From the Associated Press

By REBECCA BOONE, Associated Press

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday set a deadline for unsealing an expert’s report on medical care for inmates at an Idaho correctional facility, saying opposing lawyers for the state and prisoners have one week to agree on a statement to accompany the findings.

U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill appointed the expert to create the report as part of his effort to bring a decades-old lawsuit between the state and inmates at the Idaho State Correctional Institution to a close. Correctional health care expert Dr. Marc Stern filed the report under seal last month.

Attorneys for the state argued that the report should remain sealed until both sides have a chance to contest it, because otherwise, they said, the public could wrongly assume Stern’s findings amounted to a court order.

But during a hearing Thursday, Winmill said the public’s right to know outweighed the state’s concern. He gave both sides one week to agree on wording for a stamp to put on each page of the report stating that it isn’t the court’s official ruling, and said after that, it would be unsealed.

Though still under seal, it’s clear the report isn’t flattering to the state. Deputy Idaho Attorney Generals Mark Kubinski and Colleen Zahn told the court that it contained inflammatory statements that if released, would be likely to cause an “unjustified public scandal.”

Zahn told Winmill that the state needed a chance to “provide information that shows the conclusions in that report are very inaccurate.”

But Jason Prince, an attorney with law firm Stoel Rives, which is representing the inmates, noted that Stern was ordered by the court to research and review the medical care at the prison and file his report under penalty of perjury. Just because the information Stern found might embarrass the state was no reason to seal it, Prince argued.

The lawsuit began in the early 1980s when so many inmates from the Idaho State Correctional Institution began filing lawsuits that the cases threatened to clog Idaho’s federal dockets. The judge presiding over the lawsuits at that time noted similarities between them and combined them all into one class-action lawsuit, which became known as the “Balla case” after lead plaintiff Walter Balla.

Several rulings against the state were handed down over the next three decades, with various federal judges ordering Idaho leaders to stop prison overcrowding, reduce violence, provide prisoners with warm clothes and improve access to medical and mental health care.

But the case kept bouncing back to the federal courts as inmates maintained problems at the prison continued. Most recently, the complaints have focused on medical and mental health care — a premise that seemed to be at least partly supported by the state’s own decision in recent years to fine its medical care provider more than $382,500 for failing to meet some health care requirements set by the state.

The state contends that the Idaho State Correctional Institution has changed dramatically in both its physical facilities and operations over the past several years and that rulings in the long-running lawsuit are increasingly difficult to apply to the prison as it stands today.

Idaho officials contend that if there are still problems at ISCI, the inmates should file new lawsuits that would accurately reflect the present circumstances.
Winmill appointed Stern last year to review health care at the prison so that he can review the findings in deciding whether to end the Balla case or continue court oversight.

From the Associated Press

From the Associated Press

By Rebecca Boone, Associated Press

BOISE, Idaho (AP) — State prison officials say a report on health care and other conditions at an Idaho prison is so inflammatory that it must remain sealed.

U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill appointed a correctional health care expert to see if Idaho is complying with a ruling in a long -running lawsuit brought by inmates at the Idaho State Correctional Institution.

Marc Stern’s report was filed under seal last month, and the judge ordered attorneys on both sides to review the document to see if any information should be redacted to protect health privacy concerns.

Though they agreed no such redactions were needed, the state says the report should be sealed anyway because the public could mistakenly believe it amounted to the opinion of the court, leading to an “unjustified public scandal.”

From the Associated Press

From the Associated Press

A group of severely disabled Idahoans is suing the state after the Idaho Department of Health & Welfare cut their Medicaid benefits by as much as 40 percent, then refused to tell them why, saying its formula for the benefits is a “trade secret,” and therefore exempt from release under the Idaho Public Records Law, the AP reports; the secrecy makes it nearly impossible for the patients to appeal the decisions. Click below for a full report from AP reporter Rebecca Boone.

Some Medicaid clients sue Idaho over budget cuts
By REBECCA BOONE, Associated Press

From the Idaho Press-Tribune

CANYON COUNTY – The Idaho Supreme Court, in a ruling filed Thursday, said financial documents related to John Bujak’s contract with the city of Nampa for prosecuting services were indeed public record.

Newly elected Nampa City Council member Bob Henry, who sued Bujak and Canyon County to see the records, said Thursday that the decision is a significant victory.

The high court, however, did not award Henry attorney fees.

The court ruled that Bujak’s financial documents relating to payments for services his office provided to the city of Nampa should have been available for public scrutiny, the county was not required “to obtain records that it had never prepared, owned, used or retained.”

Canyon County Prosecutor Bryan Taylor also called the decision a win for the county, but looks beyond what happened before he was appointed county prosecutor after Bujak resigned in September 2010.

“My task since taking office has been to move beyond these issues,” Taylor said. “I think we’ve done that, in a way which is aggressively transparent and above politics. One of my primary objectives since I have been appointed as the prosecutor is to make sure this sort of thing does not happen again.  Politics and law make uneasy bedfellows and that is a lesson my administration has taken to heart.”

Henry said the ruling also “vindicates the interests of the citizens of Canyon County” in four ways:

1. The prosecution services contract was a public contract and Bujak’s performance of the contract was the public’s business,

2. That payments from the city of Nampa to Bujak did not make the payments his personal money,

3. That records regarding public moneys cannot be shielded from public scrutiny just because the Canyon County commissioners agreed to have hundreds of thousands of dollars deposited into Mr. Bujak’s personal bank account

4. That the Canyon County commissioners always had the statutory power to demand an audit and the records from Mr. Bujak, but the commissioners simply decided not to use that power for the benefit of the public.

“As I stated previously, my goal in pursuing the appeal was to establish case law that help prevent future misuses of public funds,” Henry said.  “(The) opinion satisfies that goal.”

John Bujak criminal case update

Canyon County’s former prosecutor was arrested Dec. 13 on charges of embezzlement by and theft by deception charges. He is accused of taking $236,000 in money that should have gone to Canyon County.

The funds, according to an affidavit filed in 3rd District Court, came from a trust account Bujak used to deposit money from the city of Nampa for nonfelony prosecution services performed by the county.

Bujak said because the contract was private he owed the county nothing.

A preliminary hearing for Bujak’s case is set for 9 a.m., Jan. 25 before Magistrate Judge James Peart.

Bujak bonded out of jail but must wear an electronic GPS device and stay in the 3rd and 4th judicial districts. He also surrendered his passport.

From the Idaho Press-Tribune

From the Associated Press

A federal judge has refused to unseal a settlement agreement between an Idaho inmate and a private prison company involving allegations of rampant violence at a lockup near Boise known as “Gladiator School.”

The Associated Press had asked the court to unseal the settlement between Marlin Riggs and Corrections Corp. of America.

However, U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge said Wednesday the interests of Riggs and the company in keeping the settlement confidential outweighed the interest the public has in learning its terms.

The AP’s West regional editor, Traci Carl, said the news organization’s attorneys were reviewing the ruling and considering the legal options.

“The AP is disappointed with the ruling and believes the public has a right to know the terms of the settlement,” Carl said.

Neither Riggs’ attorney James Huegli nor CCA’s attorney Kirtlan Naylor immediately returned messages from The Associated Press seeking comment.

Riggs initially asked for $55 million in damages, saying the Idaho Correctional Center was nicknamed “Gladiator School” and that guards knew Riggs was about to be attacked but failed to protect him.

The AP contended the lawsuit raised profound and far-reaching issues of public interest. In his written ruling, Lodge acknowledged that the operation of a prison raises issues of public concern, but he said he feared releasing the document would place Riggs at risk for intimidation or assault in prison. He also said future litigants would be discouraged from participating in judicially supervised settlement conferences if they believed the outcome could be made public.

The judge also noted that a settlement agreement in a “companion lawsuit” between other inmates at the prison and CCA was released to the public. In that case, the inmates were alleging the same types of civil rights violations that Riggs claimed, but they didn’t ask the court for any monetary damages. Instead, the inmates wanted changes to the way the prison is run — and in the settlement agreement, CCA agreed to make those changes, though the company did not acknowledge any guilt or liability. Both CCA and the American Civil Liberties Union of Idaho, which was representing the inmates, agreed to make that settlement public.

“The present case now involves only a single prisoner seeking monetary damages for an assault,” Lodge wrote. “The public’s interest in knowing the precise terms of his agreement with CCA is outweighed by the parties’ interest in confidentiality as a means of minimizing the serious risks that the Court has found to exist.”

From the Associated Press

From the Idaho Statesman

If Bob Henry prevails on appeal in his public records lawsuit against Canyon County, the result could end up helping the county in a separate Bujak-related legal struggle.

That’s because the trustee in former county prosecutor John Bujak’s bankruptcy case is suing the county for nearly $1 million based on the presumption that Bujak’s contract to use county resources to prosecute Nampa misdemeanor cases was his private property. Trustee Jeremy Gugino wants proceeds from the contract to be divided among Bujak’s many creditors as part of the Chapter 7 proceedings. The county is one of those creditors, claiming Bujak still owes it about $300,000.

That presumption is supported by a district judge ruling in Henry’s public records lawsuit last year, but Henry now hopes that the state’s highest court will determine that ruling was in error.

If the Nampa contract is declared public record, that would bolster the county’s argument that the money it has collected from the contract is rightfully the county’s and not part of Bujak’s assets for distribution, Henry said.

Trustee Gugino could not be reached for comment Friday. His case against Canyon County is scheduled for a pretrial hearing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court Dec. 21.

At Friday’s hearing, the Idaho Supreme Court didn’t indicate how long it might take to reach a decision in the appeal. But Henry said he was heartened by some of the justice’s questions and statements that seemed to echo his belief that Canyon County commissioners were wrong to support Bujak’s contention that the nearly $600,000 contract was private and appropriately deposited into his private account, with the expectation that the lion’s share of the money would end up in county hands. But Bujak resigned Sept. 30, 2010, after he couldn’t turn over the approximately $300,000 commissioners said he still owed from the contract. County commissioners have said they relied on their then-prosecutor to be true to his word, but he fraudulently used the Nampa money for his personal expenses. He denies he owes the county any money.

Justice Jim Jones commented on the “loosey-goosey nature of this arrangement, where you just kind of hand the money over and there’s not going to be any accounting.”

And Justice Warren Jones voiced the opinion Henry hopes the court will reflect in its opinion: “To me, it’s reasonably clear these are public records. They were public records then, they’re public records now.”

The county’s legal team contends Henry’s appeal in his public records case is moot, because once the county gained access to Bujak’s financial records through the bankruptcy proceeding, it provided them to Henry.

“We don’t know why we’re here,” Canyon County Deputy Prosecutor Carl Erickson told the justices. “Because we’ve turned over everything, there is nothing else that we could produce.”

After Bujak resigned, the county made the Nampa contract and its financial records public, Erickson said. But despite repeated questioning from the justices, he stopped short of saying county officials now believe the contract should have been treated as a public agreement all along.