Minority maneuver

Simpson to take new route on wilderness bill

By COREY TAULE
ctaule@postregister.com

With the Democrats in control of the House and Senate, the Idaho senator will have to walk a fine line to get his Boulder-White Clouds legislation passed.

For the past seven years, Congressman Mike Simpson has viewed efforts to pass Idaho's first wilderness bill in 26 years through a comforting prism.

Simpson, a Republican, was attempting to wedge his landmark bill through a Republican Congress and place its fate in the hands of a Republican president.

But the landscape has changed. Democrats control the House and Senate. Simpson, for the first time, finds himself a member of the minority.

When Congress convenes next year, Simpson will introduce yet another version of his Central Idaho Economic Development and Recreation Act. The bill contains many of the same elements you've heard about for the past few years.

It would protect 312,000 acres in the Boulder-White Cloud Mountains from development. In order to make this palatable to a conservative populace, Simpson's bill sets aside land for motorized recreation and awards more than 3,600 acres of federal land to Custer County.

All these moving parts mean the coalition endorsing CIEDRA is tenuous. So everyone is anxious to see what changes Democrats make to the bill.

"It could cause some problems depending on what the D's want," Simpson said.

Simpson said his first task when Congress convenes next year is to sit down with House Democrats to find a compromise that meets their desires while not blowing his Idaho coalition.

The former chairman of the House Resources Committee, Richard Pombo of California, was not a fan of creating new wilderness areas. Yet Simpson worked with Pombo, changing his bill in ways that did not trim environmental groups such as the Idaho Conservation League from his coalition.

Next year's challenge will be entirely different.

New Resources Committee Chairman Nick Jo Rahall of West Virginia is a wilderness supporter. But Democrats such as Rahall have their own problems with the bill, such as the federal land giveaway to Custer County.

If that part of the bill goes, Idaho Conservation League Executive Director Rick Johnson said, the entire bill likely goes with it.

"We can't lose Custer County," Johnson said.

Simpson said Democrats have been influenced "because of all the bull that's going on." CIEDRA opponents, he said, have purchased advertisements depicting those 3,600 acres as pristine wilderness instead of what it really is.

"This is sagebrush desert," Simpson said.

Simpson said he plans to take pictures of every acre going to Custer County in order to show the Democrats what the federal government is really giving up.

But that's not Simpson's only concern.

Idaho's senior senator, Larry Craig, was not the reason that CIEDRA didn't get through Congress this month. But Craig still has concerns about creating new wilderness. His spokesman, Dan Whiting, said Craig wouldn't oppose CIEDRA so long as none of the groups that have worked on this for years walks away empty handed.

"Everybody needs to get part of what they expected," Whiting said.

But when Congress convenes next year, Craig will no longer chair the subcommittee that oversees debate about wilderness, and couldn't block CIEDRA if he wanted to.

Finally, Idaho's new congressman, Bill Sali, said in this year's GOP primary that he was opposed to creating new wilderness in the Boulder-White Clouds.

Simpson said it would help if Sali was on board, but that he doesn't expect his opposition to be a major factor because not one of the 312,000 acres are in Sali's district.

Sali's spokesman, Wayne Hoffman, said his boss respects the work Simpson has done on CIEDRA and will go into the debate with an open mind.

"This has everything to do with the fact that a fellow representative from Idaho has done a lot of groundwork on it," Hoffman said.

And who knows -- Simpson may find some comfort in hanging out with the Democrats on this issue. As Johnson told the Idaho Statesman earlier this month, it would be much easier to talk with Rahall than Pombo about creating new wilderness.

And Johnson expects Rahall to moderate his views now that he's evolved from minority voice in the wilderness to man in charge.

"Leadership means to lead, and Mr. Rahall is very capable of that," Johnson said.

Plus, it was his own party leadership that cost Simpson passage of CIEDRA this month.

Simpson had managed to attach CIEDRA to a tax bill. But at the last moment, outgoing House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Ways & Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas cut CIEDRA from the legislation and replaced it with a tax break for Hastert's home state of Illinois.

"It's too bad it didn't pass," Simpson said. "It should have. It didn't, frankly, because of Hastert and Bill Thomas."

And so Simpson starts over. But he does so with the same determination that has carried him through seven years of ups and downs.

It's tough to pass a wilderness bill in Idaho. Simpson knows that, and he's emphasized time and time again that he won't quit pushing until the Boulder-White Clouds are forever protected from development.

"He's the real deal," Johnson said. "I've been so impressed with his tenacity."

Government reporter Corey Taule can be reached at 542-6754.

Defining wilderness

In 1964, Congress passed the Wilderness Act, which allows public land to be protected from commercial development. A wilderness designation requires an act of Congress and does not apply to state or private land. Congress last passed an Idaho wilderness bill in 1980, for the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness.