheap but innocent Mississippi of the Northwest it has been. As the Idaho Place saga reveals, it is now a place where a handful of powerful people can do what they want, without regard for proper procedure and at public expense. It is a place where Huey Long and Edwin Edwards would feel right at home. -- J.F.

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