Court Opinion

ID: 9844761
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:08:34.342553+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:15:42.439999
License: Public Domain

JOHNSON, Justice,
concurring in the result.
I concur in the result reached in the Court’s opinion. In doing so, I announce that I consider the opinion in this case effectively to overrule Kootenai County Property Ass’n v. Kootenai County., 115 Idaho 676, 769 P.2d 553 (1989).
The Court’s opinion attempts to distinguish Kootenai by stating that in Kootenai “everyone who paid the solid waste disposal fee was entitled to the benefit of solid waste disposal services,” while in this case, “[ejligi-bility to participate in the insurance program is not related to payment of the transfer fee.” Op. at 894, 920 P.2d at 913. In my view, this attempted distinction is not valid.
In Kootenai, the Court held that because any owner of a habitable residential dwelling was eligible to use the county waste disposal site, the charge imposed on them was a fee and not a tax. 115 Idaho at 678, 769 P.2d at 555. The essence of this logic was that it was up to the owner whether they chose to send their solid waste, if they had any, to the county waste disposal site. In the present case, anyone who pays the transfer fee is eligible to participate in the Trust Fund’s insurance program, if they choose to have storage tanks, as V-l has. In Kootenai, only those who chose to use the county waste disposal site received a benefit. Here, only those who choose to have storage tanks benefit. Having disagreed with the Court in Koo-tenai, and having attempted without success to convince the Court that Kootenai controlled, I now enthusiastically accept what I consider to be the demise of Kootenai as' precedent. “It is said that there is nothing so dangerous to the status quo as an idea whose time has come. More dangerous yet is the continuance of an idea whose time has past.” Olsen v. Olsen, 98 Idaho 10, 21, 557 P.2d 604, 615 (1976) (Shepard, J., dissenting).