Also minus Ben Bradlee and Katharine Graham.

Good comment. Thank you!

Mary, obviously Piazza deflected the truth. The Counties website has a link for resolutions and 2009-10 is not found there. It exists with no minutes and two different agendas the one available on the County’s website does not mention it. There is no record for who drafted it or took part in drafting it and so far no legal opinion. The resolution itself does not cite a single Statute or any authority just that the BOCC decided to do this. The resolution lists a copy was given to the prosecutor.

The Idaho Attorney General already concluded that the Kootenai County BOCC cannot have in-house attorneys and they just won’t stop. Piazza was excused when the measurer came before the Board however a lot of combined effort went into the measure and much more into keeping it a secret. The whole process is defaulting to them as prosecutors and deflection is right on that gets far worse with the County attorneys obviously. What this was about is what the document is titled at the bottom of the signature page.

With that said the Idaho State Bar comments “A prosecutor has the responsibility of a minister of justice and not simply that of an advocate”. Unbiased justice does not exist at any level of the prosecutors office only a full time advocate in so far as the County’s officials and managers all while ignoring the policy of the State and the prosecutors primary duty of enforcing all the penal provisions of any and all statutes of this state, in any court. Those who are in the club of officials and managers get a FREE PASS while the malfeasance runs rampant with several elected officials.

Claimed training is a ruse and the County already has Risk Management attorney’s though ICRIMP. In this County the malfeasance is so bad an elected official is appointed an attorney to run interference protecting them and the public record. They cannot do the job without an attorney? You would think a higher standard for following the law but instead it couldn’t possibly be worse including serious disclosure problems that already exist at several County levels.

In my opinion thus far the situation is our prosecutor is paid by the people and is the prosecutor of the people acting on behalf of the people but will not hold accountable for following the law those who serve the people.

Here is the link to Resolution No. 2009-10, Transferring Authority and Control over the Risk Management Department to the Human Resources Department.

I’m sure McHugh has an explanation. However, if it is correct that Cafferty is part of the County’s Risk Management program, then authority and control over him appears to have been transferred from the Prosecutor to Human Resources. If that is so, then Cafferty is subordinate to the Administrative Services position which is subordinate to the Board of County Commissioners on this (outdated, what a surprise) County organization chart. That raises some really interesting questions, then, about who has been directing the county’s obstruction of Jim Brannon’s election contest. Cafferty’s actions may have been directed not by Prosecutor Barry McHugh but by Commissioners Currie, Tondee, and Piazza. Indeed, if this is correct, McHugh may have been powerless to stop Cafferty from doing anything. That does not let McHugh off the hook. He could have revealed all of this, assuming it is accurate, to the public.

To understand why the Commissioners would want to obstruct the election contest does not take a law degree. The county contracted with the city to administer the city’s municipal election according to Title 50, Chapter 20, which governs municipal elections. English and Company messed it up. The city could have and should have enforced its contract with the county for a do-over on the election at county expense, probably insured. Instead, the county and city colluded to try and scuttle the election contest lawsuit. They knew that it would be costly if Brannon through his attorney Starr Kelso prosecuted the lawsuit as persistently, aggressively, and courageously as he has. But they also figured they had more money to spend (it is, of course, taxpayer’s money, but that never stopped a Kootenai County Commissioner from making expensively bad decisions), so they would simply pile the obstructive actions on which would require costly legal responses from Brannon and Kelso. It will probably prove to be less expensive for county and city taxpayers if the city had forced the county to do the election right. The city and county will try to blame Brannon for the expense, but it was the city’s failure to enforce its contract against the county that led to the costs. As Nixon and his cronies learned from Watergate, the inevitably unsuccessful cover-up attempt always has more serious consequences than if they had just acknowledged openly the original error and then corrected it.

By the way, the legality of the transfer in this resolution is questionable at best. McHugh’s explanation ought to be very interesting.

It might also be appropriate to get Commissioners-elect Jai Nelson and Dan Green to comment publicly and on the record about this resolution, something other than the usual, “I’ll have to get back to you on that.”

I obtained a copy of the resolution today. As I recall, McHugh promised to bring all the deputy prosecutors back under his umbrella when he took office. Resolution 2009-10 suggests that he reneged on that promise.