From the Twin Falls Times-News

TWIN FALLS • The public and press won’t be allowed to sit in as candidates interview for the open Twin Falls City Council seat.

The public normally elects city council members to serve two-year terms. But when a mid-term vacancy opens, a city’s mayor can appoint someone to the seat. That person will serve until the next general election.

In April, Councilman Lance Clow stepped down, and 13 people applied to fill the spot. The council’s selection committee — Mayor Greg Lanting and Councilmen Don Hall and Chris Talkington — heard speeches from candidates on Tuesday and chose four finalists to interview for the position.

Because the council won’t have a quorum, the Friday interviews don’t fall under public meeting law, but aren’t necessarily closed. It’s up to the Lanting to decide whether to allow the public and press to sit in, said Twin Falls City Attorney Fritz Wonderlich.

Lanting said he will keep the interviews private, even if the candidates are OK with opening up the process.

“I really feel that we can choose the best candidate when they’re alone, just asking the question, and there’s no reporter there,”Lanting said. The press and public might hamper candid responses from the candidates, he said.

“I apologize, but I have the right to close this so I’m going to keep it closed,”he said.

The four candidates are Christopher Reid, Suzanne Hawkins, Allen Starley and Gary Garnand. After the interviews, the mayor will appoint one of the four to the council. The other council members will vote on whether they approve the appointment at Monday’s meeting.

If approved, the new council member will start immediately and sit in on that night’s meeting.

From the Twin Falls Times-News

From State Impact Idaho

The state of Idaho will give up an estimated $845 million this year in the form of tax credits and exemptions. And only a select few at the Idaho Tax Commission know exactly where that money goes.

Idaho’s law is pretty clear, individual and business tax information is confidential. Tax returns, specifically, are confidential under federal law. But some states have set up reporting requirements for businesses to disclose which state-specific incentives they’re using (think tax credits and exemptions), and how much those are worth. Idaho isn’t one of those states.

“We’re not advocating the disclosure of tax returns,” says Greg LeRoy, the executive director of the non-partisan organization Good Jobs First. “This is about saying, if you claim a corporate income tax credit on line 39C of your Idaho tax return, it’s no different than if the state wrote you a check.”

Read more.

From State Impact Idaho

From Huckleberries Online/The Spokesman-Review

Kootenai County GOP Central Committee Chairman Tina Jacobson has filed a lawsuit against a Huckleberries Online commenter who goes by the pseudonym “almostinnocentbystander.” Jacobson’s lawsuit names as defendant “John Doe” and/or “Jane Doe.” The Spokesman-Review is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit. Jacobson is claiming that the anonymous commenter “committed a tort of libel by publishing, via the internet, a malicious defamation” on Huckleberries Online about Jacobson during the visit of GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum to Coeur d’Alene in mid-February. According to the lawsuit, “almostinnocentbystander,” had commented at Huckleberries Online that “there was $10,000 missing from the Republican Central Committee funds and that the missing funds were hidden on the person of Mrs. Jacobson.” The suit goes on to say that Huckleberries blogger D.F. Oliveria removed the comment. The complaint adds that Oliveria and the Spokesman-Review refused to provide the identity of the commenter to Jacobson. The lawsuit seeks damages from the anonymous poster for alleged libel and an injunction to prevent future acts of libel. It is expected that, as part of the litigation, the plaintiff will seek to learn the identity of the anonymous poster. You can read the complaint for yourself here.

From Huckleberries Online/The Spokesman-Review

Editorial from the Lewiston Tribune

Sought or not, Wayne Hoffman has earned your gratitude.

The director of the right-wing Idaho Freedom Foundation is credited with exposing the inner workings of Idaho’s new closed Republican Primary election.

This was presented as a way to purify the GOP from independent thinkers, moderates and even the handful of Democrats who choose to cast ballots in what is often the real election in a one-party state.

But it’s also a way to publicly document who votes Republican in Idaho, how often they vote Republican in Idaho – and by inference, all those who do not vote Republican in Idaho.

From now on, every time you vote in the Idaho GOP primary, you first register as a Republican voter. It’s a matter of public record. So far, Idaho Democrats don’t require voters to register before voting in their primary. But the fact that you voted in a primary but not as a Republican remains subject to public inspection.

So it cuts either way – you’re either registered as one of the GOP faithful or you’re not.

All of which already was causing consternation among professionals who are expected to show impartiality – journalists and judges come to mind. Hoffman then supposedly hinted he might out any Idaho journalist who votes as a registered Republican. That set off a debate in newsrooms across the state.

Hoffman maintains he said no such thing. Maybe he didn’t. Or maybe the Titan of Transparency decided to back away before someone pointed out, once again, his own hypocrisy.

Whether it’s conservative billionaires David H. Koch and Charles G. Koch, Idaho libertarian guru Ralph Smeed’s estate or even eastern Idaho’s Melaleuca CEO Frank VanderSloot who bankrolls Hoffman’s enterprise, he isn’t saying.

Either way, here’s what he told the Tribune’s Brad Gary: “I never said I was going to go around and make an effort to publish that information. I said that information would be useful.”

Useful?

To whom?

Certainly to political parties. Election after election, the Idaho GOP will compile a list of its reliable voters. Its base. The people it can count on to turn out at the polls. To put up yard signs. To contribute money.

The party also can identify the people who switch in and out of its ranks, voting in a GOP election this year and a Democratic contest the next. These Republicans in Name Only are the kind of people the GOP wants to cull from its ranks and certainly from its roll of candidates.

But there’s also room for mischief.

How about the political operative who wants to discredit a newspaper reporter before the campaign begins?

Or the liberal lawyer who wants to disqualify a judge as a card-carrying Republican?

What happens to the small-town high school government teacher whose voting pattern gets scrutinized by a group of parents? Does he edit what he says in class about historical or political figures?

Or the small business owner who can no longer hide his political affiliation from his customers?

It’s illegal for a boss to inquire about a worker’s political leanings. But nothing can stop that employer from probing the voting behavior of people he has hired, might hire or plans to promote.

What about the physician who is pro-choice and wants to make certain any nurse on his staff shares that view? A good clue would be whether he votes as a Republican, which has a history of attracting pro-life voters and candidates

Or the state agency head who wants to guarantee his next chief deputy or press spokesman is a steady Republican voter? Registration records will fill in the blanks.

Even the conservative corporate executive who wants to promote a like-minded staffer has the opportunity to research the voting registration of his subordinates.

Far-fetched?

Don’t be so sure. Hoffman didn’t corner the market on imagination. He’s merely more talkative. – M.T.

Editorial from the Lewiston Tribune

From IDOG

As part of the 8^th annual Sunshine Week, which was March 11-17 this year, free-press volunteers throughout the country – including here in Idaho – paid visits to their local broadcast stations to inspect their “public files.” Sunshine Week is “a time to stand up for the importance of open government and freedom of information,” reported Stevie Converse of  “Media Minutes,” a weekly review of news “related to the intersection of media and democracy.” She reported on the effort and interviewed volunteer Steve Walker, the retired state archivist of the state of Idaho and the secretary/treasurer of IDOG, Idahoans for Openness in Government.

Walker volunteered to inspect the public files at two local TV stations, KBOI2 and KTVB in Boise.  “Both stations were very pleasant and gave me ready access to the files,” Walker reported. “The thing that surprised me most was the amount of money coming into the stations from out-of-state (political) advertising. Political candidates such as Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Newt Gingrich spent very large sums of money here in Idaho to get their message out, along with other Political Action Committees.”

Walker told Media Minutes, “It really kind of shocked me to see a lot of the things coming from out-of-state interests. It isn’t in-state money funding a lot of these things, it is out-of-state money.”

Converse reported, “Even a longtime open government advocate like Walker was unaware that broadcast stations maintain public files.” The information collected by Walker and other volunteers will be compiled to develop statistics on access to such public records at broadcast stations. Asked why he participated in the project, which took about an hour at each station, Walker said, “I’ve just been a long supporter for openness in government and transparency in government. I think that that’s the essence of democracy.”

You can listen to the full Media Minutes podcast here; select the March 16 edition, in which the Sunshine Week effort is the first item.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/media-minutes-podcast/id286885579

From IDOG

Editorial from the Idaho Statesman

Idaho expects, and allows, its 105 citizen legislators to police themselves — to write and enforce their own ethical guidelines.

And that’s one reason why the rules are so weak. It is unrealistic to expect lawmakers to write rules without thinking about what helps or hurts them.

That’s why the Legislature has been slow to follow 47 other states that require lawmakers to disclose their finances. Some people in elected public service would rather keep their private information to themselves — and nobody is in any hurry to make them do otherwise.

That’s why, days after a Senate ethics committee publicly cleared New Plymouth GOP Sen. Monty Pearce of wrongdoing, Republicans passed a rule that will allow senators to review the actions of their colleagues, behind closed doors. Sure, it looks terrible, and compromises the integrity of the process. But when senators are writing the rules, it should come as no surprise that they’d write rules borne of personal convenience.

And that’s why legislators have, so far, been unwilling to close the “revolving door” that allows legislators to move straight into lobbying. As lawmakers repeatedly and reasonably say, no one runs for a $16,116-a-year legislative seat to get rich. Again, it shouldn’t be surprising that they have been reluctant to close the door on more lucrative work.

Which brings us to Boise Democratic Rep. Brian Cronin. A rising star in the state’s minority party and a 41-year-old father of two, Cronin is leaving the Legislature this year, due to financial concerns.

Cronin says he will not apply his four years of legislative experience into lobbying his former colleagues. Cronin’s new employer — Strategies 360, a Seattle-based communications firm — corroborates his account.

Of course, that decision is strictly between Cronin and Strategies 360. The state has no say in the matter, because it has no rules to prohibit Cronin from lobbying.

Legislative Democrats have tended to be the most vocal critics of the rules — and again, that’s no surprise. In a Republican state, Republicans get more opportunities to ride the “revolving door” to a future in lobbying.

But the revolving door is not discriminating: It allows a Republican, or a Democrat, to go from lawmaker to lobbyist in the time it takes to clean out one desk and move into another. The only thing preventing anyone from taking this step is a desire to do the right thing — or, perhaps, just a self-interested concern about appearances.

Appearances do matter. But are Idahoans fed up enough to take matters into their own hands?

They have before. The state only has a campaign contribution disclosure law because Idaho voters approved an initiative in 1974. As legislators dance around the edges of ethics reform, they gradually advance the argument for an ethics initiative.

“Our View” is the editorial position of the Idaho Statesman. It is an unsigned opinion expressing the consensus of the Statesman’s editorial board.

Editorial from the Idaho Statesman

From the Idaho Statesman

I thought something was up last month when retiring Rep. Wendy Jaquet, D-Ketchum, appeared to stray from her party’s position on imposing a one-year cooling-off period before lawmakers and other high officials become lobbyists.

“Let’s say we have a different governor. Where does that staff go? I mean, they need a job. They have families, too,” Jaquet said in reflecting on her 18 years of service, including 10 as minority leader.

I immediately thought of Rep. Brian Cronin, D-Boise, whose decision to leave the Legislature after just four years dimmed what many Democrats considered one of their brightest stars.

Cronin, father of 9-year-old twins, has spent the past decade running a marketing and communications firm. His associate left for another job last fall.

Though he has a master’s from Harvard, Cronin, 41, has made it no secret that supporting his family hasn’t been easy to balance with legislative duties. “I’ve talked candidly with Wendy about my struggles and difficulties with making a living in general for a couple of years now.”

So, when Cronin told me Tuesday that he was taking a job at Strategies 360, which opened a Boise office in 2010, I expected him to confirm a rumor he would become a lobbyist. After all, the two Democrats fired in February by the left-leaning Seattle-based firm were leading lobbyists for the oil and gas industry in the hot fight over regulation.

While just 14 of Idaho’s 376 registered lobbyists are former lawmakers, several are among the heaviest hitters, including Bill Roden, Skip Smyser and Jerry Deckard. Relatives of lawmakers abound, as do former high-level staffers. Connections and an understanding of the process can be “monetized.”

But Cronin said he won’t register as a lobbyist when he starts next week and doesn’t have plans to do so.

“I don’t want to say ‘never,’ but that’s not why they hired me,” Cronin said. “I’m attracted to them because they’re a strategic communications firm. They do marketing, they do branding, they do public relations, they do social media and social networking.”

Paul Queary, spokesman for 360, affirmed Cronin’s account, saying his skills “lend themselves to a different basket of clients.”

Anonymous comments on my Wednesday blog post and a Friday column on Cronin were skeptical. “So how does one go work for a lobbying firm and not register as a lobbyist?” asked one.

“What’s the difference between lobbying and ‘PR consulting’? Just the cost of the lunch tab?” wrote another.

Cronin acknowledged he’ll be doing policy work but said that doesn’t require him to lobby.

“You can be a PR consultant and not necessarily get into the definition of lobbying,” said Secretary of State Ben Ysursa, who enforces the law. “Sometimes it is a fine line. Our view as a disclosure office is: When in doubt, register and report. Nobody’s ever been fined or convicted for overreporting.”

In fact, no one’s ever been convicted under the law’s misdemeanor provision, which requires willful violation. Civil fines are small — Monsanto’s Trent Clark paid $100 this year for not registering on time — and typically come for filing late spending reports. Failing to register is rare, Ysursa said.

Ysursa is amused by the criticism of Cronin, saying, “The cart’s about five feet in front of the horse here, isn’t it? They’re anticipating he will lobby and won’t register. I don’t know how you anticipate a breach.”

Ysursa said he believes compliance is solid: “There’s a lot of self-policing. We’ll hear something from somebody else, obviously somebody who’s mad. I think there will be a lot of scrutiny of Mr. Cronin’s activities.”

Cronin plans to finish his term, which ends Dec. 1. After that, there is no legal bar to him lobbying. Democrats have called for personal financial disclosure without unilaterally revealing their income and assets.

But if Cronin hopes to preserve his prospects to return to the Legislature or seek higher office, he would be far better off not becoming a lobbyist.

Even 38 years after the disclosure law passed, the association of lobbyists calls itself “Idaho Legislative Advisors,” Ysursa noted.

“There’s still the old scarlet letter associated with the word ‘lobbyist,’ ” Ysursa said.

Dan Popkey: 377-6438

From the Idaho Statesman

From the Associated Press

Medical care is so poor at an Idaho state prison that it amounts to neglect and cruel and unusual punishment, according to a report that was unsealed Monday.

Correctional health care expert Dr. Marc Stern said there have been some improvements at the Idaho State Correctional Institution south of Boise. But terminal and long-term inmates sometimes went unfed, nursing mistakes or failure likely resulted in some deaths, and one inmate wasn’t told for seven months that he likely had cancer, he said.

The Idaho Department of Correction and the prison health care provider, Brentwood, Tenn.-based Corizon, said they’re disappointed and are preparing a response that will show the care delivered to inmates meets constitutional and health care standards.

Stern was appointed to study the care prison near Boise as part of a long-running lawsuit brought by inmates. A federal judge is expected to consider the report as he decides whether to allow the lawsuit to continue or bring it to a close.

Some of the medical problems described in the report are disturbing, including Stern’s findings that inmates who were terminal or required long-term care and who were unable to move on their own were sometimes left in soiled linens, given inadequate pain medication and went periods without food and water. Stern said those conditions were “inhumane.”

Emergency care was also found deficient in the report, with medical staffers routinely failing to bring parts of a basic resuscitation device — a ventilator mask for rescue breathing — to inmates experiencing medical emergencies. Prison guards reported to Stern that they sometimes had to call the health staffers multiple times to get them to respond to inmate emergencies, and sometimes the nurses only responded by phone, telling the guards to have the inmates request care the following day.

In another case described by Stern, a nurse who found an inmate unconscious and having serious breathing problems didn’t take any other vital signs and failed to give the man oxygen.

“Such evaluation was critically important at this point because it was highly likely the patient was not getting enough blood to his brain and required resuscitation,” Stern wrote.

Instead, he contends, the nurse moved the patient to the health unit and only assessed him a few minutes later, when he was having a heart attack. The patient died.

“It is impossible to know if immediate application of life saving measures in the living unit would have saved this patient,” Stern wrote. “However, failure to provide these measures greatly reduced any chance for survival.”

The report focuses only on the Idaho State Correctional Institution, though Corizon provides medical care for all inmates in Idaho’s state-run prisons.

Inmates at the Idaho State Correctional Institution, called ISCI, sued more than 30 years ago, alleging that they were subject to violence and rape by fellow inmates, denied adequate medical care, subjected to poor diets and forced to deal with extreme overcrowding.

Over the next three decades, they won several rulings designed to improve conditions at the prison, and the federal court continued to oversee operations to make sure that the state was complying with all of its orders.

But U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill is eager to end the court’s babysitting role, and the Idaho Department of Correction hopes the lawsuit will be closed for good. The inmates, however, said some of the rulings still aren’t being complied with — particularly the orders to improve access to medical and mental health care.

Complicating matters is that the prison has grown and changed over the years, and the state now says it’s difficult to apply the old rulings to the facility as it now stands.

Attorneys for the state argued against releasing the report, saying the public could confuse Stern’s findings with the court’s opinion. The state said the report should be sealed until both sides had responded to the findings in court.
Corizon is not named as a defendant in the case. But in a joint statement released moments after the report was unsealed Monday, officials from the company and the state acknowledged a few of the allegations in the report “may be well-founded but unfortunate anomalies” but most of them have been or are being addressed.

“We are particularly puzzled by the Special Master’s report because it contradicts a recent (June, 2010) accreditation study of the Idaho Department of Correction by the highly respected National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCCHC). Their very thorough study found our care to exceed compliance with national healthcare guidelines,” the organizations said in the statement.

Officials with Corizon released a statement taking issue with Stern’s findings. The company said Stern inappropriately used legal language and made conclusions that were totally unsupported by the facts.

“The recent Special Master’s report regarding healthcare at the Idaho State Correctional Institution (ISCI) is an incomplete, misleading and erroneous representation of the current healthcare delivery system. The flawed report totally undermines the hard work and trust developed between the Idaho Department of Correction, Corizon and our inmate patients,” the company said.

Stern’s review process was biased, incomplete and based on anecdotes related to a few, isolated incidents, the company maintained.

Corizon said it’s so confident of the quality of care that it has contracted with an auditor to review Stern’s methodology and asked the National Commission on Correctional Health Care to return to Idaho and perform a “thorough review in compliance with the court’s instructions, at Corizon’s expense.”That audit will occur on April 2 and 3, the company said.

From the Associated Press

From Eye on Boise/The Spokesman-Review

“The sunshine of disclosure cleanses your interest,” Deputy Attorney General Brian Kane told the Senate Ethics Committee this morning, “because now it puts everyone on notice that you have competing interests within a piece of legislation, meaning you have interests as a private citizen, and you also have interests within the public trust. It lets everyone know, ‘This is where my legislator is coming from.’ And then they can make an appropriate decision as to whether the legislator has appropriately quantified and represented … that interest.”

The decision then “comes home to roost at the ballot box,” Kane said, when voters can decide, with all the information, whether they believe a legislator is appropriately representing them. You can read my full story here at spokesman.com on the Senate Ethics Committee convening for the first time in seven years.

From Eye on Boise/The Spokesman-Review