Letters from the West
Energy and environmental news from across the West
Energy and environmental news from across the West
Energy and environmental news from across the West
Energy and environmental news from across the West
Crapo didn’t like that the measure lifted the bipartisan spending caps and did not include budget reforms, said his spokesman, Robert Sumner.
“Rushing through a spending package denies members of Congress a real opportunity to debate and consider how to prioritize important investments and programs.,” Sumner said. “As a member of the Budget Committee, he continues to advocate for critical fiscal reforms.”
Simpson, who served as House speaker in Idaho when Risch was Senate pro tem, said the pair have had many disagreements, including Risch’s 2010 surprise turnabout on the Boulder-White Clouds. The congressman said he expects they will get past this dispute as well.
Meanwhile, the headlines have focused on Risch.
Addressing the Andrus rivalry, Minton said Risch has only made one public statement about the former governor in the last 25 years and it was upon Andrus’ death in 2017.
“Gov. Andrus was one of the most accomplished, successful and masterful political figures I have worked with,” Risch said at that time. “He had the judgment and strength to take matters where he wanted them to go. Vicki and I extend our condolences to Carol and the Andrus family — they are in our prayers.”
Risch “meant that when it was said,” Minton said, “and his feelings have not changed.”
Rocky Barker: 208-377-6484, @RockyBarker
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The two controversial Texas brothers who have bought thousands of acres of Idaho forest land weren’t listed as a part of the coalition that successfully carried a trespassing bill to the governor’s desk.
The Wilks brothers were involved. But they weren’t the driving force, said House Speaker Scott Bedke.
“To attribute this trespassing bill to the Wilks brothers is not completely accurate,” Bedke said.
The bill updates three different sections of Idaho trespass law. It revises private property notice requirements and increases trespassing penalties. Law enforcement and sportsmen’s groups have lingering questions about the measure, and lawmakers are waiting to see whether Gov. Butch Otter will veto the bill before they end the session this week.
Critics sought the entire session to pin the bill on Dan and Farris Wilks, the Texas billionaires who have angered hunters, ATV riders, campers and local officials in central Idaho after they closed off 172,000 acres of forest they bought in 2016. The land was already private property for years, but hunters and others had enjoyed access to it and the network of roads running through it under previous owners Boise Cascade and Potlatch Corp.
Initially, the Wilkses closed down logging, hunting and canceled leases with Valley County to main roads that provided access to snowmobile trails on public lands. They later worked out a deal with the county and Idaho snowmobilers that reopened some access. And the brothers made news again earlier this month when they put 54,000 acres in Idaho up for sale.
But a 2017 video showing a run-in between a security guard and a Valley County recreationalist on the public Clear Creek Road reinforced the view that the brothers were not good neighbors.
Rep. Terry Gestrin, R-Donnelly, was a strong supporter of the trespassing bill. He said his constituents aren’t happy with the Wilkses, and if the bill was seen as solely protecting them, he couldn’t have supported it.
“I didn’t appreciate what the Wilkses did either,” Gestrin said. “I told Justin (Wilks, Farris’ son) this isn’t Texas.”
But it is private land, and farmers, ranchers and other large landowners have complained for years about the mixed-up and toothless set of rules and laws around trespassing. Bedke said many of his neighbors have been trying to get him to address the problem for several years.
He had talked previously to Farris Wilks about access issues. But, he said, other landowners, ranchers and farmers also sought legislation to fix the current laws.
“My neighbors don’t know who the Wilks brothers are,” said the Oakley Republican rancher.
In 2017, the various groups that had been considering legislation came together and met with legislative leadership, said Russ Hendricks, director of governmental affairs for the Idaho Farm Bureau.
“They told us to go ahead for this year,” Hendricks said.
The Wilks brothers’ lobbyists in 2017, John Foster and Kate Haas, also approached the trespass group, Hendricks said.
“We visited with them and they said they were working on it too,” Hendricks said.
Rep. Judy Boyle, R-Midvale, had just come off of spearheading legislation to reform the state’s oil and gas law, and now would lead the trespassing effort in the House. She often had been in conflict with Foster, who then represented Alta Mesa, the main oil and gas driller in the state.
After the July 24 security guard confrontation, where Foster had handled the Texas landowners’ response, Boyle called Justin Wilks. She said she told him she could not work with Foster and that his public statements on the confrontation could hurt the efforts of other private property owners to get a trespass bill passed.
“They had become the boogeyman,” Boyle said.
In January, Jonathan Oppenheimer of the Idaho Conservation League said Foster told him he was not working on the trespass bill. Instead Suzanne Budge, who had worked closely with Boyle on her oil and gas legislation the year before, was the lobbyist for the Wilkses.
Foster is still listed as the lobbyist for DF Development, a Wilks company. He declined comment for this report, as did Budge.
Budge signed her name to a list of 33 Idaho Property Rights Coalition members — the main group that sought the bill. But there, she represented the Idaho Petroleum Marketers & Convenience Store Association and the National Federation of Independent Business.
Budge sat and conferred with Gary Allen, a Boise attorney who helped present the legislation, during the bill’s House and Senate committee hearings. She never testified before either committee.
Attorney Kahle Becker, who described himself as a sportsman, filed several public records requests seeking to learn who paid Allen, who reportedly drafted the legislation.
On the day that the House cleared the way for the bill’s final passage, Allen released a letter saying he worked with Boyle and the Senate sponsor Mark Harris, R-Soda Springs. He also registered as a lobbyist for the Idaho Property Rights Coalition.
Becker said the earlier lack of transparency made critics like him skeptical. And, he said, the Wilkses’ role was larger than it seemed because of Budge.
“She was at the center of all of it,” he said.
Rocky Barker: 208-377-6484, @RockyBarker
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Sen. Jim Risch’s late-night paroxysm on the Senate floor to keep Cecil Andrus’ name off of Idaho's White Clouds Wilderness he helped create shocked almost everyone.
The effort appears to have failed, giving Risch’s longtime political rival, who died last year, the last word. No matter what happens from now on, Risch’s temper tantrum will always be a part of his narrative.
President Donald Trump signed the omnibus spending bill Friday that included Republican Rep. Mike Simpson’s provision to add Andrus’ name to the iconic area in Central Idaho he devoted his career to preserve. Risch had gotten the Senate to vote for a correction that would need House approval later – approval that will not come because of Simpson’s objection.
What’s surprising is that Risch did not do it quietly and effectively.
But to understand why the powerful senator and former Idaho governor got to the place where he would threaten a government shutdown over such a small matter, you have to understand the politics of Idaho in the 1980s. Risch, as president pro tem of the Senate, and Andrus, as governor, fought vicious battles over education, taxes and power.
As soon as Andrus took office for his third term in 1986, he put out a dramatically higher education budget in an effort to make up for deep cuts made during the recession in the early 1980s. Risch and Republicans had largely gotten their way with former Gov. John Evans and now they were facing a tough, relentless Democrat.
Andrus used the press and speeches statewide to pressure Republicans, and in response Risch and his caucus upped their own education spending to be just slightly higher than what Andrus proposed.
“Andrus could be mean and nasty behind the scenes, but what we saw was a congenial, open leader,” said Chuck Malloy, now a political columnist for Idaho Politics Weekly and in the 1980s the political editor of the Post Register in Idaho Falls. “In so many ways Risch and Andrus were alike.”
The big difference was Andrus was extremely media savvy. His folksy Orofino logger image came through individually with voters, and through television and press reports.
He had already played on the national stage as Interior secretary under President Jimmy Carter, going toe-to-toe with Alaskan politicians such as Republican Rep. Don Young and Gov. Jay Hammond, who got a wilderness named after him in the same omnibus spending bill Thursday night. Convincing Carter to use the power play of proclaiming 55 million acres as a national monument with the signing of a pen, to force them to come to the table and finish the Alaska Lands Act, had prepared him to play hardball with a Republican Legislature in Idaho that always had the voting edge.
Risch came off as partisan and only interested in winning, which cost him. He lost his Boise seat to Democrat Mike Burkett in 1988 by a wide margin. He didn’t return to the Senate until 1995, after Andrus left.
They might have had a lot in common, but when they went head-to-head, Andrus usually came out on top. More important, they just didn’t like each other.
Andrus would ridicule Risch every chance he got, and it often got him big laughs. I remember specifically two instances.
The first was in 2013, when he was speaking to the Idaho Environmental Forum and Risch’s name came up over his successful effort to quash Republican Rep. Mike Simpson’s Boulder-White Clouds bill in 2010.
“That short little son of a bitch. Oops! I didn’t mean to call him short,” Andrus said. In all the years that I saw Risch speak, I never saw him attack Andrus the same way.
In 2015, Andrus and Rick Johnson were talking about Simpson’s renewed efforts to revive the bill that later was pushed through Congress with Risch’s critical support.
“If I ever agreed with Risch, say we’re both wrong,” Andrus said.
Andrus never gave Risch the credit he was due for finally helping get Simpson’s bill through the Senate, a final slight that must have continued eating away at Risch.
“Even from beyond the grave he could make Jim Risch look vindictive and stupid,” said Marc Johnson, Andrus’ former chief of staff.
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Cecil Andrus saved Idaho’s White Cloud Mountains from an open-pit mine, and it helped him get elected governor in 1970.
Now, seven months after his death at age 85, the White Clouds Wilderness will carry his name.
The spending bill that passed the Senate late Thursday and is now before President Trump includes a provision to rename 90,769 acres of craggy peaks, mountain lakes and forests the Cecil D. Andrus-White Clouds Wilderness. It passed despite a last-minute effort by Andrus’ long time political rival Jim Risch to pull it from the bill.
Idaho Rep. Mike Simpson led the fight to protect the area as part of a 275,000-acre wilderness package that President Barack Obama signed in 2015.
“It is only fitting that this iconic land in Idaho is forever tied to the man who dedicated his public service to protecting it,” Simpson said.
Andrus fought to stop Asarco Corp. from replacing iconic Castle Peak with an open-pit molybdenum mine in the heart of the White Cloud Mountains during his successful campaign for governor in 1970. That effort led to the establishment of the Sawtooth National Recreation Area in 1972.
“Dad viewed the White Clouds as one of Idaho’s crown jewels,” said Tracy Andrus, Cecil’s daughter. “To receive this, he would have been honored and humbled.”
Andrus went on to become Idaho’s longest-serving governor, with a stint as the secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior in between his four terms.
As Interior secretary under President Jimmy Carter in 1980, Andrus engineered public-land protections for 25 percent of Alaska, including 104.3 million acres of new parks, wilderness and wildlife refuges.
Tracy Andrus said the Andrus family will be “eternally grateful to Rep. Simpson for making this happen.”
Rocky Barker: 208-377-6484, @RockyBarker
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