The College of Western Idaho won’t have to pay a dime for the Ford Idaho Center.

But CWI could buy itself a ton of trouble with the Legislature.

Some Canyon County lawmakers are seething about the college’s plan to acquire the Idaho Center — a multipurpose indoor arena, an outdoor amphitheater and horse park. A divided Nampa City Council approved the no-cash transfer Monday.

It’s not a done deal. CWI trustees must approve the transfer as well. If they sign on, the state’s largest community college would acquire 100 acres that bisect the Nampa campus, and the assets that sit on top of it. But CWI would inherit a complex that has received $21.9 million in city subsidies over the past two decades, and carries an estimated $25 million in deferred maintenance costs.

Could that throw a monkey wrench into passing a budget for Idaho’s four community colleges, including CWI?

“Yes, it can, and it will,” Rep. Brent Crane, R-Nampa, told Idaho Education News Wednesday.

Canyon County legislators are also going on social media to call the transfer a giveaway — and question how CWI officials can possibly afford it.

“It only means that they have been collecting too much money from the taxpayers in property tax, and/or that the state of Idaho has been setting aside too much in the way of state taxpayer dollars for the school,” Rep. Kent Marmon, R-Caldwell, wrote on Facebook this week.

Sen. Brian Lenney wants to know what the budget-writing Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee will say about the deal.

“CWI has told JFAC they can barely keep the lights on, yet suddenly they can absorb a money-losing venue that required nearly $1 million in annual city subsidies for years?” Lenney, R-Nampa, wrote on X this week. “The math doesn’t add up.”

JFAC’s co-chair says the issue is outside her committee’s lane.

“This is an independent transaction between two other legal organizations,” Rep. Wendy Horman, R-Idaho Falls. “I don’t see the Legislature having a role in it.”

Community colleges are a different animal than the four-year schools. The two-year schools have an elected board of trustees — and CWI’s five trustees have the final word on the Idaho Center transfer. While the State Board of Education has broad policymaking authority for K-12 and higher education, the board also tends to defer to community college trustees — as they did when a debacle of dysfunction threatened North Idaho College’s accreditation. The Legislature didn’t (and couldn’t) do much about NIC either, except to register their concerns.

Horman is no easy sell when it comes to education budgets, but she doesn’t sound overly concerned about the economics of the Idaho Center transfer. She said CWI President Gordon Jones reached out to her and explained how he expects to make the math work.

In an EdNews interview Wednesday, Jones walked through his plan in detail.

First, he’s not convinced the center is a perennial money pit. The city has subsidized the Idaho Center for years, but Jones accurately points out that the balance sheet has improved over the past four post-pandemic years. He also thinks CWI could net hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual upfront money by renegotiating with Oak View Group, the national firm that manages the Idaho Center.

“I’m certainly not interested in subsidizing an arena with an academic budget,” Jones said.

Jones also says CWI has several ways to pay for the deferred maintenance costs, whenever that work is needed. CWI could qualify for funds through the Nampa Auditorium District. CWI could also lease out eight to 10 land parcels near the center. Noting that CWI raises more than $10 million a year, Jones says private donations could pick up the slack.

CWI could also raise property taxes — across a community college district that takes in all of Ada and Canyon counties. Or it could increase tuition. Both, said Jones, are options of last resort.

And those should be CWI’s last options. Raising taxes or tuition to float a real estate deal could be a great way for a trustee to get voted out of office. Or for a college president to get fired.

CWI will face enough Statehouse blowback as it is, if trustees approve the Idaho Center deal.

A fight over the community college budget wouldn’t be unprecedented, but it would be a new twist. Horman has weathered plenty of higher ed budget floor fights in her seven House terms. But usually, it’s been because lawmakers want to send a message to Boise State University or the University of Idaho. Funded separately from the four-year schools,  the community colleges have generally skirted the crossfire, she said.

Crane could play a prominent role. The 10-term lawmaker chairs the House State Affairs Committee — which is packed with conservatives, and never bashful about throwing its weight around in the policy arena. Crane already envisions a couple of policy bills in response to the Idaho Center issue: perhaps a bill that would ban community colleges from collecting auditorium district revenues, or a bill to limit a city’s ability to transfer properties like the Idaho Center through a cashless “conveyance.”

Crane is no stranger to these fights, either. In 2024, House State Affairs played a lead role in galvanizing opposition to the University of Idaho’s failed University of Phoenix acquisition. Not inaccurately, Crane calls the tense two-day committee hearing a “black eye” for U of I President C. Scott Green.

Crane is representative of a Legislature that gets uneasy whenever colleges and universities try to build their portfolio. Lawmakers helped to kill the Phoenix deal. Some legislators are likely to be skeptical, at best, if Idaho State University follows through on trying to acquire the Idaho College of Osteopathic Medicine.

And in the Idaho Center, Crane sees a financial liability waiting to happen. “Once that building moves to the state, that problem moves to the state.”

Jones doesn’t think the legislative pushback has much to do with a college that serves 31,000 students — including 6,000 that live in Nampa — or the Idaho Center itself.

“I suspect it has to do more to do with their philosophy of higher ed than any particular grievance they have with CWI,” he said.

Whether it’s fiscal or philosophical, or some of both, it’s shaping up to be a showdown. After a quarter century of hosting concerts and rodeos, the Idaho Center could serve up some high-quality political theater.

Kevin Richert writes a weekly analysis on education policy and education politics. Look for his stories each Thursday.