I’m back in familiar territory — in the State of Confusion.
The Idaho Statesman is reporting that next Tuesday night, the Eagle City Council will vote to change the makeup of its urban renewal agency. The proposal is to have the newly constructed agency composed of the Eagle mayor and council plus two additional commissioners they appoint. According to the news/views/skewspaper article, the purpose of the reconstruction is to give the city more oversight over the agency.
But in two separate decisions, the Idaho Supreme Court has held that the urban renewal agency is not the alter ego of the city in which it resides. So if Eagle goes through with its plan, if the new URA is made up of city officials, exactly how do these city officials exercise more oversight over the URA without the URA being the alter ego of the city?
Welcome to my state.
Eagle is a suburb of Boise. In that neighborhood people tend to do pretty much whatever they want regardless of silly things such as laws and court decisions. So no surprise here. The post, and the proposed action, does raise issues such as conflict of interest and there being a quorum of the council. Some would describe this type of action, although aparently well intended, as job security for lawyers.
Comment by Joe Six-Pack — January 20, 2012 @ 9:09 am
There is something about the state of Idaho, you can love it and hate it at the same time. Once you realize there is no ‘sense’ in Idaho, one is able to care less about the confusion and focus on the positive even if it is only one spud at a time. In this case the city of Eagle probably doesn’t even know or care that the Idaho Supreme Court has anything to do with their mission. Probably a good thing because they most likely could not make any sense out of it either.
Comment by Stebbijo — January 20, 2012 @ 5:10 pm
I’m the one that’s confused. Idaho Code allows what Eagle is doing when it says
What I can’t understand is how the legislature could pass a law which essentially requires separate and possibly even conflicting behaviors from the same people. I think that’s what Joe Six-Pack was getting at. With that in mind, I don’t see how the Court would be able to reconcile their behaviors.
Comment by Bill — January 20, 2012 @ 5:26 pm
They could patchwork the statutes to fix them. Or they could toss them all out.
Comment by Dan — January 20, 2012 @ 5:56 pm
Wow –
I don’t think some people in their positions know how to read or proof their work – it is the only explanation. Our legislature drafts bills at a whim to suit various projects – future and present. The Court cannot reconcile a mistake, they have to admit that there is one, first. Seriously, this clause defies all common sense, but you have to understand that Idaho does not have any ‘sense’, and then you will be able to accept how business is done in the state of confusion called Idaho – by design.
Comment by Stebbijo — January 20, 2012 @ 6:54 pm
……..”the local governing body may appoint and designate itself to be the board of commissioners of the urban renewal agency,”…..
or
…..”in all respects when acting as an urban renewal”……….. “entirely separate and distinct from the municipality”…….
Can you REALLY have it both ways?
Comment by Ancientemplar — January 20, 2012 @ 7:25 pm
Ancientemplar,
In the real world, no, you can’t have it both ways. This one paragraph exemplifies what is wrong with the existing urban renewal laws in Idaho. I don’t know if the wording was composed by snake oil salesmen or by some lobbying organization such as the Association of Idaho Cities, but whoever put it together envisioned a horse and produced a hippopotamus. When wording like that is put into law, it makes the grifters very very happy. It doesn’t help when you have legislators who refuse to accept that some of the people in their constituency are the aforementioned grifters.
Comment by Bill — January 21, 2012 @ 6:53 am
Janus, the Roman God with a single head and two faces, opposite, should be the logo for all Urban Renewal Agencies, or maybe the Supreme Court. Yeah, I like the application to the Supreme Court.
Comment by Gary Ingram — January 21, 2012 @ 11:08 am
Urban Renewal is nothing more than a “gateway drug” to corruption. It is a complete violation of the Idaho Constitution authorized by the Idaho Legislature to cut citizens out of process of spending their property tax dollars.
It is wrong and anyone with a basic understanding of UR knows they offer nothing but the ability to go into debt without a bond election for all manner of goofy pork projects that would never pass muster with voters.
Comment by paul — January 30, 2012 @ 10:17 am
I like it: “gateway drug”! I agree, Paul, because human frailties, like greed, are all too real. And when a system of government is set up to allow non-elected, appointed cronies to handle massive amounts of taxpayer dollars, human character flaws come to the fore.
Comment by mary — January 30, 2012 @ 11:47 am
Paul,
The analogy of UR to a gateway drug is frighteningly close.
Gateway drugs are often distributed by those whose intention is to lure victims into addiction and then profit from the victims’ eventual misery.
By the time the victim realizes he’s been snared, the pusher is long gone (meaning beyond the reach of the law).
People who become addicted develop a tolerance for their drug of choice. They need more and more to achieve the same high.
People who become addicted develop a social indifference to the people around them, because they become so intently focused on getting more and more of their drug of choice. They eventually turn to indiscriminately taking from their friends and acquaintances to get the money they need to feed their addiction.
In some circumstances, the pusher gains control over those who could put a stop to the crime — the legislators and law enforcement. When the pushers own the enforcers, there is no enforcement, and the enforcers become the protectors of the pushers.
Yep — a pretty good analogy for some of Idaho’s urban renewal agencies.
Comment by Bill — January 30, 2012 @ 12:53 pm
http://www.tetonvalleynews.net/opinion/where-did-the-money-go/article_96e58e3c-0594-11e1-87a8-001cc4c03286.html
Comment by Dan — January 30, 2012 @ 1:31 pm
Dan, great article! OMG, doesn’t this statement about the Driggs URA sound like what our LCDC is doing?:
Tony Berns keeps a hand-written ledger and says there are no computerized records of their expenditures?
Comment by mary — January 30, 2012 @ 2:23 pm
Mary, I would add that his filing system is questionable as it took him hours to locate check register pages Dan requested. What multi-million dollar business operates in this fashion? By the way, I should mention the odd chart of accounts whose numbers never appear on any of the register pages.
Comment by Susie Snedaker — February 2, 2012 @ 9:44 am