Ever Onward Podcast

Are Idaho’s Public Lands at Risk? Rep. James Petzke | Ever Onward - Ep. 123

• Ahlquist. • Season 1 • Episode 123

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In part two of our public lands series, we’re joined by Idaho State Representative James Petzke and Idaho Wildlife Federation Executive Director Nick Fasciano for a deeper conversation on one of the most important issues shaping Idaho’s future.

Public lands are more than just places to recreate—they’re a defining part of why people choose to live, work, and stay in Idaho. From the Frank Church Wilderness to the Sawtooths, Clearwater, and Owyhees, these landscapes drive quality of life, economic growth, and the culture of the state.

In this episode, we go beyond the surface to talk about what’s really happening:
• The recent federal land sale conversations and what they mean for Idaho
• Why public lands are one of the biggest drivers of population growth
• The challenge of funding and maintaining non-motorized trails
• The role of the legislature in protecting access and balancing priorities
• State endowment lands, recreation access, and long-term decision making

We also explore the tension between access and preservation, the realities of policymaking, and what it actually takes to protect these places for future generations.

If you care about Idaho, the outdoors, or the future of growth in the West—this conversation matters.

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Welcome And Series Context

SPEAKER_01

Welcome to the Ever Onward Podcast. Uh a refresher for the these episodes we're doing on public lands. Um last week we heard from Dan Waugh and uh Nick Frasiano from the Idaho Wildlife Federation. Um as a second uh in this series, we will have a guest today, Representative James Petzky, on with Nick. And I excited to talk to James. James is an unbelievable guy. He even though he looks like he's 16 years old, he's actually uh one of one of our representatives from Meridian in the legislature, does a great job, one of the thought leaders, and and and really respect him a lot and appreciate his service in the House of Representatives. Uh he represents District 21 in Meridian. Um he is a Republican and uh serves on the uh JFAC committee, which uh as everyone knows is the real important appropriations committee in the uh in the legislature. He also serves on resources and transportation committees. Before uh serving in the legislature in 2022, he was an entrepreneur who built uh and sold multiple e-commerce businesses. He's a graduate of Boise State and Harvard University and uh very uh aware of the issues that are facing the state on public lands, and will be a great guest to talk about the politics in the legislature and going forward with public lands. Again, I'll be joined by uh Nick Frasiano on this episode. Nick is an avid hunter, uh he is the uh executive director of the Idaho Wildlife Federation, uh he's a uh very active publisher of articles and the former head of the North American Venture Capital Immerser. Uh a great co-host, uh appreciate both of them and hope you enjoy today. Um as always, uh appreciate you listening. And um uh please uh like, share, and and follow us on whatever uh channels you're on to listen to this, and uh hope you enjoy this uh second part of uh Public Lands in Idaho. James, thanks for joining, Nick and I. Yeah, no, thanks for having me. You're smiling like the hallway. You're you're a little bit more uh like happy and cheerful now that the session's over.

SPEAKER_03

You know, you get a few days out of the session and everything just totally it just feels so much better. Take the tie off, take the jacket off. It's yeah, a lot less stress.

SPEAKER_01

I want to start there. Thank you for your service. So, Representative Petskys from um Meridian District 21. 21. Actually, we're in uh district twenty one right now. I live, I mean, two blocks that way. So you've been serving for how many years? Four years now. Four years. And and ironically, with all the turnover down there, like you're one of the kind you're on JFAC now already. You're kind of one of the big decision makers down there.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, believe it or not, I am uh tied for second place in seniority on JFAC, which is unbelievable, right? Like so think about that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. So JFAC I've only been there for four years. The appropriations committee, like the biggest thing there is, and you're you're that far up in seniority. Pretty wild. Well, and it was a wild session. We would we don't want to go down that rabbit hole with you too much today. But we'll talk about fun stuff today. The fun, yeah. The the what we what we wanted to have you on for Nick uh suggested you to come on. We're we just uh want to talk public lands on a couple of these uh episodes. Um little background, it's just it's so important to us. This will be the second part in uh two-part series. We had Dan um do the first one, but uh he's like, Well, we gotta get James on. Yeah. Like, well, let's do it. So thank you for being on. Do you want to start by telling us a little bit about you and your background and why this is such an important thing for you?

SPEAKER_03

Absolutely. Yeah. So I grew up in Haley, so a couple hours uh from here. Uh, you know, the Wood River Valley area, obviously big outdoor rec community, right? Like everybody skis, everybody hunts, everybody does everything, right? It's just a it's an amazing place to grow up. Um, so grew up there, uh got into hunting pretty early on, um, totally fell in love with that. That's been my my big thing um pretty much throughout my whole life and uh ended up building a business around it later on. Um but I came to Boise for for Boise State and I've stuck around ever since because it's just it's hard to leave Idaho, you know. It's a it's a great place to be. And I think the main thing that has kept me here has been public lands. I mean, I spend so much of my life on public lands. Um I'll I'm also really into trail running, uh, run a lot of uh big trail races.

Trail Running Reset During Session

SPEAKER_01

You were telling me a crazy story. Like you left on a Friday and went down and did like a hundred mile run. It was a 50. Yeah. It was only 50 minutes.

SPEAKER_02

I only did 50 miles. I'm even talking to this guy.

SPEAKER_01

Didn't you like go down on a Friday, do the run, come back and made it back for the session of the Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

So this this was uh in February, and so I left on Friday. I'll I I missed uh, I think two votes on the floor. Um, drove eight hours down to Moab because you know we don't have any trail races in Idaho in the winter, of course, because I mean this year we maybe could have, but yeah, you know, normally in a normal winter, it's pretty hard to have a trail race in Idaho, but down in Moab, you know, places like that they can do them in the winter. And so uh I drove eight hours on Friday, pulled into camp at about 9 30 at night, popped a tent up on my truck, slept, woke up at 5 a.m., ran 50 miles, got right back in the car, and drove home to make it back in time for session. So yeah, as insane as that sounds, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

It probably was the best break from mentally from the session you could get. Total reset. What was your what was your route down there? Just interestingly enough.

SPEAKER_03

We spent a lot of time down there. So oh man, so it I'd have to look at the map, but uh, it was on so on the way to into town, about five or six miles before town, you turn right and there was a there was a campground that we that was our starting point. And then we wrote, we didn't actually go into any of the parks. We were outside of the parks the whole time, but um big, huge, like figure eight kind of loop um that covered 50 miles, you know, is it was a good run, and it had about 7,000 feet of elevation gain in it, too.

SPEAKER_01

It's an amazing part of the world that it's it's crazy, totally unique, you know. I uh after going down there for literally a couple decades, uh my my son wanted to do a helicopter tour and seeing it from the air and just looking at the different geo the just the geology within a 10 mile radius, literally. Like you have the big domes of of of Hell's Revenge, and then you have like uh arches right there, and it it's just crazy to see it. And then the LaSalle Mountains right there. It's it's it's an unbelievable place to go. That's great.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Fun, fun place for sure.

SPEAKER_02

You you hit on something there that I I think we wanted to explore a little. So you you'd mentioned that um you know you came to Boise and public lands are kind of what kept you um in Idaho. I mean, I think a lot of play people um you know have have options, right? We can live a lot of different places. Um you're you're choosing to stay here because of these. So like how does that kind of like inform your thinking? I mean, because we were thinking about it both from people who who choose to stay here, but also people who are coming in, right? And sort of just how it how it helps propel the um the job market and the talent pool, which is the availability of all this stuff.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, no, great, great question. It's something I've talked about a lot because I I really believe that the public lands are the thing that they're the thing that are driving people to be here, to either move here or to stay here. If you think about what's unique about Idaho, right? Like we've sure, we've got a lot of great things going for us right now, right? Like we've got the micron development, that's fantastic. Boys you say, football's awesome, you know, a lot of great things, but none of them are like truly unique in the country, with the exception of public lands. We have some of the most incredible public lands that you will find. I mean, certainly in the lower 48, we have the largest wilderness area, right? We have the Frank Church wilderness, incredible wilderness area. You can get more remote in the middle of Idaho than you can anywhere else in the lower 48.

SPEAKER_01

Do you mind if we go through as we go? Because one thing we didn't get to last time. I I can tell you're gonna rattle these off, but but for people that are listening that haven't experienced things, let's talk about the Frank Church Wilderness.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

It's unbelievable. It is. And Maddie, why can you pull some of this stuff up as we go through it? So the Frank Church Wilderness, um, one of the largest wilderness areas in the lower 48.

SPEAKER_02

It is, yeah, the largest contiguous wilderness area in the lower 48. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And and talk about some of the things that I'll let you guys do your thing because you're the experts. I've just been there as a recreator.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I mean, I I can just give a quick overview and then you then you can jump in. I mean, you look you look at a map of of Idaho, and right there in the middle, you it is, you know, kind of mountain range to mountain range, the Frank Church uh River of No Return wilderness. It's um it's a federally desert designated wilderness area. It is incredible. Um pretty pretty much every species that can be hunted in Idaho you can find in the Frank Church. Uh the there's a few, you know, kind of a handful of airstrips that were grandfathered in, and that's kind of how people can get there. You can also find ways to drive or go horseback.

SPEAKER_01

But here's some data on it. So it's uh it's 2,366,000 acres in Idaho. Uh covers 2.4 million acres of roadless mountainous terrain across five national forests featuring 2,616 miles of trails, deep canyons, and 370 plus animal species. It's kind of what you just said.

SPEAKER_02

Yes, and it is some incredibly rugged, beautiful terrain. Yeah. Right. That that trail system that it's it's talking about there is is no joke. You need those things to get around. I mean, you you were talking it is it is some of the most rugged, beautiful country uh in America.

SPEAKER_03

Um and yeah, it's it's entirely wild. Yeah, and that and that trail system too, it honestly needs work, and thankfully we have great volunteers that are doing that work. That's one thing that I've been working for uh the last few years at the state level is we need some sort of funding mechanism for non-motorized trail maintenance in the state. We have a really great one for motorized trail maintenance, and that's through the the stickers that you buy if you have an ATV, a side-by-side, motorcycle, snowmobile, whatever, you have to buy a sticker, and that sticker price funds maintenance on trails for motorized trails, but we don't have the equivalent for non-motorized trails. So that's something that we need to work on because in a place like the Frank, man, you cannot get in there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Right.

SPEAKER_03

And when those trails get overgrown, which they are constantly growing, and you know, the nature's doing its thing, right? It's going to close those trails up if we don't maintain them. But man, that 2.6 million acres in the Frank, it is difficult to get in there. You've basically got three options, right? You can either fly in, there's a few remote airstrips, and that gets you to a different starting point somewhere in the middle of it. You can take a boat and you can float down the river, and obviously you could jump off at any point in there and get into there, or you could walk in on your feet, right? That's that's pretty much it. You can and you can use animals, and that helps obviously a lot too. Um, but man, it is hard to get in there. That is some rugged, rugged, but that's what makes it so so amazing and so special, right? Like there's nothing else like that. There's very few places like that in the entire world, let alone in the US.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, but there's always that tension. Sorry, I'm gonna cut you off. No, there's always that tension in wilderness between the the sort of the pristine nature of it and the accessibility, right? Like you need people to be able to enjoy it if we want to be able to continue with this stuff. And so having that trail system, I mean, I've I've I've been in there on trail hitches, and you know, the way that you cut trail is with either like a with a cross-cut saw, right? Or one of these, you know, fancy ninja things that comes out like a katana and you slice it through yourself. It's big work. And you get blowdown every year covering these trails, and the guides come through and help um slice them up and then you know in individual volunteers, but it's a lot of it's a lot of trail. Uh, it's absolutely necessary to get back there. And and you do need some level of accessibility for people to be able to enjoy it, and that's the only way that you maintain it.

SPEAKER_03

And I think there's an important point there too. Uh the difference between a wilderness area and like a regular national forest or national park. In a wilderness area, you are very restricted on what you're allowed to use in there. You can't run a chainsaw. Yeah, you can't use any kind of motor of any kind. So you can't do any kind of you know, motorized equipment to clear trails, and you can't, you can't even ride a bicycle to get in there. And there's just a lot more restrictions, and that's what makes it so pristine and so untouched. So again, that's you, you know, it's it's the it makes it more difficult to get in there, but that's what makes it so special. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Thanks for I I interrupted you, but I wanted some of the some we're talking about how beautiful it is, but for people listening, they're like, I want to I want to talk about some of these things. So thanks. You were you were gonna go down a list here, but Frank Church is probably what we're known for, right?

Idaho Wildernesses Worth The Trip

SPEAKER_03

Oh, I that's that's certainly one of the biggest one, right? And then you obviously you got places like the Sawtooth Wilderness. I mean, that's that one, that one's the more accessible one, right? Because you can you can drive right along that highway that and you can see all of it, you can go through Stanley, you can see it right there, and it's just incredible views. Uh, I've spent a ton of my life backpacking. I can't even tell you how many nights I've spent asleep in the sawtooth.

SPEAKER_01

Talk about I've I've been on several of those too, but let's talk through some of those because for for also for people that are new, this is more accessible. Yeah, you can buy a guide, you can you don't have to be a professional backpacker. There's a lot of couple day trips, day trips. Yeah, I I've taken a group of scouts in there a whole bunch of times. I mean, it it is unbelievably gorgeous, though. So a couple of the famous ones, what what what would you say if you're a beginner looking to go up into great question.

SPEAKER_03

So, I mean, those places, they're totally accessible. You can just do it, right? Like I grew up, I mean, I mean, I I we didn't have money growing up. My parents are school teachers, right? So we were, you know, using like thrift store backpacks and eating top ramen, and we would go, we'd just go walk in there and like places like the Alice Talksway loop is probably the most famous one. Yep, that one's incredible. It's an 18-mile loop that goes through a series of lakes that's just unbelievable. Um, and then uh Barron and Kramer lakes across Redfish. So if you're familiar with Redfish Lake, I know a lot of people are, you can obviously drive right to Redfish Lake. Incredible lake to recreate on. And then you can also take a boat, and it's basically a shuttle that takes you all the way across the lake to the other side. And at the other side, there's this trailhead that goes, and you can get on to Barron Lakes, Kramer Lakes, Saddleback Lakes, and a few others back there. Those are incredible spots. Um there's big backpack tricks dumping, don't get me wrong, you gotta you gotta be willing to to hike, you gotta be willing to put in some miles and climb some vertical, but man, those are cool spots back there.

SPEAKER_02

But the trails are there and the people are there, and so it's like, and and and you're right in the middle of if what you're if you're what you're into is just going off trail and exploring and exploring the woods, that's not too far from there either. Yeah, but that whole trail system, I mean, it can in the summer it Stanley comes alive with folks who are using those. Yeah, it's great.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Yeah. Um to talk a little bit more. So growing uh knowing where you grew up now, um it it it's a little different than kind of this side, you know, over here it's more a Waihe's McCall kind of West Mountain, Long Valley kind of stuff. What what are some of the highlights of growing up where you did over there, just so we we hear some of the other great things you had?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, of course, Sun the Sundalai Ski Resort, right? Like that was a great thing to have as a kid. Being a local there, you get, you know, again, we didn't have a ton of money growing up. My parents are teachers, right? But they did have a great program for local um students who were enrolled in the local school district could get discounted lift tickets. So I was able to grow up snowboarding uh, you know, in that area. And then, of course, the whole Sat Tooth National Recreation Area, which starts basically just north of Ketchum and then runs all the way uh up through Stanley. Incredible area. Uh, and that's where I did a lot of my hunting. So basically, you know, you start in Ketchum and you go north for for a lot of miles. Um, great area as well. And that that's a little bit more um rugged as well. You can really get into some of those. Um, the uh the Boulder White Clouds Wilderness is also right there. It runs just to the west of that. Um, and again, huge, huge tract of public land. The white clouds are incredible, amazing place. And you know, it's basically the other side of the Sawtooths, right? And like people, people, the the Sawtooths are kind of the they're like the Instagram picture-worthy destination, right? Like when people think of Idaho, they think of that picture, you know, from Redfish Lake looking at um, you know, those mountains right there, and that's an incredible place. But you go just to the other side of the highway and you go to the white clouds, man, it's it's just as pretty over there, and there's a lot less people. So some of those secrets, you know. Maybe I should be careful putting that out on the podcast, right? Yeah, be careful we don't want to blow up too many spots.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, it's it's it's always kind of the tension of like you don't want places to get loved to death, right? And so the but right we do have so many places. I mean, you're talking about rattling off. I mean, we've got Hell's Canyon, we've got the clear water, we've got like a you know, you could go up towards towards Priest Lake. Let's keep going on some of these.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. I think I think this is interesting. So Hell's Canyon, like and like the Seven Devils. I've been in there twice. And unbelievable terrain, the coolest lakes. You talk about fishing, you get up there in the Seven Devils with all those little mountain lakes, and you literally can just throw in a hook with a fly rod. Yeah, that didn't matter what it's on the hook, and you can catch fish all day. I can't wait till my grandkids are old enough to come go do some of those hikes. I think that's about seven or eight miles in from kind of the trailhead into the seven devils, so not horrible as far as getting in and out. Um, you know, you certainly would need to be prepared and ready to go because it's pretty rugged, but but uh but just beautiful. And then where else is you just you you rattled off a couple.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I mean, like I could have been uh it's near Hells Canyon, but you know, we have like the whole clear water up there. Oh, yeah, which is one of the most gorgeous places you're ever gonna see. The fishing's incredible. Um, it's it's more timbered, sort of that north country. I mean, I Idaho is functionally multiple different states when it comes to our topography.

SPEAKER_01

And pretty interesting elevations because you look at where you go down to Riggins and then you come back out, and then you get up, you get the the the Clearwater. I was just shocked in the middle of the winter, yeah, what the clear water was like, and getting up to then uh Dwarzack and that whole area is unbelievable. Yeah, Elk City, um crazy good stuff.

SPEAKER_02

You're never gonna run out of variety. You're never gonna run out of variety. It's it's we have it's kind of a a parade of iconic landscapes. Yeah, and people who live close to them tend to identify more with with that specific area. Um but you know, if you feel like think about the diversity we have here.

SPEAKER_01

Like, I mean, I know I'm that's crazy, but we're talking about if to get over to the white clouds in the Satus in the summer to go on a hike or whatever, to get up up north and just go fish the clear water. I mean, you're a few hours to a world-class fishery there. And then we haven't talked about, we talked a little bit about Henry's Fork, yeah, eastern Idaho. Um, we the Owai, the the the fishing in the Oahee River is world class for brown trout. I mean, it just everything is so close to us. And to your back to your original point, that's why people are coming here.

SPEAKER_03

Exactly, exactly. And that's why they stay, right? Like, and we saw that especially during COVID, of course. That was a time when people were fleeing other states and they're saying, okay, I want to get outside. Where's the best place to do that? Well, duh, Idaho. And that's why we kept so many people here. And you I mean, you look at people, I mean, look at the you know, the people at this table, right? Like we're all very qualified individuals. We could probably have economic opportunities in other states, that would be pretty fantastic. But why do we choose to live here? Because of the opportunities that we have for recreation that's so close by, right? Like, I love the fact that I can, you know, leave my house and drive 20 minutes and be climbing a pretty serious mountain. I mean, that's that's pretty hard to beat. You're not gonna get that in, you know, downtown in some big city somewhere. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Have you spent much time in the Oahis, either of you? I didn't know. A little bit, yeah. I I haven't as much as I should, but but um you don't even think about them until you get down there and you start exploring them. And and it's it's beautiful. Mike Borren, Mike Bourn has a couple of ranches down there. Um, the Josephine um ranch. And again, so I've spent some time down there, and I'm like, oh my goodness, this is on my bucket list to spend more time down there. Yes. Um uh over the next decade because there I think it's it's beautiful and and not nearly explored as much as it should be.

SPEAKER_02

A lot of that sort of um, you know, because a lot of that sagebrush country runs up to the Uahees and and you kind of have to it can sometimes be a little bit of an acquired taste for people to to understand kind of the abundance in that landscape. But once you get in there, it's it's an incredible place to and incredible for hunting, right? Oh, it's all yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Some of the some of our largest elk big time, big time trophy destinations. Hard to get those tags. Very hard to get those tags. Yeah, yeah. But tough draw.

Measuring The Outdoor Economy Is Hard

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, but I mean kind of what what James was saying, and and um we touched a little bit on this before, but the the kind of the stickiness of public lands and sort of it attracting people or keeping people here, or the impact from the hunting community or any kind of recreation, it's profound, but it's not super easy to quantify. Right? We've we've never really had to do this as an as a we don't have a trade association. Yeah, right. We don't we don't have like a you know an easy report saying like here's here's the economic impact of what public lands brings or what uh what hunting brings to the economy.

SPEAKER_01

I mean, it seems like someone there's a lot of reasons to have that, either the state or private organizations, or seems like something that should exist.

SPEAKER_03

So I I think part of that is it's actually really hard to quantify. Yeah, right. Like what is the economic value of someone like me growing up in Idaho and choosing to stay here instead of going somewhere else, right? Like, how do you put a number on that? It's really tough to quantify, but there is clearly a value there, right? Like, and that's you know, think about the hundreds of thousands of Idaho kids who, you know, choose to stay in Idaho and make their lives here because of the great experiences they had recreating on Idaho public lands growing up. You know, there's a lot of them and you know that they're contributing to our economy, but you it's really difficult to put a number on that.

SPEAKER_01

It's probably easier to outside money coming in, it's probably easier. Yes, money people spend is probably easier.

SPEAKER_03

But the reason you're here is probably got a little bit of a harder thing to you know, you could almost, I mean, I'd maybe be a little bit biased in saying this, but I mean, I think you could attribute a certain percentage of Idaho's overall growth, right? Like we know that our population is growing at the fastest, one of the fastest rates in the nation. There's certainly a pretty large percentage of that population that you could say is driven by our public land access. And you could probably quantify that, right? Like say, okay, all the people coming in here and all the businesses that's being developed here because of those people, a big chunk of that is because of those public lands. And you also do see, you know, like organizations like the Eduho Outfitters and Guides Association, they've done some studies on, you know, the uh the economic impact of their industry alone. And obviously that's just a segment of the uh you know the outdoor space, but it's a it's a meaningful one, and it's it's billions of dollars, if I remember correctly.

SPEAKER_01

Yes. I was just thinking of your role in the legislature, and I think um I know this session, I was I was down there way too much, by the way.

SPEAKER_03

My condolences, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

I was we all were I was down there way, way more than I've ever been in my life, probably. So I was down there a lot. But you you hear about ag issues a lot, you hear about heritage issues as it relates to farming and ag, which you should. I mean, that's that's IDO, right? Uh but but within the legislature and and your colleagues, um ag that part of our economy dominates. How how much is it talked about amongst legislators, the public lands, the economic impact, some of the concerns or opportunities we have? Is it is it something that is talked about quite a bit?

SPEAKER_03

So I think this year it was talked about a lot more. And part of that was of course driven by the conversation that happened at the federal level last summer that really scared a lot of people, myself included. You know, the idea of a mass federal land sell off is terrifying to to so many of us and something that we will absolutely rally against. So I think that drove a lot of the conversation this year.

SPEAKER_01

And how united do you think the legislative body is on that issue?

SPEAKER_03

You know, I that's tough. I don't I don't know that we've we've never taken a vote on it, right? And you never know. Like I I I I I'll I've learned in this job, you never count votes until the vote happens. Like you know, like for sh to you know, for sure say on the record, like, oh yeah, it's gonna, you know, it's gonna come out to this because uh, you know, people change their minds. I do think there's absolutely a majority uh, you know, in in both chambers that support public landscape. I don't know how you do it, by the way.

SPEAKER_01

I was really I was really passionate about the balance budget amendment thing. This two years in a row, put time and treasure into it and thought we had the votes and didn't even get out of committee in the Senate, and I'm like, oh my gosh. I don't know how to do that. It's a whirlwind. I just want to walk out and just like, I'm not doing this anymore. Yeah, I think I don't know how he does it either.

SPEAKER_02

But I I I guess to follow up on on sort of without being able to count noses on this, do you think the reaction, the response to the public lands sort of uh reconciliation discussion of last summer, do you think the response to that surprised a lot of your colleagues down at the legislature? Because I I think that one thing that became clear out of that was how how nonpartisan an issue this is. And and that was very relieving to me because when things stay dormant for a while, it can start to look a little bit more associated with one side, which isn't necessarily ideal in our state. And that the the the reconciliation fight punched through all that. It's like this isn't a partisan issue. We all really care about public lands, but do you think that kind of reset anyone's expectations or kind of was a surprise, or how how did you track that?

SPEAKER_03

No, I I think for sure. And I think I think people realize now that there is definitely a a massive majority of people who support public land access and support public lands staying in public hands, right? That's kind of the classic slogan. And there's a you know a great piece of uh legislation at the federal level by that name that I I wish would pass. Um I I I it was very clear from everything that we were hearing from our federal delegation and from what we were hearing from our own constituents that this is something that's important to people. And frankly, the the group of people who do want public lands to be sold off is so tiny and so clearly self-interested that it's not a it's not a constituency that's worth listening to, at least in my mind. And we do have some legislators that are on that bandwagon, right? Like, don't get me wrong, there are absolutely a few of them that think that we should be doing more private ownership, more, you know, and mostly for the the sake of extractive resources and different management of those lands. Um, and I at least from you know my perspective, you know, if I look at my district, it's an entirely suburban area, right? There's nobody in the in my district that's trying to buy up a chunk of land to cut all the timber on, or very few, but there are a lot of hunters. There are a lot of trailrners, there are a lot of mountain bikers, there are a lot of people that like whitewater rafting, right? Like all those people benefit from public lands. So of my 55,000 constituents, I mean, it's a huge majority of people who would be opposed to the sale of public lands. So we know that through polling. There were quite a few organizations who did polls around this last year because of the what happened at the federal level. And all the polls were overwhelming, like 85, 90 percent plus in support of public lands and public hands.

SPEAKER_01

So it's strong majority. That's awesome. Thanks for hitting that. Um talk about the state, and um, you know, obviously you got the executive branch, the legislative branch. From the legislative branch, what are the top issues that are on your radar for you to advocate for or legislate for? And what are the biggest concerns you have as it relates to management at the state level?

Trail Funding Ideas That Could Work

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, great question. So uh I mentioned one earlier, the the non-motorized trails thing. I think that's a really important thing that we haven't figured out yet as a state and something that we need to work on. Um, the tough thing there is the funding mechanism, right? How do you come up? You can't, it's kind of the classic thing, you know, Dan Wah, who was just in here uh doing your previous episode, uh, he always says you can't put a sticker on a horse's ass. And he's totally right about that, right? Like you can't, it's it's not as simple as putting a sticker on an ATV, you know, as part of your registration or whatever for it, and then you know, that that's how you fund that that maintenance of those roads. But for these non-motorized trails, I mean, how are you gonna do it? How are you gonna charge the you know, the kid at Boise State who wants to go for a hike in the foothills? Like that's that's really tough. What special fee, you know, like there, and there have been all kinds of ideas floated on on how to do it. Um and I've proposed several different pieces of legislation that haven't moved forward yet on different ways we could do it, and frankly, none of them are perfect. So I'm you know, like it's a very much a work in progress thing. Um, I I think it could be a general fund funding thing at some point. Yeah, that's that would be my preference.

SPEAKER_01

I was just gonna say, I mean, it's it's it sounds like I mean you think of who benefits from it, it's kind of everybody. Everybody. And and at least hey, this is yeah, everyone benefits, so everyone should pay for it, kind of a thing, you'd think, right? Um and and I think Dan said that the total revenue from the motorized uh stickers are about two million. I think it's even more than that.

SPEAKER_03

It's many millions, yeah. It's it's I like I want to say it's somewhere between eight and ten million in total, between the different so there's different programs though, right?

SPEAKER_01

It's and Matty, see if you can find out uh revenue generated from um off-road uh motorized vehicles or stickers.

SPEAKER_03

And there's multiple different programs. So you got the OHV program, you've got the snowmobile program, uh, and they're and there's different um levels of the phone. So probably if you if you add them all up together, yeah somewhere in that range. It's a ton of money.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. But it but but if you think of the, you know, like I'm not trying to make it not sound like a lot of money, but but like if you said, okay, if we had if we had a matching amount of money and what that would mean to the general fund, it is right. We we have money wasted on that in like like four breaths of air in some of these some of these.

SPEAKER_02

This this might not have been the year to bring it up.

SPEAKER_01

But yeah, the the but by and large, I mean, compared to what you gain, compared to what you compared to what you gain, it seems like that should be a little, that should be like a easy thing to say, hey, let's let's just put this into it, right?

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

We tried uh last year to get$1.7 million coming from vehicle sticker registrations to pay for non-motorized trail maintenance. And that would have made an a massive, massive difference um on our non-motorized trails, but we couldn't do it. There was just too much hesitancy around adding fees and spending money on a new program. And that's those are just those are those are dirty words with a lot of my colleagues, unfortunately. So um I, you know, I I I do think at some point we can get it done. Yeah, this was just a tough year to do it because of the budget situation this year. Um, but I I'm optimistic that at some point we'll get that one done. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02

The user pay model is one of the things that I mean, drop throughout a lot of conservation work is done. I mean, like from the hunting side again, hunting licenses and fees, um, taxes on on guns and firearms and ammunition and um uh and archery, and same thing happens on the fishing side uh through the Dangle-Johnson Act. And so, you know, the the conversation is sort of perpetual. Like, how do we how do we further that? How do other states do it?

SPEAKER_03

Lots of different ways. Um, frankly, one of the biggest ones that we're missing out on right now is our parks passport program. So our parks passport is$10 for an annual pass to access all of Idaho's state parks. It's incredibly cheap. If you look at all of our neighboring states, most of them are over$100 for a similar level of pass. So we're just we're undergenerating revenue on that one. And uh a piece of that could very easily be used to find non-motorized trail maintenance. And that was one of the ideas that we had come up with last year.

SPEAKER_01

And right now, isn't that just an elective thing when you register? Oh, yeah. It's just right now, I know I know every time I do, it's like, do you want a parks pass? And it's 10 bucks. Right. And I usually say yes for every vehicle. Yep. But your point, and and I've all and I've almost wondered, like, well, what do I get for this?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. I mean, it it's kind of crazy because one day at a state park is seven bucks. Yeah. So if you go to state parks two days, which I mean, most people, even if you're like a you know, a city dweller and you don't spend a lot of time. I mean, if you live here in Boise, you got Eagle Island, you got Lucky Peak, they're right here, right?

SPEAKER_01

Odds are pretty good that's it. Do you know the irony of ironies? Is I do it for almost all my vehicles, and yet I had to I had to go into Ponderace. I for whatever reason the ramp was closed in McCall and I was gonna go out fishing for some kokini, and I had to launch in Ponderosa State Park, and I'm like, oh great, I got a park pass. And then that my truck I use that day, I didn't have it. So I know it's seven bucks. I'm like, yep. Dang, what are the odds of that? Right? That's how it always goes.

SPEAKER_03

But it is pretty amazing, right? It is pretty amazing that if you would have bucks for the year to cover all of it, and you can go as many days as you want, right? Like ponder, I mean, I spent a ton of time at Ponderosa. Uh it's one of the one of the crown jewels of our state for sure. Yeah, and unlimited access to it for ten bucks a year is unbelievable.

unknown

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

So are are you who who's the committee or who's the one leading the efforts on that, or is it the departments, or how how does something like that change in our state?

SPEAKER_03

Uh yes. Uh so it's um there's all all these things that have lots, lots of stakeholders, right? And so um you've got the resources committees in both the House and the Senate. That's where the policy bill would most likely go through. Um, the exception to that would be one of the ideas that I've had is to tie it to the parks passport and therefore to vehicle registration, and then it could end up going through the transportation committee. But at the end of the day, you have to get majorities of the whole House and the whole Senate to make it happen, right? So the only way that you can create something like this is you have to get law passed to do it. The departments are great at kind of leading the charge and saying like this is a this is a mechanism. Like Susan Buxton's a great champion of this, uh, and she's uh she's been you know kind of working on on several ideas with it and tried to talk to legislators about it, but it is just tough to get to that 36 and 18, you know, count on both sides when you're talking about a new program and a new fee, even if it's something that all Idahoans agree on, right? It's just there are so many people that's gonna be able to do that. It's so interesting.

SPEAKER_01

Every time you see polling on like Jesus himself could like write the legislation for a fee that that benefited every child in Idaho. And if if the fees going up, it's like it's a tough sell. It's tough sell. You're starting like it it at like 50-50 at best, and and probably lower than that.

SPEAKER_03

There, I don't know the exact number, but I know that there are a lot of my colleagues who have signed various pledges that say some form of I will never support an increase in taxes or fees. Yeah. And I've carried several fee increases across our floor before, and man, every time it's a fight to get to 36 votes. Yeah, it's hard. Do you love what you do? Yeah, you know, it's a it's a challenging job. Um, I I'm not a career politician. I won't do it for that much longer, I don't think. You know, you know, I'm I'm running for another term uh and we'll see beyond that. But it there is no better place to learn. It is especially getting to serve on JFAC, I get to talk to every single department. I get to, you know, learn about all the ins and outs of government, see how everything works across the whole state. And you get to meet so many smart people and talk to all the experts in the field. That part makes it worth it. The politics side isn't my favorite, right? All the personality stuff and the drama that happens there. I mean, you would be shocked how much of the decision making that happens in a legislative body is based purely on personality conflicts. And that's the stuff that drives me. Yeah, you can give enough where you could get it all.

SPEAKER_01

I might be surprised. You'd be all right. But uh don't don't break our hearts here, James. Well, first of all, you guys are running all the freaking time, whether you're in the House or the Senate, it's every two years. Two year terms. Two-year terms for both. So like the second you're done and you get kind of a little bit of breathing room, probably a little bit, and then you're if you're gonna run again, it's like, oh, coming up another election year. So that's a pain in the ass.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And then I'm sure it's not the most pleasant thing, but we need good people. We need smart people. And I and I think about the breadth of knowledge you need to have as a legislator. And and then unfortunately or fortunately, like you're you're influenced by lobbyists and people with special interests 24-7, and that's usually where you get most of your information.

SPEAKER_03

Right. I'd say I'd say the biggest thing is you have to be doing it for the right reasons. Yeah, like honestly, like you know, with 105 members of the legislature, you're gonna get people that are experts in every single area, right? Like, but what you need is you need people who are there because they want to do public service, they're not there to, you know, because they enjoy the game, right? There's a ton of people that have been there for a long, long time and they're there because they like playing the game. It's like chess to them, right? But with people. And that's I I I think that's that's the wrong way to approach it. But if you approach it from the I want to serve the public, I want to do good for the state, and I'm not here to the the worst is when people come in because they have an ideology, right? Whatever that all ideology is. I mean, we all have our opinions, right? Like I'm I obviously lean on the conservative side, but I'm not, you know, driven solely by an ideology. I'm here to solve problems and do good things for the state. And, you know, that's my motivation. My motivation isn't oh why.

SPEAKER_01

What you want as a I mean, as a citizen, you want a legislature that of policy wonks. I mean, you do. I mean, what you really want is someone that, like we're talking about public lands, someone that deep dives in and understands ups and downs, ins and outs, sort of options, what are other people doing, and then comes back with policy that is sound that's not partisan. Unfortunately, that's not how that works down there.

SPEAKER_02

Then the tough the tough thing about that is is um you also want somebody who has been there. Yeah. Right? Like you you need a a personal connection to the landscape before to to really understand what it is that we're talking about and why this means so much to people. And that's, I think, over time has is you know become harder. Again, as as people disconnect from the land to some degree, you have fewer and fewer people who who are sportsmen and women, who spend time outside, and that sort of nexus between the individual experience and the policy wonkiness is tough to come by.

SPEAKER_01

On public lens, Nick, who who's your go-to right now in the legislature on the Senate or House side? Who are the ones that really get it? Obviously, James does because he's here, but yeah.

SPEAKER_02

I mean, like the the the there's there's there's a number of folks. Any anybody who spends um time outside and engages in in it doesn't have to be hunting and fishing. It could, it could, it could be any kind of outdoor recreation. And and so I mean this is such an a big issue in Idaho that people you know people think about it all the time, whether or not it's just purely from the frustrations of like we need to be able to cut more timber, there's there's read that this is holding us up from being able to do it to people who being like, listen, we we we understand there's a balancing act that needs to happen. Um there's so do you find most legislators approachable and and uh and and interested in this or I think approachable, yeah, I I feel like in especially in the last um like James mentioned, it was a pretty um it was more front burner this particular past year.

Sagebrush Rebellion And Budget Reconciliation

SPEAKER_01

Can we let's look while we got James here, let's dive a little bit more because because I I followed it what I read, yeah. But but it kind of started with in Utah with with sent with uh Lee, right?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

And it was kind of an idea, I mean, so it was kind of surprising. Well I when I first was reading I'm like, why, why is he a very conservative guy? Yeah, you would think would would be on the opposite side of this issue, but he certainly was kind of the champion that brought the idea, from what I read.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and he's been on it for a while. I mean, I can give that the quick so I mean like in in 1976, the the Federal Land Policy and Management Act was passed that made it the position of the United States that we would hold land into perpetuity. Around that time, what was called the Sagebrush Rebellion first started, which I think was was sort of quarterbacked by Orin Hatch at the time and and has um come in in different fits and starts of of folks who uh would rather see more of that land privatized. And uh it a lot of it does come out of Utah, and it it's every 10 something years it it seems to come back up.

SPEAKER_01

And does it go back to and sorry to interrupt you, but so it's so the sagebrush, does it go back to some public grazing, some some state rights, and hey, why are you telling me what we should do? Does it go back to some of that ideology? Is that where some of it comes? So it's not purely an economic. There's there's also some, hey, you know, this is our state, we want to be able to do with it what we want to do. And okay. So that's part of the.

SPEAKER_02

Um basically saying that the Supreme C that the federal government doesn't have the right to own these lands into perpetuity. They were talking about Bureau of Land Management lands about 18 million acres within their own borders. And so that sort of kicked everything off. And then that didn't go anywhere. The Supreme Court declined to hear that. And when budget reconciliation came up, it started on the House side. I think it was it was um Mark Amade, I think, was looking for half a million acres in in uh primarily in Nevada. And then that didn't go through, and then Senator Mike Lee came out with his proposal for about two between two and three million acres, which would have mandated that the federal government dispose of something within that land across 11 states, including Idaho, within a set period of time. And that's what sort of brought the real response from everybody. Where it's a um, again, I think sort of like I I was mentioning before, I'm not sure what the calculus was in terms of um what what his constituency or what pe folks in the West would would think, but there seemed to be a perception that this that you know there was more on the left would have been where the resistance was. And and once that happened, it became very clear this was across the political spectrum, right? A lot of us who touched the land, um, who come from more of a a conservative background really want to see that not happen. And that's what that's what started the firestorm.

SPEAKER_01

And and how to remind us how it ended, and was the signal strong enough you think it's going to be an issue that kind of quiets down for a while, or it sounds like this is always gonna come up. But so tell us how it ended.

SPEAKER_02

So basically, I mean it was it was several iterations, right? It was and there was this question of whether the Senate parliamentarian would even permit this, because there's an argument to be made this is making policy rather than actually just solving a budget problem. Right. And so the first iteration didn't pass muster uh on I think on bird rule considerations, and then eventually there was one that did. But it kicked up enough of a firestorm that you started to see um Republican legislators in the West saying, we're not going to support this. And and you know, namely people like Senator Jim Rish uh coming out and saying that we that we don't want to see this as part of reconciliation. Um, you know, Congressman Mike Simpson on the House side uh was on the the public lands caucus and also fairly vocal about you know, we don't want to see this this come through. Uh it's too important to Idahoans. And so it was it was quite a firestorm, but it went down to the wire. I mean, I I'd say from from everyone who was watching it, um it it felt like it could go either way right up until the last minute. Because I mean, as the big beautiful bill was a big deal, right? The concern was that that that that was just gonna be a freight train moving forward and people weren't gonna be able to stand in its way over this. Um and so it was a nail biter, but that's what happened. And uh, I think a lot of us felt like the signal was pretty strong that that um a lot of us don't want to see um large-scale indiscriminate uh sale like that, right? Now the process for disposing of federal lands in increments is there, right? It no one's no at least most of us are not saying we we shouldn't sell a single acre ever. It's just this way, right? There are certainly pro situations where disposing of federal land in in smaller increments is in the public interest. But could it come back? Maybe. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

I think it's important there to give a shout out to our our congressional delegation. Yeah, three of the four, they stood up in a big way publicly, and they were really the driving force behind putting a stop to it.

SPEAKER_01

I think that was a fantastic thing. People that listen to this know that one of my favorite guys on the planet that's ever walked the earth is Jim Rish. He's one of my just one of my mentors and good friends, but I know where he stood on it and was very, very forceful. And it's in in for a relatively small state with Rish and Crapo, um, we have we out we outswing our weight class for sure back in that town. And I think they were very helpful. And and you got Mike that's been there and always been a public lands guy, right?

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, yeah. We've got a we've got a lot of, I mean, there's a lot of Idahoans at the at the federal level who are very m impactful in the public lands discussion right now. But yeah, I mean, just to reiterate what you'd said there, I mean, like when when um when Senator Rish came out and sort of made his comments, um, that's where it felt like the tide turned on on the issue and and that we were gonna start to be able to see, okay, maybe we're gonna get out of this, uh, and then move on, hopefully, from the ownership discussion to the management discussion. Yeah. Right. And and be able to pivot in a way that said, listen, we all want to see this stuff, or enough of us want to see this land stay public. We understand the frustrations, we have to talk about the management side. And so hopefully that's where we can go to avoid having this just circle right back up again.

SPEAKER_03

And I think it's important to note too that the reason that Jim Rish's office was and that and he made the decision to do this, they were getting so much pressure from individual sportsmen who were out there, you know, they were just concerned about this issue. They I I was told that their their office, that this issue was the number one issue that they had ever received individual communications about. The number one issue out of all the issues that Congress deals with, they had never gotten so flooded with constituent emails and calls and letters.

SPEAKER_01

It gets back to where we started with why people are here. Exactly. This is like there's there's there's some things in government which are policy that may affect us, are really complicated, right? Like some healthcare decisions or some policy decision that you're like, oh, I wonder how that helps affects me. But someone says, hey, I'm gonna take away something that that is part of my everyday life and culture and what I love to do with my family. It's it's a you can see why. I mean, I'm not surprised by that. Um I was frankly surprised that it got so like someone on the outside looking at it that that it went so far before it happened, wondering when that that swell of public support would would hammer him.

SPEAKER_03

But well, I mean it kind of speaks to the legislative process and how you can have a person in an individual position who was a chairman who had a lot of influence on this one specific thing, and he could essentially put that there, and then it was up to the body, the legislative body, to reject it.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, yeah, right.

SPEAKER_03

And so, you know, as a chairman, he had a lot of influence, and so he was able to swing a lot of people to get them to go along with it just to get you to get that freight train of the one big beautiful bill moving. But thankfully we had people like Jim Rersh and Mike Crapo who stood up and said, No, we're not gonna go there, and Mike Simpson.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and the and the advocacy I think was impressive because I don't think it's a lot, it's it shouldn't be a surprise that most sportsmen hadn't spent a ton of time thinking about budget reconciliation prior to that incident, right? Like I think the idea most people haven't really thought too much about how we dispose of public lands in general, because we do have a process, but nobody really had seriously considered that it could happen this way. Yeah. And so we just weren't really geared up. Uh, but they it happened fast. And so the the advocacy showed up and and the results were were positive, but it was a nail biter. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Anything else legislatively that uh we kind of we go down rabbit holes once you start. But uh, what are the other things you're working on that are that are kind of in the hopper for you?

Protecting State Endowment Lands

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, you know, uh as far as the public lands thing goes, there's one other big one that we should probably talk about, and that's the constitutional amendments that were proposed this year. Um, one by uh Senator Adams and another one by uh Representative Brett Raybold. And I was a co sponsor on that one with Representative Raybold. And really what we were trying to address uh with that constitutional amendment was our endowment lands. So we've talked a lot about our federal lands here in Idaho, which is most of them. Right, that's roughly 60%, almost 60% of the of the state is federal public lands. You've got about two and a half million acres that is state endowment lands. Now, those lands were given to us by the feds back in the 1800s at statehood, and they were given to the beneficiaries essentially to fund mostly public schools. Um, that the money uh that is generated from the timber sales and from the endowment fund, which is has been set up to essentially collect the earnings from the lands. Those monies go out to the beneficiaries. Um the scary thing with the our state endowment lands is that there's not a lot of restriction on when those lands can be sold. Uh it's really it's up to five members of the land board, and they have a constitutional mandate to maximize the colour.

SPEAKER_01

Let's let's just stop a little bit. So so it's the land board is the constitu it's the it's constitutional officers. Yep. Um so governor, lieutenant governor, uh school superintendent, uh uh AG, AG, and Secretary of State, uh, I don't think um controller lieutenant governor is actually on there.

SPEAKER_03

I don't think it's the other five. Okay, because there's two that are not, because we have seven constitutional officers and there's five that are on the land.

SPEAKER_01

So I know controller is. Yep. So it's it's Branna Wolf, Labrador, Debbie Critchfield, Phil McGrain, Phil McGill. Phil McGrain, and Governor Little. Governor Little. That's right. That's right. So they they they meet, and right now, well, just take so I'm developing a piece of property, and right next to me is some state land, and I'm like, oh, that would be nice part of my development. There you go to them and say, hey, would like to trade for this, or I'd like to buy this or propose it, or you get it to an auction, and they sit back and say, Well, this is given to us to benefit schools, we can monetize this right now, or we can hold it forever. And that's the process that happens right now.

SPEAKER_03

Essentially, yeah. And so some of those parcels of land, you know, some of them are like infill in cities, right? Like there was a big uh chunk out in Canyon County that was sold uh a number of years ago for millions and millions of dollars that was essentially in city limits, as like there's no value there for public recreation, right? Like there's no argument that we should be holding on to that as a state. Better to sell that off, put that money in the endowment fund, and earn a return on it for uh the beneficiaries. But for the majority of the land that the endowment has, uh most of it's not in the path of development. I mean, you got a lot of infill lots, um, you know, and you got a checkerboard pattern, right, through a lot of the state, and you, you know, you got a lot of pieces of state state land there that is valuable for recreation access. And the mandate in our constitution is that they have to maximize the financial return for the beneficiaries. Well, a it scares me. You know, our current land board has done a great job. They haven't been, with the exception of one sale last year uh of 160 acres that a lot of us were pretty upset about. Um, with with the exception of that, they have not been selling off publicly.

SPEAKER_01

Well, there was a big one, there was a big controversial one up around McCall, right?

SPEAKER_02

Well, that that one didn't happen, but that was a proposed.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, around pay at lakes, yeah. Trident group, I'm yes, I remember watching it. It's a big pay uh would it be a big pay at lake thing. Yep, yep. I mean you you definitely saw both sides of it on that because one, it was large, too, it would affect access to a lot of different things. So that you could see how it could easily happen um in anything that involves access or connection to forest or yeah, and oftentimes it's state land that is that because it came from federal land.

SPEAKER_03

Yep.

SPEAKER_01

A lot of times you'll have okay, what's per currently city limits or public state, then federal. So you could see how it could drastically change access.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, it's it's used as access to to federal land a lot.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Well, the pay at Lake When is the the poster child of this issue because right now the state, the endowment owns sixty percent of the lakefront property. And that property, the estimates are it's worth somewhere between 200 and 300 million dollars, right? If you were to just sell it to a developer who wanted to build out McCall and build all the way around the lake. I mean, that's hundreds of millions of dollars. And it's hard to argue that if you look at the constitution, which says maximize financial return, it's hard to argue that, oh, we should hold on to this land and sell a couple trees off it every year, right? That's the struggle that the Department of Lands and that um that the land board has. And so what you know, I I think what a few of us were looking at this year is we need to make some sort of change to our constitution that gives them essentially another tool to say, hey, when there's recreational value to these lands, we need to be able to say, okay, we don't have to just think about the financials, we also need to think about the the public value of these lands because the dollar value of you know the the sticks on the land, right? Because it's all timber sales, that's what most of the endowment fund revenue is generated from. It's not just about the you know the dollar value of the timber, right? It's also about the value of all of us getting to recreate on Pay At Lake, right? We get to go and have access to that lake. What is the value to Idaho of having that lake be 60% of it be publicly accessible? What's a lot? What was the pushback and how far did you get? So we we had a hearing in Senate State Affairs, um, and the pushback came from the the timber industry and from others, even though they were specifically carved out in the amendment language that we had and said we're gonna give, you know, the first priority shall be revenue generation, the second priority shall be public access, and then only if uh a parcel of land doesn't have those things, then you then it can be sold. That was the way that we structured our constitutional amendment. The timber industry has such a great thing going on, they were hesitant about making any kind of a change. Yeah, they they looked at that and they said, Oh, we don't want to make any kind of a change at all. And I and I think really that's where the heart of all the pushback came from. It was just a we why would we want to change something that's working for us right now? Um, and so we it ended up it died on a tie vote in committee, which was a bummer. Um, I do think that we can make that language a little bit simpler and cleaner. So I think we're gonna try again next year. There is a time limit on constitutional amendments, and so once we tried the first time, we had run the clock out enough that we couldn't try again. Um, so next year we'll once we have that clock start over, hopefully we can try again with a simpler, cleaner version of that amendment that hopefully won't, you know, bring up that controversy and and really we'll make it more clear what we're trying to do. Because I think there was also some confusion. There were some people that were saying, oh, you're trying to open it up so the state can never sell land and you're trying to open it up to environmentalist lawsuits. Like, no, obviously not. That's not what we're trying to do. Um, but I think there's just some some some fear around any kind of a change to the Constitution.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, and just to define the stakes there a little bit, I think you know, th those are those are considerations that um everyone wants to make sure address, but it's not theoretical, right? At at the time of statehood, Idaho was conferred about 3.6 million acres of land. We're about two and a half million now. You know, nationwide, I think it was about north of north of 300 million acres were conferred to the states. Of all of that, about 45 million is left. So this does happen. And it's not always it's not always a problem, right? Sometimes it does it is going to make sense to sell or exchange lands. But the mandate to have that happen, you know, just just given um just it's helpful, I think, to look at the whole picture in terms of what what the um well and you think of the constitutional mandate that they currently have, you could see if the r if if someone wasn't in that board position that you could see how this could change quickly.

SPEAKER_01

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_03

I mean you you could very easily do the math and say, oh, well, it's the best financial interest of the state to sell every single acre and put it all in the stock market and take the money from that and pay for public schools that way, right? And I that's a scary thing to me. And I I am very thankful that we have great land board members right now who don't see it that way. Um, but I would like to make sure that in our constitution it says that if we did ever have a change in the land board, that they couldn't go down that road, right? Especially for the lands that we know have really big value to Idahoans for recreation purposes.

Websites And Listener Next Steps

SPEAKER_01

Well, James, this went by way too fast. It always does. But um any final words? Uh well, first of all, again, thank you. Um enjoy your time off. And uh you got a primary account. Yeah, did anyone or you have a primary?

SPEAKER_03

I don't I got lucky, thankfully. No, no primaries. No one wants to be a good one. It's a great break. Well, so the first couple times I ran, the first time I ran, I had six total opponents between the primary and the general, and the second time I had three more. So I've had my share of uh competitive races, but thankfully I got off easy this time. And no, I I appreciate you having me on. Uh, you know, great to be on, always great to chat with both of you guys. And uh, you know, I'm really glad that you're advocating for public lands and you know, in in in the show. And I think that's a that's a great thing that we need to be doing more of in the state and really be pushing that narrative forward and um keeping it top of mind for people because every so often you get somebody like Senator Mike Lee in Utah who wants to sell it all off. And it's it's important that we are ready for that when it comes.

SPEAKER_01

Great. Hey, um, what's what can people do to find your website for you personally? And you got a campaign coming up.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Um what's what's your URL? So my website's Petskyforidaho.com. Um, you can go there and that uh we'll find you most uh uh most of my information. Um I'm not a big social media guy. I you know, kind of weird on the one of the youngest members of the legislature, but I'm probably one of the least active on social media, as funny as that is.

SPEAKER_01

Um well, and I do think people should you you're you're very important down there, and you will become. I don't want you to don't you know I know you don't want to be a career politician, but don't stop, man. Like we need you to. I'll give it at least two more. Yeah. We'll save it. Great job, but there it is, Petsky for Idaho. Yep. And then Nick, thank you. This has been a phenomenal couple of episodes. What are ways for people to find you and your organization online?

SPEAKER_02

So it's uh Idaho Wildlife Federation, so it's uh IdahoWildlife.org. Um, and then yeah, anywhere other uh Instagram or LinkedIn or anything, just Nick Fasciano is uh usually pretty easy to find.

SPEAKER_01

So Unified Voice for Sportsmen and Women, uh thank you for all you do. Thank you. It's really cool to to spend time and and I've I follow you and I know you've been on with uh with uh Matt a few times. Yeah, that's been a lot of people. It's always great.

SPEAKER_02

Yeah, I mean it's it's as as we grow as a state. I mean that the the the fundamental question is as we as we continue to grow as state, how do we maintain sort of the abundance that we've got and the sporting culture that we that we've are are so blessed with? Um and that's that's what we're trying to do is is make sure that we've got enough of a unified voice that um when the big problems come that we've got the voice at the table to address them. So really appreciate uh you have having us on and for everything that you do. And uh that's been great. Thanks, thanks, gentlemen. Thanks for having me.

unknown

Thank you.