Idaho Governor's Mansion Might Come on Market

(MoneyWatch)  It's a 7,370-square-foot house, with 1,151 square feet of garages, set on 37 acres in Boise -- and there's just one problem -- the state of Idaho doesn't want it.

The "it" in question is the Idaho Governor's Mansion, more formally known as the State of Idaho Executive Residence.

The house, donated by the late potato king J.R. Simplot -- if you've ever had McDonald's French fries you've probably eaten a Simplot potato -- is just too expensive to keep up. (An Associated Press story about the mansion costs notes that in 2007, lawn maintenance and irrigation alone cost $100,000).

What's more, the current governor Butch Otter doesn't live there, preferring to stay on his own ranch near Boise. (Otter divorced Gay Simplot, Simplot's daughter, in 1993, so he might not want to stay in a place that came from his ex-father-in-law.)

So the five-member Governor's Housing Committee (Idaho state representatives Max Black and Phylis King, state senators Les Bock and Robert Geddes, and Mike Gwartney, the director of the Idaho Department of Administration) is going to meet to decide what to do with the place.

Rep. King was quoted last fall as saying that a sale was a possibiliity.

Spring market, anyone?