According to SeattlePI.com, retired Los Angeles Police Department Detective Phil Vannatter has died of cancer at age 70 in Santa Clarita, CA.
Vannatter was one of the LAPD Robbery-Homicide Division Detectives involved in the 1994 homicide investigation into the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. The suspect in that investigation, O.J. Simpson, was charged with their homicides but acquitted by a jury.
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The Idaho Freedom Foundation’s 2012 “Pork Report” is available online. It is 120 pages long, and gives examples of excessive and wasteful spending by Idaho’s public entities throughout the state.
As you might expect, Coeur d’Alene is mentioned prominently (again) in this year’s “Pork Report.
An alert OpenCdA reader pointed us to this story in the Bitterroot Star newspaper.
It’s a story you’re not likely to see in Idaho and will never see in Coeur d’Alene: The Mayor of Stevensville, Montana, demanded that three airport board members resign because … they violated the state’s Open Meeting Law. Apparently in Montana, or at least in Stevensville, ignorance of the state’s open meeting law is no defense for public officials to hide behind.
Imagine that! A mayor that follows the law. Shocking!
I’m back in familiar territory — in the State of Confusion.
The Idaho Statesman is reporting that next Tuesday night, the Eagle City Council will vote to change the makeup of its urban renewal agency. The proposal is to have the newly constructed agency composed of the Eagle mayor and council plus two additional commissioners they appoint. According to the news/views/skewspaper article, the purpose of the reconstruction is to give the city more oversight over the agency.
But in two separate decisions, the Idaho Supreme Court has held that the urban renewal agency is not the alter ego of the city in which it resides. So if Eagle goes through with its plan, if the new URA is made up of city officials, exactly how do these city officials exercise more oversight over the URA without the URA being the alter ego of the city?
Welcome to my state.
Reps. Sims (left) and Henderson (right)
A bill authored by Coeur d’Alene Representative Kathleen Sims was introduced today in the Idaho legislature on a motion by Post Falls Representative Frank Henderson. The bill, H0381, “Amends and adds to existing law to revise qualifications of electors; to provide a written warning on the application for an absentee elector’s ballot form; and to revise procedures for counting absentee ballots.” It clarifies and emphasizes the need for residency requirements of Idaho’s electors and to ensure the validity of absentee ballots and their count.
This bill begins to correct several major Idaho election administration law deficiencies which were identified because of the Coeur d’Alene City election contest lawsuit of 2009.
(click to enlarge)
Within a few days every Idaho state legislator will receive a copy of “Taxation Without Representation – LCDC,” a revealing look at how Idaho’s urban renewal laws have been misused in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. (This hyperlink is the low-resolution version because of limitations on file sizes we can upload.) The 16-page brochure was professionally designed and printed. Printing costs were paid by private donations from concerned citizens of Coeur d’Alene, many of them private businesspeople.
Citizens in several Idaho cities, not just Coeur d’Alene, have been asking, “Just exactly how has our community benefited from the tax increment skimming our urban renewal agencies have been doing?”. A news article titled New Eagle City Council champing at the bit for change in today’s Idaho Statesman raises the same question.
Rather than trying to “kill” urban renewal laws, Idaho’s citizens are trying to encourage legislators to modify them so they can achieve their intended purposes while at the same time making them less susceptible to predatory exploitation.
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According to this news release, North Idaho College is asking citizens to tell the school what qualities and characteristics we would like to see in the school’s next president.
What qualities would you like to see?
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Kootenai County Clerk Cliff Hayes has been recognized as Idaho’s 2012 Outstanding Republican Administrator and installed in the GOP Hall of Fame by the Idaho Republican Party. Hayes accepted the award in Boise on Friday night. In giving the award to Hayes, the Idaho Republican Party noted that he has, “…brought back confidence in the integrity of our election process.” Hayes’ accomplishments are particularly noteworthy, because he has been the Kootenai County Clerk for only 1-1/2 years.
According to the occasionally accurate but rarely complete Coeur d’Alene Press, a motion to put the McEuen Field renovation project to a public advisory vote will be offered and seconded, then discussed, at the January 17 Coeur d’Alene City Council meeting.
Do you believe there should be a public advisory vote on this issue? If so, who should write the ballot wording, and why? Who should administer the vote, and why? Who should be allowed to vote?
This would not be a statutorily required general or special election, so Idaho’s election laws would not necessarily control the conduct of the election.
Here’s another question: If a public vote were held and if it indicated the voters did not favor the project, would that outcome be interpreted as a vote of “no confidence” in the Mayor and those still on the Council who supported the project and did not want a public vote?
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