Gem State terminator

BOISE - A vocal gadfly who convinced the Idaho Supreme Court to stop Boise from building an airport parking garage is now fighting to kill three proposed constitutional amendments aimed at undermining his efforts.

David Frazier wants voters this Nov. 2 to reject measures that would let local governments enter longterm debt agreements without holding an election, provided that taxpayers aren't on the hook to pay off the debt.

Frazier is convinced officials are grabbing for power and cutting out voters with these amendments, which have support of Idaho cities and counties, the Idaho Hospital Association, utilities and economic development groups.

"Public money is public money," Frazier said. "It's our money, we the people. Therefore, we have a right to determine how it should be spent in cases of debt."

One amendment would help Idaho's 20 publicly owned hospitals finance projects due to be paid off with hospital revenue.

A second deals with municipal airports like Boise's. Again, to avoid a vote, airport revenues - not taxes - would back the bonds sold to build parking garages or terminals.

With the third, Idaho's 11 city-owned utilities including in Idaho Falls could sign longterm power contracts with the Bonneville Power Administration, then pass on charges to customers through their electricity bills.

Frazier is just one guy, a rotund ex-newspaper photographer from Boise with a highly-opinionated website.

Still, much of official Idaho is paying attention, because it was his lawsuit in the state Supreme Court in 2006 that put an abrupt halt to Boise's push to expand its airport parking garage. Justices ruled such projects had to go to a vote, because they weren't emergencies.

In 1889, framers of Idaho's Constitution decided residents should almost always weigh in before local governments went into debt. Pre-statehood exceptions included emergency repairs to ditches, problems that in 19th-century, agrarian Idaho just couldn't wait.

Now, government leaders and business groups behind the three amendments are aggressively making the case that the original restrictions - drafted when Benjamin Harrison was president and the Western frontier was just closing - are inappropriate in a 21st-century economy.

Boise Mayor David Bieter, clearly frustrated by Frazier's ardent opposition, contends that projects financed by so-called revenue bonds historically never went to a public vote - not until 2006 and Frazier's constitutional objections.

"We seek to return this to what the situation had been," Bieter said.

Frazier's take: "Nothing has changed, the Constitution and the law have always been the same. It was just ignored."

Boise is spending $60,000 in airport funds on voter education, while Idaho Falls Power spent $2,000 on literature for its 26,000 customers. But governments must limit efforts to unbiased education, not advocacy, because they're using public funds.

"We're doing everything we can legally do to get that word out there," said Van Ashton, an Idaho Falls Power spokesman.

Will Hart, director of the Idaho Consumer-Owned Utilities Association, said he fears anti-government sentiment this election could sour voters on the amendments, before they even consider their merits.

"Folks are just unhappy generally with government," Hart said. "That's the battle we're fighting more than anything else."

Majority Republicans in the 2010 Legislature voted overwhelmingly to put the three measures on November's ballot.

But in June, delegates including tea-party-leaning Republicans at the Idaho State GOP Convention added a plank to their platform opposing all of them.

North Idaho delegate Larry Spencer, of Spirit Lake, who proposed the plank, insists the amendments could allow local governments to pursue unnecessary projects.

"Do you want to end up with everything around airports being government-owned and off the tax rolls, rather than privately owned and paying taxes?" Spencer said.

Meanwhile, proponents such as the Idaho Hospital Association are airing TV ads suggesting Idaho's health care system will be more vulnerable to federal meddling if the constitutional changes go down to defeat.

Hospital Association director Steve Millard said freedom to pursue longterm projects unburdened by an unwieldy vote mandate will let publicly owned hospitals react nimbly to changes in federal rules that require substantial investment.

It's a complex argument, something Millard concedes isn't easily explained in a 30-second sound bite.

"That's why we're doing the hard-hitting ads," Millard said. "If it gets people to the website so they can get educated, we think we've accomplished part of our goal. Our main goal is to get it passed."