On the other, it is feuding with Blaine County because the county wants to exert local control on state-owned lands. State leaders generally don t like the way the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management manage federal lands in Idaho. It irks them that 63 percent of the state is federally owned. It irks them that logging, grazing and mining are no longer Kings of the economy. They regularly complain about the feds insensitivity to local concerns.
Idaho leaders think the state can do it better.
So far, the feds are ignoring them. The state would like to tell the feds to buzz off. County leaders don t like the state s proposal to install a big gravel pit on 640 acres of state land in Ohio Gulch. The land is zoned for residential and agricultural activities, not heavy industry. The county complains that the state is insensitive to local concerns.