For the week of August 15 - 21, 2001

Contempt for 
Idaho’s Constitution

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For members of Idaho’s Board of Land Commissioners, taking the state oath—solemnly swearing to "support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Idaho" and to "faithfully discharge the duties … "—is just so much lip service.

When doing state business, the board reverts to making up "law" as it goes along.

Twice in as many years, the board has lawlessly tried to thwart the bane of its existence, Hailey gadfly conservationist Jon Marvel, who persists in doing the unthinkable—he follows a law that the Land Board prefers to abuse and ignore.

Marvel’s sin is that he and his Western Watersheds Project bid higher on leases for grazing and farming land held in trust by the land board. The board is required by the state Constitution to "secure the maximum long-term financial return" to benefit Idaho schools on leases and sales. But the land board wants none of Marvel’s winning bids. The commissioners resent Marvel’s retiring the land from farming or grazing and preserving it for environmental purposes.

So the land board has decreed that trust land should be reserved for grazing and farming, not for Marvel’s environmental conservation, even though Marvel’s higher bids are what the Constitution requires the land board to accept.

This tactic was declared unconstitutional by the Idaho Supreme Court in April 1999 after Marvel sued, and yet land board commissioners have just revived the discredited rule by fiat again, in effect snubbing the state’s high court and surely inviting another Marvel lawsuit against the state.

What makes this torturous twisting of law to sabotage Marvel’s totally legal goals so unspeakably arrogant is that it’s accomplished with the assistance of Idaho’s top law enforcement official and principal lawyer, Attorney General Alan Lance, a member of the land board, who contemptuously shrugs off the Supreme Court order.

To legitimize their ad hoc attempt to subvert the state Constitution, Lance and his land board colleagues presumably will badger the state Legislature into enacting new guidelines for leasing and selling state trust land.

If legislators join in this clumsy scheme to handcuff the rights of one man, then Idaho’s Republican hierarchy will be complicit in a mean-spirited decision that will only punish state schools with less lucrative land deals and would legalize state favoritism for ranchers and farmers who want free enterprise limited for their benefit.

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.