OPINION: There’s likely no happy ending to this movie remake

This editorial was published in The Idaho Statesman of Boise.

———

Remember the 1986 movie “The Money Pit,” starring Tom Hanks and Shelley Long as a couple whose relationship is tested when they buy a beautiful old mansion for a suspiciously low price that ends up needing extensive repairs, costing the couple thousands of dollars and millions of headaches?

We hear they’re doing a remake of that movie and setting it in Idaho.

But there are some new twists: Hanks will be playing the role of an arrogant and cantankerous House speaker who scuttles a plan to sell the Idaho Transportation Department headquarters, only to find out that the renovations to the old, flood-damaged, asbestos- and mold-riddled building are going to cost tens of millions more than previously disclosed.

It’s based on a true story, as reported recently by The Idaho Statesman’s Nick Rosenberger, who wrote that the estimates to renovate the old ITD headquarters are right at $64 million, a lot more than the $32.5 million that legislators were told when they voted this year to kill a deal to sell the property to developers.

It’s a long back story, and we hope the screenwriters skip over the boring parts:

(Cue flashback sequence)

In 2017, the state of Idaho purchased the massive 200-acre HP campus on Chinden Boulevard for $110 million, to consolidate state agencies into a single location, which would allow for more efficient operations and cost savings. Plans included moving the Idaho Transportation Department there.

In 2022, the building that served as ITD headquarters along State Street suffered massive damage from burst pipes that flooded the building, rendering much of it unusable. The building was determined to have asbestos and mold, just for good measure. ITD employees started moving out of the building to the Chinden campus.

The state even budgeted and set aside $37 million to renovate space at the Chinden campus to accommodate ITD.

Then, in August 2022, the state declared the State Street property surplus and put it up for sale.

Shortly thereafter, in November 2022, in the first round of bidding — which was heavily documented and publicized in the media — the state determined that all of the bids were too low, so they put it out for bid again.

In the second round of bidding, in 2023, five bidders stepped forward, with the winner being a group of developers that included Boise’s Hawkins Companies, along with FJ Management and Pacific West Communities, for the price of $51.7 million.

The property would then be developed in the city of Boise, bringing much-needed housing and other amenities in what was called the crown jewel of development in the state’s capital city. And the state would collect $52 million for a derelict piece of property.

Happy ending, right? That would be a pretty boring movie.

Don’t worry, there was a plot twist.

House Speaker Mike Moyle, R-Star, introduced a bill in the 2024 legislative session to change the way the state disposed of property. But he never said his bill would have killed the deal to sell the ITD property.

When people found that out, a new budget bill was introduced that effectively killed the deal.

That bill did the trick, and the developers who were going to buy the land and build out the property were out of luck — and the property stayed in the state’s hands.

As if sensing the potential for a movie script, KIVI-TV’s Don Nelson asked Moyle in a November interview: “So Mike Moyle is not the bad guy in this story.”

“Oh no, Mike Moyle’s the good guy,” Moyle said. “I just saved the taxpayers — I helped save — it wasn’t just me, it was everybody, it was a team effort.”

But now the mayhem ensues.

A new report out last week shows that the estimated costs to renovate the old ITD building are basically double the estimate that legislators considered when they killed the deal. It’s hard to see how Moyle saved the taxpayers any money.

The original estimate “was generated quickly — a rudimentary ‘back of the napkin’ approach — in order to give legislators an initial gauge,” according to an email from the Department of Administration.

So legislators made a multimillion-dollar decision based on a “back of the napkin” estimate? Cue the laugh track.

So much for being fiscally conservative.

And if you think the $64 million cost estimate for renovations is going to stay accurate, go back and watch “The Money Pit” again.

Plus, as Rosenberger reported, legislators didn’t even include the proceeds from the sale of the building when weighing the best route forward.

What a boondoggle.

If the screenwriters for this movie want a happy ending, they’d write that the state realized its mistake, recognized that it was the much smarter and fiscally responsible thing to sell the property, take the $52 million, spend the $37 million it had already budgeted to renovate the space at the Chinden campus and move ITD employees there — just as they had planned years ago.

And everyone — especially Idaho taxpayers — lived happily ever after.

While the couple in “The Money Pit” reconcile in the end and live happily ever after, given our Republican legislators’ track record, the Idaho version of this movie likely has no happy ending.

TNS