Harrison breaks ballot bind

Posted: Thursday, Jul 17, 2008 - 10:34:18 pm PDT
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By RYAN SHELTON
Staff writer 

Mayor stops stalemate to send fee hike to voters

COEUR d'ALENE -- Kootenai County voters will have one more decision to make when they hit the polls this November.

A ballot measure to give voters the power to decide whether to increase local road funding by raising vehicle registration fees was resurrected this week after being voted down in early July.

Harrison Mayor Josephine Prophet broke a tie vote at a City Council meeting Tuesday to allow the proposed fee increase to appear on November ballots. The council previously voted against the measure.

Joe Wuest, Lakes Highway Division road supervisor, said Harrison's vote was the measure's only roadblock.

"We need help with our roadways," Wuest said. "This will allow for the voters to decide."

The city councils of Coeur d'Alene, Athol, Rathdrum and Hayden already approved allowing the measure to appear on the ballots.

The local option fee -- a $24 rise in vehicle registration for 20 years -- would help fund additional road and highway maintenance in Kootenai County.

According to Idaho law, a ballot measure to increase registration fees must be approved by either a two-thirds majority vote of county commissioners or by written requests from city councils and the governing boards of all four local highway jurisdictions.

Rick Currie, chairman of the Kootenai County Commission, said he couldn't support putting the issue on the November ballot because the proposed jail expansion will already be on it.

"The more items you put on a ballot, the better chance everything is going to fail," he has said previously.

The Harrison vote came just one day prior to Gov. Butch Otter's Coeur d'Alene visit, where he made the case that an additional $240 million is needed annually to maintain and expand Idaho's aging transportation infrastructure. Increasing vehicle registration rates statewide was one method Otter suggested as a component to his plan.

Prior to Tuesday's re-vote, Prophet said the Harrison City Council voted down the measure because of the governor's intentions to enact a similar, statewide fee increase.

"The bottom line is that, even though we don't like everything about the measure, the voters should be the ones who decide," Prophet said.