Timber company, county decry Idaho land buying splurge

By Keith Ridler
Associated Press in the Idaho Statesman
April 16, 2019
Category: Business & Politics
Region: United States, US West

Idaho’s plan to buy timberland unfairly competes with private businesses and takes away tax revenue from local governments, a timber company and a northern Idaho county said Tuesday. Keith Williams of the Stimson Lumber Company told Republican Gov. Brad Little and four other statewide-elected officials on the Idaho Land Board that the state buying timberland is a bad idea. Idaho has been selling hundreds of residential home sites as well as commercial real estate as it gets out of leasing properties. The state expects to bank about $180 million that a financial adviser says should be used to buy timberland and farmland. “The scale of the Land Board’s reinvestment strategy just, quite simply, doesn’t work for Stimson,” Williams told the board. “It pits the state in direct competition with the private sector. Why does the state want to compete with the private sector at all?”

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