Take a look at the user comment area attached to today’s Press article headlined Teen worker dies in accident at Hauser corn maze.   The screen capture above is one of the “user comments”.

Is it appropriate for a Press staff member to post pseudonymously on one of the skewspaper’s own news articles?

It immediately raises very reasonable questions:  How many other “users” are also Press staff members who comment pseudonymously to push the skewspaper’s agenda on its own news stories?   If a Press staff member wants to answer a “user” comment or clarify something in a news story, why not use his or her true name above the staff identifier?  How accepted is this practice among our region’s news media who allow online users to post comments on news stories?

Saturday morning’s Coeur d’Alene Press skewspaper reported that District Court Judge John Stegner has denied Kootenai County’s petition for judicial confirmation to fund the lease of a privately-owned jail.  The article is headlined  Judge:  Jail Plan Unconstitutional.

OpenCdA’s post dated June 15, 2014 entitled Judicial Confirmation – Bypassing Voters discussed Idaho’s judicial confirmation statute and some of its application in this particular issue, the expansion of the Kootenai County Jail.

We can not comment specifically on Judge Stegner’s decision, because we have not yet obtained and studied his written decision and order.  His written and filed decision and order will necessarily be a detailed explanation of the legal basis for his decision.    It would help guide both the petitioner and the respondents on any future legal actions.

However, we will offer our opinion on some of the information included in this morning’s Press article.  (more…)

This morning’s Coeur d’Alene Press editorial entitled Open eyes – and meetings strives desperately to discredit local education watchdog Mary Jo Finney’s complaint that the Board of Trustees of School District 271 engaged in an unlawful meeting while a quorum of their members were in Boise.

The Press editorial includes this 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.”

Oh, really?

For the record, Google Maps’ most direct route from Coeur d’Alene to Boise shows that the driving distance is approximately 378 miles with a drive time of approximately 6 hours 59 minutes.

OpenCdA will assume the Press is accurately reporting that “…the district legally posted notice of a meeting in Boise…”.   We will take that as an accurate admission, even by the Press, that a meeting not only took place but that the meeting was also  scheduled in advance.   To take that one step further, if the School District did post the stautorily-required notice of the Boise meeting, then it was acknowledging  that the meeting in Boise was in fact, a meeting required by law to be noticed.  Idaho Code §67-2341(6) defines such a meeting as “… the convening of a governing body of a public agency to make a decision or to deliberate toward a decision on any matter.”  Thus, the only reason to properly notice the meeting was because the quorum of the School District Board of Trustees attending the meeting intended in advance to deliberate toward a decision and possibly make one.  So instead of successfully discrediting Finney’s assertion that the alleged meeting took place illegally, the Coeur d’Alene Press has in fact admitted and established that it did.  (more…)