Idaho officials OK $84.5 million endowment distribution

State officials have approved a 4.5 percent increase in payouts to public schools and other beneficiaries from money generated from the state’s 3,750 square miles of endowment lands.

Idaho Republican Gov. Brad Little and four other statewide elected officials on the Idaho Land Board voted 5-0 Tuesday to approve the record $84.5 million distribution.

Most of that money, $52.5 million, will go to public schools. The rest will be split up between universities, state hospitals for the mentally ill, state veterans homes, the Idaho School for the Deaf and Blind, Idaho’s juvenile correction system and Idaho’s prison system.

The $84.5 million comes from timber sales, leases on state lands and earnings from investments in the $2.3 billion land grant endowment fund.

Idaho received the endowment lands in 1890 when it became a state.