Boise Airport highlights four state legislative priorities at Idaho Airport Managers luncheon

Boise — At the Boise Airport Commission meeting on March 5, Director Rebecca Houghton reviewed a handout the airport provided at a recent Idaho Airport Managers Association legislative luncheon and outlined four legislative priorities the airport asked state lawmakers to consider.

Houghton said the airport’s top requests were: (1) greater transparency in how the state collects and distributes the aviation fuel tax to airports across Idaho, (2) a state exemption to resolve a conflict between state procurement law and federal grant rules that affects use of the construction-manager-at-risk (CMAR) delivery method, (3) an exemption to allow regulation of transportation network companies (TNCs) such as rideshare operators at airports, and (4) an updated state economic impact study — the last was completed in 2020.

On the CMAR issue, Houghton said state law and federal grant rules currently conflict because one requires price to be part of selection and the other precludes selection based on price for qualification-based procurement, complicating the airport’s ability to use a qualifications-based method that federal grants sometimes require. On TNCs, she said Idaho is the only state that does not allow airports or municipalities to regulate TNCs at airports, and that change is needed so airports can manage curb congestion and meet grant-agreement requirements to charge fair market value for facility use.

“We are asking that there be an exemption for that because we have a lot of congestion at the curb,” Houghton said in the meeting.

Houghton said the back of the handout summarized major projects at Idaho’s commercial service airports and that the airport would like the legislature to refresh its economic-impact analysis to reflect population and activity growth since 2020.

Provenance: Rebecca Houghton presented the priorities and described the handout during the March 5, 2025 commission meeting.