COEUR d'ALENE - In the 2012 Legislature, Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden predicts one hot issue will be the state Land Board and a lingering philosophical perception by some that it's competing with the private sector by owning a Boise self-storage business.

"This will be a big fight," Wasden said Tuesday in a conversation at The Press. "They will try and put limits on what the Land Board can do."

Wasden said the policy debate has already taken place, a long time ago, and now it's just a matter of following the law.

"We have been in business since 1890," said Wasden, who is a Land Board commissioner, along with Idaho Gov. Butch Otter, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna and others.

Wasden said the law, in this case, is the Land Board's constitutional responsibility to manage state endowment lands to secure the maximum long-term financial return. The chief beneficiaries are Idaho's public schools and the University of Idaho.

The Land Board purchased the self-storage business in Boise in August 2010. Both Luna and Otter now have said they made a mistake voting for the storage business purchase.

In part, the purchase was made to diversify asset types in the endowment portfolio to reduce risk, but it also increases cash flow to the public school fund. Idaho's endowment also benefits prisons and mental hospitals.

In the 2011 Legislature, a bill floated to prevent the Land Board from making purchases like the Boise self-storage was unsuccessful.

Also hot in the upcoming legislative session will be the issue of state Republican lawmakers trying to nullify the federal health care reform bill.

Wasden, who opposes the federal law, said, "States can't nullify federal law."

He said it's the wrong approach and won't work.

"This nullification process drags us right back to the Articles of Confederation," Wasden said, suggesting that ultimately, nullification would lead to anarchy.

Republican Rep. Vito Barbieri, of Dalton Gardens, sponsored a health care nullification bill.

Wasden said he's working against the health care law, but not through nullification.

He joined a multi-state lawsuit challenging the constitutionality.

When he joined the lawsuit early last year, Wasden said, "Our complaint alleges the new law infringes upon the constitutional rights of Idahoans and residents of the other states by mandating all citizens and legal residents have qualifying health care coverage or pay a tax penalty."

He said the law infringes on the sovereignty of the states by imposing onerous new operating rules that Idaho must follow as well as requiring the states to spend billions of additional dollars without providing funds or resources to the states to help subsidize the cost of implementation of the law.