To address rising costs of law enforcement in fast-growing communities like those in Kootenai County, Commissioner Bruce Mattare has proposed that lawmakers empower counties to bill cities without their own police departments or a contract with the county sheriff’s office for “city-incurred law enforcement services that are in excess of what city taxpayers pay to the county.”

Mattare said he believes this proposal, outlined in a white paper, is a “fair and impartial solution” that accounts for county law enforcement services and how those services can be tracked and priced. 

But local city leaders and the Association of Idaho Cities argue the proposal's structure is unlawful and would amount to a double tax. 

“A number of cities in Kootenai County have their own growth model,” Mattare told The Press. “They add businesses and developments, but they don’t incorporate a way to pay for the public safety component of their growth. They dump that cost onto the sheriff’s office.” 

In Idaho, the county sheriff primarily enforces state penal laws. Cities can create their own police departments, but they aren’t obligated to. 

Every property owner in Kootenai County pays a portion of their property taxes to the county. Part of that property tax goes to Kootenai County’s justice fund, which pays for justice services the county provides to residents, including the jail and patrol. 

In his white paper, Mattare argues that, because crime rates are “disproportionately higher” in cities than in unincorporated parts of the county, cities that rely on sheriffs for primary policing “effectively force other county taxpayers to subsidize the excessive law enforcement costs these cities pass to the county.” 

“It creates an undue hardship on the county as these cities continue to grow without picking up the real cost of public safety,” Mattare said. 

The equitable solution, Mattare said, is to make cities responsible for the cost of law enforcement services and develop a reasonable cost model that establishes an hourly billable rate and accounts for deputy time. 

Kootenai County has yet to develop that model. 

That’s been a sticking point in recent years as the county and the city of Hayden, which contracts with the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office for law enforcement services, have sparred over policing costs and questions about accountability. 

“The city wants accountability,” said Hayden City Councilor Ed DePriest. 

Hayden contracts with KCSO for five patrol deputies, one sergeant and one animal control officer assigned to the city. 

“For a long time, we’ve been trying to determine if we’re getting what we’re paying for,” said Hayden City Councilor Matt Roetter. 

City leaders have asked the sheriff’s office to show how much time the dedicated officers spend patrolling or responding to calls for service in Hayden. 

“They can’t tell us how much time the deputies assigned to Hayden spend there,” Roetter said. 

To assign a cost value for illustrative purposes, Mattare said he took the total amount levied for the justice fund for the sheriff’s office patrol division in 2025, roughly $11.2 million, and divided it by the total number of incidents KCSO responded to in the entire county, 28,823. 

Mattare arrived at $391.86 per incident, which he said revealed a disparity between some cities' contributions to the justice fund and the law enforcement burden placed on the sheriff’s office. 

He acknowledged that the data is “imperfect” because the sheriff’s office doesn’t track time per incident. 

“We cannot account for time,” he said. “We cannot provide a receipt for services rendered.” 

In a response to Mattare’s white paper, the Association of Idaho Cities said the proposal’s structure is unlawful. 

“It converts a countywide public responsibility into a compulsory charge against selected municipalities without identifying a service purchased by the city, without measuring the actual additional cost of providing that service and without applying uniform assessment of those costs to every part of the county,” the report said. “Calling the charge a fee or reimbursement does not change its substance or account for the fact that city residents already pay property tax to the county for the exact services being provided. 

Roetter agreed, adding that Idaho lawmakers might look at the proposal with skepticism. 

“It’s a double taxation,” he said. “That’s not a Republican principle.” 

The white paper doesn’t establish that cities collectively impose an unfunded burden on counties across Idaho, according to the AIC response, “let alone in Kootenai County.” 

If lawmakers consider a different compulsory structure, the AIC argues they must create a properly defined taxing authority, impose the tax uniformly, provide clear standards and reciprocal accounting and protect meaningful review. 

“The proposal described in the white paper does none of those things,” the report said. “It is unlawful, unfair to affected municipal taxpayers, and should it be enacted, will instantly lead to unnecessary, costly litigation, likely being struck down by in court.” 

For his part, Mattare said his goal in preparing the white paper was to promote a discussion about how Idaho cities without their own police departments fund law enforcement services. In that sense, he said he’s succeeding. 

“No one has put numbers to the problem until I did,” he said. “When I put numbers to it, the response is that my numbers are wrong, not that there isn’t a problem.” 

    DePriest
  

    Roetter