Shocking Results?

After the Republican Primary last Tuesday, the newspapers and online blogs have been trying desperately to explain how several new people won legislative spots, unseating some big name incumbents, while other highly targeted incumbents managed to win with comfortable margins.  The media reported that some folks are “shocked” at the outcome of the election! (more…)

Should Idaho’s capital city Boise change its name to Clowntown?  If so,  Idaho’s Governor Clement L. Otter may have earned the opportunity to be its first mayor under the new name.

According to the Idaho Statesman, Otter  insisted that candidates Walt Bayes and Harley Brown be allowed to participate in the Republican gubernatorial primary election candidates  debate with him and his principal challenger, state Senator Russ Fulcher.

By many accounts, the result was a debacle rather than a debate.

The debate (or whatever it was) was presented by the Idaho Press Club, the League of Women Voters, and Idaho Public Television.  The presenters had established a debate format and rules which the participants presumably agreed to follow.  Though it might not have been obvious from the participation in the debate, the presenters had also established criteria for choosing the candidates who would be invited to participate.  But as the Idaho Statesman implied in its article linked above and as candidate Fulcher alleged specifically in a statement posted on his campaign website after the debate, the presenters may have disregarded the eligibility criteria when they allowed one or both of candidates Bayes and Brown to participate.

OpenCdA has sent inquiries to both the Fulcher campaign and to Idaho Public Television (IPT).

Of IPT, we asked:

In a statement on his campaign website, gubernatorial candidate Sen. Russ Fulcher stated, “Although they did not meet the debate’s qualifying criteria, governor Otter demanded inclusion of two perennial candidates, Walt Bayes and Harley Brown, as a contingency of his participation in the only debate he would agree to.”

1.  Did candidate Bayes and candidate Brown meet each of the “Criteria for choosing candidates in the Idaho Debates” as those were stated at http://idahoptv.org/elections/2014/rules.cfm?

2.  If either or both candidates Bayes and Brown did not meet each of the “Criteria …,” then why was the noncompliant candidate(s) allowed to participate in the gubernatorial debate?   Was Governor Otter’s participation in the debate contingent on an invitation to participate being extended to either or both candidates Bayes and Brown?

3.  If the decision was made to invite and allow participation by either candidates Bayes and Brown and if that decision was made contrary to the “Criteria…,” please identify by name and organizational affiliation the person(s) consulted in the decision and the person(s) who made the decision.

Of Sen. Fulcher’s campaign, we asked:

Idaho Public Television’s website listed the “Criteria for choosing candidates in the Idaho Debates.”  Which of these criteria did each of the two candidates Bayes and Brown not meet?  Since the debate was presented by the Idaho Press Club, the League of Women Voters, and Idaho Public Television, who at each of these organizations agreed to waive those requirements?

Their responses, if any, will be an addendum to this post.

Long-time readers of OpenCdA may recognize the photo to the left.  It accompanied our April 21, 2009, post entitled Closed for Your Protection?.  It’s a photo of the City of Coeur d’Alene’s police substation that sits in City Park just behind the North Idaho Museum.

There was another photo, a more recent one, of Coeur d’Alene’s police substation in the news yesterday.  Taxpayers in Coeur d’Alene and Kootenai County who read the companion article from yesterday’s Spokesman-Review headlined WSU to look into CdA peeing complaint and today’s Coeur d’Alene Press article headlined Drinking and disturbing will observe in yesterday’s photo that the police substation was still closed for your protection.

Given the theme of yesterday’s photo, it’s ironic that in April 2008 we ran a five-part series of posts entitled Toilet Not Included. There were other companion posts as well, and all had the same theme:  This alleged public safety building in the park was a gigantic boondoggle, a waste of money intended to allow the City of Coeur d’Alene to put public money in the pockets of some of its favorite contractors.  (more…)

Our OpenCdA post dated April 25, 2014, and titled Deception by Omission?, was based on our assumption that both the Coeur d’Alene Press editorial writers and the Trustees of School District 271 understood the Idaho Open Meeting Law codified at Idaho Code §§ 67-2340 through 67-2347 and summarized conveniently in Q&A format by the Idaho Attorney General in the Idaho Open Meeting Law Manual, November 2011.  We made our assumption based on the content of the Coeur d’Alene Press’s editorial on Friday, April 25, 2014, headlined Open eyes – and meetings.

To OpenCdA, it appeared the Press editorial was a thinly-veiled directive to Kootenai County Prosecuting Attorney Barry McHugh to dismiss school district patron/watchdog Mary Jo Finney’s allegation that a quorum of three School District 271 Trustees (Hearn, Hazel, Eubanks) violated the Idaho Open Meeting Law when they, along with the District’s Superintendent Matthew Handelman and Communications Director Laura Rumpler, attended the Idaho School Board Association Day on the Hill in Boise on February 24 and 25, 2014.

The Press editorial included this very direct statement:  “The fact that the district legally posted notice of a meeting in Boise that was central to Finney’s complaint weakened her argument, if it didn’t kill it altogether.” [emphasis ours] The editorial suggested that apparent compliance with the “notice” requirement of Idaho Code § 67-2343 automatically made the meeting entirely legal even if there were other factors making it illegal.

Our curiosity piqued, we submitted a public records request to the School District for a copy of the meeting notice and a copy of the written minutes which Idaho Code § 67-2344 requires be kept at such a meeting.  The two-page response we received from Clerk of the Board Lynn Towne was confusing.  (more…)

This morning’s The Spokesman-Review published in Spokane, Washington, had an article authored by Mike Prager and headlined “Spokane County Jail is overcrowded and falling apart.”  The headline accurately states the problem.  The overcrowding precedes the falling apart by over a decade.

In early 2006, The Spokesman-Review’s op-ed editor Doug Floyd contacted me and requested that I prepare an op-ed piece for the newspaper.  My response was headlined “Bi-state effort answer to jail overcrowding” which ran in The Spokesman-Review on March 2, 2006.  It seems to me to be an idea worth reconsidering.  I would go even further now and suggest that Washington and Idaho jointly consider acquiring enough land to not only meet the needs outlined in my original op-ed piece, but establish a regional public safety training facility which would provide bi-state certification for public safety officers in both Washington and Idaho.

When my op-ed first ran in 2006, the response from then Kootenai County Undersheriff Tad Leach was to ask what the County would do with the existing facility on Government Way in Coeur d’Alene.  He observed there isn’t much of a market for old jails.  My response was quite simple.  With some modification to parts of each structure, both Spokane and Kootenai Counties could use their respective jail facilities for intake, medical holding, psychiatric holding, and release processing.   Both Spokane and Kootenai County jails are reasonably close to hospital facilities.

Yes, even I recognized then and now that the turf politics associated with such a bi-state facility would be daunting.   But in the end, it would address the seemingly never ending plea for more jail space while also improving the professionalism of the public safety officers in this region.  It’s an idea that should be revisited.

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[A lawsuit filed March 16, 2014, in Idaho Federal District Court challenges the constitutionality of Idaho’s newly-passed Interference with Agricultural Production law.  The law is better known in Idaho by its informal nickname, the “ag gag law”.

A news summary of the lawsuit appeared in an online IdahoReporter.com article by Austin Hill dated April 18, 2014, entitled Idaho farm protection bill faces legal scrutiny.

The formal complaint, filed in the federal district court under case number 1:14-cv-00104- BLW, is titled “Animal Legal Defense Fund et al v. Otter et al“.  Here is a link to the 52-page complaint.  (more…)