by Logan Finney, Idaho Reports

The House Resources and Conservation Committee unanimously advanced a bill Monday that would empower the governor of Idaho to use state firefighting resources on federal lands and then seek repayment in court.

Rep. Judy Boyle, R-Midvale, presented House Bill 389 to the committee. She said the Idaho Department of Lands could better manage potentially catastrophic fires that start on federal land, rather than waiting for federal agencies to get to work.

“IDL puts the fires out. Their average is less than 10 acres,” Boyle said. “The federal government is lucky if they can put it out when it’s a hundred thousand acres.”

Idaho saw several major blazes during the 2024 fire season, including the Wapiti and Lava fires.

The state taking over initial fire responses is “the only way we’re going to be able to get rid of this craziness,” Boyle said. “When there is a lightning strike in one tree, instead of sitting around for five or six days until the fire grows and grows and grows before they go put it out, we can just send IDL out to put the fire out while it’s still burning the one tree.”

A few Idaho loggers who work on fire management jobs spoke in favor of the bill.

“The loggers do not want to sit down on a fire and spend the rest of our summer there. We want to suppress these fires and go back to logging,” Mark Mahon said for the Associated Logging Contractors.

“If it affects the health, safety, and lives of our citizens, then it’s within our power to do something,” Boyle said in the hearing. “I live not very far from the Lava Fire, and it went on for about a week and nobody did a thing. It was on Forest Service land.”

The bill would authorize the state to charge firefighting costs to what is called a deficiency warrant and then recoup those costs later from the federal government. Deficiency warrants are an existing way to pay after the fact for fires on state lands, not federal lands.

“I agree with the whole theory, and I want them to put a fire out as quick as possible,” said Rep. John Vander Woude, R-Nampa. “I’m trying to figure out the logistics of how this works.”

Boyle emphasized that the policy would fall under police powers that are constitutionally reserved to the state.

“We direct the Attorney General to initiate a civil action to try to recover those costs from the federal government,” Boyle explained. “I would hope with this new administration that we would be quite successful, that they would be willing to pay. We can’t continue to let our people lose their livelihoods, all their property, and all our watersheds and wildlife.”

Jonathan Oppenheimer with the Idaho Conservation League was at a different committee meeting and was not able to testify on the bill.

“It’s unconstitutional,” Oppenheimer told Idaho Reports after the vote.

Oppenheimer said the legislation would conflict with the complex master fire agreement between state and federal agencies which governs responsibility for wildfire management.

“The feds could say, ‘This isn’t part of our agreement, we’re not going to pay it at all,’” Oppenheimer said, or there could be questions of liability if the state sends firefighters onto federal lands without proper authorization.

The bill moves to the House for consideration. It must also pass the Senate to become law.

As reported by the Idaho Capital Sun, legislative budget writers set aside less money in the upcoming budget for fighting wildfires than costs to the state last year. That budget also does not include funding for the shared stewardship program that identifies mutual priorities and forest management opportunities between the federal government and state.

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