Our View: Vote yes, four times on constitutional admendments | Editorial | Idaho Statesman
Idaho’s publicly owned airports, community hospitals and city-run electric utilities need the flexibility to serve their customers and adapt to fluid markets.
On Tuesday, voters should grant that flexibility. They should vote yes on three complicated but important constitutional amendments to allow these public entities to finance projects and purchases without voter approval.
The amendments appear a la carte on the ballot: House Joint Resolution 4 covers hospitals’ ability to go into debt on equipment or property; HJR 5 covers airport projects, such as runways, hangars or terminals; HJR 7 would allow utilities to complete capital projects or sign long-term contracts to purchase power.
Still, there are some unifying threads:
Æ The amendments would not grant public entities a blank check to commit property tax dollars to long-term debt, which now requires a two-thirds voter supermajority. These debts would be financed strictly by consumers: by patient bills, by air travelers’ fees, by power bills.
Æ The amendments would allow smart investments — when the need arises, or when a good opportunity comes along. An airport could move nimbly to improve a terminal to attract a new air carrier. A hospital would be able to replace an aging CT scanner at a discount — because it would have the go-ahead to close a deal quickly.
Æ These public entities would remain answerable to voters. The electorate can always boot out a hospital board that makes a bad investment, or a city council that approves an ill-advised airport project. That is the most fundamental form of accountability.
Æ The critics — such as Dave Frazier, a photographer and author of the Boise Guardian blog — say the amendment will take away the right to a vote. That argument doesn’t wash. Voters have not been going to the polls to approve new X-ray equipment purchases or power contracts, and we don’t sense voters clamoring for this anyway. The prospect of a public vote was raised only when Frazier went the state Supreme Court to fight a Boise airport parking garage project, and won.
That decision now throws a lot of projects into unnecessary limbo. On Tuesday, voters should follow the bipartisan lead of the Legislature, and allow the people who run public entities to do their jobs.
UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO TUITION
Are you angry about rising college costs at Idaho universities? We get it. But voters should check their angst at the door and vote yes on Senate Joint Resolution 101.
This amendment would allow the University of Idaho to charge tuition, which is now allowed at other Idaho universities. (The U of I levies fees that are comparable to the other schools, but none of this money can go into academics.)
This amendment gives a cash-strapped U of I budgeting flexibility, and that makes sense.
I'm not sure I agree with this stand because I haven't read the proposed amendments, but I think their points are valid from what I see here.
If U of I's fees can't go into academics, what do they go into?
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