The College of Southern Idaho (CSI) deserves an attaboy for rebuilding the public’s trust. CSI is one of Idaho’s community colleges, and according to an article titled CSI board shakes up old ways, it took the replacement of a couple of CSI’s Trustees to make it happen. The article was written by Ben Botkin and appeared on April 30, 2011, in MagicValley.com, the online version of the Twin Falls Times-News. 

It seems that in the past, CSI’s Board of Trustees has favored one particular Twin Falls construction company, the Starr Corp.,  to get CSI’s big dollar construction contracts (Imagine that!).   It also seems that the company’s now-retired president sat on the board of the CSI Foundation.  Of course, CSI Trustees and the Foundation denied with much harrumphing that there was any favoritism shown to businesses run by those who serve on its Foundation.  It isn’t cronyism, just a coincidence, don’t you know?

But then the Times-News did what real newspapers still do:  It started digging.  And what did it find?

A Times-News investigation revealed in August 2009 that the college began consulting  with Starr and its architecture firm, CTA, for the [multi-million dollar] grant application in December 2008, well before competition for the project was opened to other firms.

In other words, CSI’s Trustees were giving Starr Corp. a leg up on getting the contract for CSI’s $7 million wind farm project.   But what about the nine other companies who wanted to apply for the work but didn’t know that the CSI Trustees were pushing for Starr Corp. to get it?  According to the Times-News article:

Several later said that they wouldn’t have bothered if the college had been upfront about Starr’s prior involvement.

That’s the point:  Unfair favoritism inevitably discourages competitive bidders and drives up the costs of public projects to those who ultimately pay the bills:  The taxpayers.  Why should businesses go to the time, effort, and cost to prepare competitive bids when one company already is almost a shoe-in?

Twin Falls has a wonderful community college, the College of Southern Idaho.  It also has a newspaper that is obviously committed to finding and reporting news the taxpayers need to make informed decisions at the polls. The voters and the administration at CSI have taken steps to reduce the chances for favoritism/cronyism.

We in northern Idaho also have a wonderful community college, North Idaho College.  The difference is we have alleged newspapers committed to preserving the status quo corruptus by not reporting the information taxpayers need to make informed decisions.  Is this same kind of favoritism/cronyism going on at North Idaho College?

Please read the linked article closely.