From the Idaho Statesman

John Bujak says he doesn’t understand why his contract to prosecute Nampa misdemeanor cases has raised red flags with some county residents.

“I’m saving Nampa money. I’m saving the county money,” Bujak said. “I would think people would be thrilled.”

Bujak says he hopes to make up to $50,000 profit for administering Nampa city prosecutions.
“Everybody wins, including me, potentially. To the extent I’m able to make money and it helps me with my debts, that’s great.”

At least two residents have contacted the media protesting Bujak’s use of a private bank account to handle the $598,000 Nampa contract and wondering whether that move was related to personal financial problems. But the contract issue that landed the prosecutor in court is simply a public records request, said Erik Stidham, who is representing Nampa insurance agent Bob Henry in his efforts to get Bujak to release the records of his bank account that receives the city’s monthly payments.

“I thought it would take maybe a letter or two” to get those records, Stidham said. Instead, he and Bujak will face off in court Thursday for the first hearing on Henry’s petition to force Bujak to open the records.

Bujak insists the records are private, not public. Stidham says that claim is untenable, since the contract is not with Bujak as a private citizen but with Bujak as county prosecutor, a public official accepting city payment for use of county resources and personnel.

But Bujak said his handling of the contract is kosher under Idaho law, upheld by the state Supreme Court in 1987 when Kootenai County commissioners unsuccessfully challenged their prosecutor’s private contract to handle cases for the city of Coeur d’Alene.

“It’s not some strange, hokey relationship,” the prosecutor said. “It’s unusual, yes. But I think taxpayers appreciate innovative ways to save them money.”

He stresses that Canyon County commissioners and the Nampa City Council approved changing the contract in September so that money would go to directly to him instead of the county auditor’s office. He asked the Idaho Attorney General’s Office to weigh in on the issue, but it declined because of the pending litigation. Now it’s up to Senior Judge Kathryn Sticklen, assigned to the case to avoid a conflict of interest for 3rd District judges who routinely work with Bujak.

Stidham said he took the case because Henry’s previous attorneys at Hamilton, Michaelson & Hilty had a conflict: They held the Nampa prosecutor contract before Bujak underbid them last year.

Bujak would like to take over Caldwell’s city prosecutions, also handled by Hamilton, Michaelson & Hilty, but he said that idea was put on hold after Henry started questioning the Nampa contract.

He said he wants a global prosecutor’s office, a “paperless” operation that handles records electronically at significant savings to taxpayers. His contract with Nampa saves the city about $150,000 per year, he said.

And it saves several hundred thousand dollars for the county, Bujak contends, because he uses Nampa’s nearly $50,000 monthly payments to cover virtually all of his office’s non-salary expenses including scanners, laptops and paper.

But where that money goes is not visible in public documents, Stidham said, and that’s the central issue: His client wants to see the records of where the money goes, because “there’s a lot of money unaccounted for.”

Of the nearly $600,000 Nampa contract, Bujak says he expects only about $30,000 to $50,000 will go to him personally – possibly much less if unexpected expenses arrive.

Stidham noted that Bujak said while pursuing the contract that he would not personally profit from it. But Bujak said those statements referred to the fact that he and his Chief of Staff Tim Fleming were the only members of his office who did not get salary increases under the Nampa contract. He also said he initially did not think he’d be able to profit from the contract but later learned the law permits it.

Bujak said he didn’t pursue the contract in order to increase his income.

Kristin Rodine: 377-6447

From the Idaho Statesman

From Eye on Boise

Idaho Secretary of State Ben Ysursa has announced fines against two groups that launched last-minute campaign attacks against an Idaho Supreme Court candidate without following the disclosure requirements of the state’s Sunshine Law. “Idaho Citizens for Justice” is being fined $1,300, and “Idaho Citizens for Commonsense Solutions” is being fined $600; the latter group provided half the funding for the former, which paid for nearly $40,000 in ads and fliers attacking Judge John Bradbury and touting sitting Justice Roger Burdick, against whom Bradbury was running in last week’s election; Burdick won. Once the two groups were contacted by the state and belatedly filed the required disclosures, it emerged that all the funding for both came from Melaleuca Inc., a personal-care products firm in eastern Idaho headed by conservative activist Frank VanderSloot.

The fines are for failure to file timely notice of the formation of the groups and of the last-minute independent campaign expenditures before the election, Ysursa said. “Timely pre-election disclosure is the key to the Sunshine Law,” he said. In letters to the two groups, Ysursa wrote, “One purpose of the Sunshine Law, as stated in I.C. 67-6601, is ‘to promote openness in government and avoiding secrecy by those giving financial support to state election campaigns…’ The Secretary of State is charged with enforcement of this law, and we take that charge seriously.”

From Eye on Boise

From the Associated Press

POCATELLO, Idaho (AP) — A government-accountability group says a southeastern Idaho school board held an illegal secret meeting over salary cuts.

The Idaho Freedom Foundation, a free-market advocate, vowed to lodge a complaint in state court against Pocatello’s District 25 school board, whose trustees held a three-hour executive session Saturday morning, followed by a vote to cut administrative salaries by 6.9 percent.

Wayne Hoffman, executive director of the Idaho Freedom Foundation, said such a topic isn’t covered under Idaho’s exemptions to its open meetings law.

Hoffman told The Associated Press on Tuesday he’s worried that school districts across Idaho could opt for similar closed-door meetings as they address budget cuts in 2011. He wants to stop this practice before it spreads.

“What makes the Pocatello school system think that making a decision to either add to or take from a public employee’s salary is confidential somehow?” Hoffman told the Idaho State Journal. “The school board has an obligation to hold a substantive debate about the budget issues confronting the school district in a public setting.”

School district officials referred questions to their lawyer, Brian Julian. Julian said the board acted appropriately, because the closed meeting covered personnel matters.

Julian said he’s dealt with hundreds of such cases over the last decade, “and this is the way it’s done every time.”

The agenda announcing Saturday’s special meeting lists the open meeting law exemption used to base the executive session as: “to consider the evaluation, dismissal or disciplining of, or to hear complaints or charges brought against a public officer, employee, staff member or agent.”

According to the Idaho open meetings manual, the state attorney general believes general personnel matters can’t be the subject of closed-door secret meetings.

Rather, only specific personnel actions — such as hiring or firing a public officer or staff member, or to hear complaints or charges brought against public employees, agents or students — are appropriate to be heard in executive sessions.

Julian, who has handled such cases for 30 years, said he believes hosting the discussion in closed session protects due process rights of employees. He also said a retired judge was listening over the phone and believes the school board had a right to deliberate in private.

“I feel comfortable that the process was appropriate,” Julian said.
___

Information from: Idaho State Journal, https://www.journalnet.com

Copyright 2010 The Associated Press.

From the Associated Press

When the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments last week in the case of Doe vs. Reed, challenging Washington state’s practice of considering signatures on petitions for a referendum or initiative to be public record, the justices’ questioning showed much concern about openness and transparency; you can see the transcript here (hat tip to Randy Stapilus’ Ridenbaugh Press). Here’s a comment from Justice Antonin Scalia to James Bopp Jr., who was arguing for keeping the names secret: “The fact is that running a democracy takes a certain amount of civic courage. And the First Amendment does not protect you from criticism or even nasty phone calls when you exercise your political rights to legislate, or to take part in the legislative process. You are asking us to enter into a whole new field where we have never gone before.”

This is a case in which Idaho has filed a friend-of-the-court brief backing the state of Washington, because Idaho’s laws are similar – and the state wants to keep its initiative and referendum petitions open.

From Eye on Boise, The Spokesman-Review

When the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals holds its first-ever sitting in Pocatello on May 24th, to hear oral arguments in two Idaho cases, it’ll make history in another way as well: Cameras will be allowed in the courtroom. Though cameras are allowed in courtrooms in most state courts, including Idaho’s, under established rules and at the presiding judge’s discretion, they’re banned almost entirely in federal district courts. That crimps TV coverage of federal court proceedings, and is the reason why major federal court cases result in paintings created by sketch artists in courtrooms being published in newspapers and on TV – because actual photos aren’t permitted. The 9th Circuit has been interested in the issue for years, and has allowed cameras in its appellate-level proceedings since 1991; the Pocatello sitting is the latest example. A pilot program also is in the works, at the urging of the 9th Circuit Judicial Council, to have federal district courts in the circuit experiment with permitting cameras in civil non-jury cases, though none have done so yet.

A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit court, including 9th Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski, Senior Judge Stephen S. Trott of Boise and Judge Randy Smith of Pocatello, will hear the two cases in Pocatello; they they are U.S. v. Alfaro, an appeal by a reputed gang leader from Boise who was sentenced to 150 months in prison on gun charges; and Community House Inc. v. Smith, an appeal by the city of Boise on an issue regarding the sale of a city homeless shelter to a religious group. For more on the cameras in the courtroom issue, check out Idaho’s state court rule here; a Reporter’s Committee for Freedom of the Press article on the recent California case that raised this issue here; a TV reporter’s perspective here; and here a legal history of the issue from the First Amendment Center.

From Eye on Boise, The Spokesman-Review

From The Spokesman-Review

BOISE – Idaho has much at stake in Washington’s big U.S. Supreme Court case over whether referendum petition signatures should be public or not.

“Our initiative and referendum statute is very similar to Washington’s and Oregon’s,” said Idaho Secretary of State Ben Ysursa, at whose request Idaho joined 22 other states in filing “friend of the court” briefs backing Washington’s position – that the signatures remain public.

“I can’t think of something any more public, that should be public, than somebody signing an initiative petition that is basically using the legislative power reserved to the people,” Ysursa said. “It’s part of an open and transparent process, just like (legislators) voting on a piece of legislation would be. That was our basic reason to join in, and the other states that have initiative and referendum seem to agree with us.”

The 23 states, which also include Oregon, Utah, Arizona and Colorado and are being led by Ohio, are among a long list of parties who’ve filed supporting briefs on one side or the other in the case, from the American Conservative Union to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The high court will hear arguments in the case on Wednesday.

The group “Protect Marriage Washington,” which sued to prevent the release of the names of petition-signers on a referendum that sought unsuccessfully to overturn a same-sex domestic partnership law, contends state public records laws that make such information public are unconstitutional, because they’d subject those signers to harassment for exercising their right to free speech.

The states, in their brief, say signing petitions for an initiative or referendum is not political speech, but legislative action. “The people’s exercise of their sovereign referendum power is, by its very nature, a public act,” the brief states.

They also note the significance of state public records laws. “Every state has recognized its compelling interest in open government – both as a check on government power, and as a means of informing the public – by enacting public records acts and open meetings laws,” the brief says.

It also contends that states won’t be able to guard against fraud or protect the integrity of their petition processes if the names of petition-signers are made secret. “Washington’s interest necessitates giving the very citizens who are exercising their sovereign legislative authority through the referendum process an opportunity to verify the integrity of that process,” the brief says.

The rights of initiative and referendum were placed in Idaho’s state constitution in 1912, in the same section that says the state House and Senate can pass laws.

Ysursa, who himself is an attorney, said he views the states’ brief as “pretty solid,” and he’s hoping the state of Washington prevails, as it did in the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. Said Ysursa, “I think it’s a step backwards for openness in government if that case is not upheld.”

From The Spokesman-Review

From the Lewiston Tribune

By William L. Spence
of the Tribune

It wasn’t Deep Throat and the story didn’t topple a presidency, but an anonymous phone call to a Moscow reporter did help establish the legal precedent that protects Idaho reporters today.

Two University of Idaho journalism students, Christopher Murray and Kyle Howerton, recently completed a documentary film marking the 25th anniversary of the case, known as In re Wright.
The film was shown to about 120 people a university symposium Monday, after which some of the main participants discussed the state of reporter privilege in the Internet Age.

The case began in the fall of 1982, when reporter Jim Wright of the Moscow Daily Idahonian wrote a story about a drug bust near Deary. The story was based largely on a law enforcement press release, which indicated that about 100 marijuana plants worth $50,000 to $60,000 had been seized.

The next day he received an anonymous call from someone disputing those figures. Through subsequent meetings, Wright determined the caller had been involved in growing the marijuana. Using information the caller provided, he was able to establish that only about a dozen plants and two pounds of marijuana had been seized.

Wright was later subpoenaed to testify in the case. When he refused to reveal his source, he was held in contempt and the paper was fined $500 per day. Publisher A.L. (Butch) Alford — now president of TPC Holdings Inc., which owns the Lewiston Tribune and Moscow-Pullman Daily News — appealed the case to the Idaho Supreme Court.

This was the second case Alford had taken to the Supreme Court. Just a few years earlier, in Caldero v. Tribune Publishing Co., the court had ruled that “no privilege against disclosure of confidential sources … exists in an absolute or qualified version.”

Charles (Chuck) Brown, the Lewiston attorney who argued both cases before the court, said protecting the identity of confidential sources is something newspapers have fought for since Colonial times. Every year there are stories about the hidden actions and wilful misrepresentations of government agencies that could only be written with help from unnamed sources. Protecting the identities of these individuals is crucial to a free press.

A handful of states recognize this by conferring absolute privilege on reporters, meaning they cannot be compelled to reveal their sources. Most states, however, have qualified privilege, in which the public’s right to know is balanced against other considerations.

In the Wright case, the justices explicitly refused to follow the Caldero precedent. Instead, they set their own standard. They said Idaho reporters have a qualified privilege and can be required to divulge their sources if three conditions are met: There must be probable cause indicating the reporter has information relevant to the case, it must be demonstrated that the information can’t be obtained by other means, and the information must be of a significant and compelling nature.

Wright, who has been a reporter and editor for 30 years attended Monday’s symposium, together with Alford, Brown, the two film-makers and ACLU attorney Ben Wizner.

After the Supreme Court issued its ruling, he said it remanded the case back to the lower court to determine if the three criteria were met “But funny enough, after two years in the legal system, nobody cared any more. No one ever called for a hearing to decide (if the criteria were met), and the dope in the evidence locker had rotted away.”

Reporter privilege continues to be a challenge in the Internet Age, with questions about who should qualify and what type of information is protected. Congress is also debating the merits of a federal shield law, which would address the question of privilege for those who cover the federal government.

As Brown indicated at the close of the documentary, this is an issue that deals with the protection of society, as well as of journalists. After all, he said, the genesis of shield laws “was free speech, not just free press.”

From the Lewiston Tribune

From the Spokesman Review

The state of Idaho will pay $275,000 to settle a dispute over the seizure of 25 boat slips and docks at the Sandpoint Marina during a U.S. Highway 95 construction project.

The agreement ends an 18-month skirmish between Ralph Sletager, the marina’s owner, and the Idaho Transportation Department. The parties agreed to drop lawsuits against each other and pay their own attorneys fees. Sletager can reinstall the docks when the $98 million Sand Creek Byway project is finished, the settlement says.

The dispute arose over right-of-way for the byway, which reroutes Highway 95 away from Sandpoint’s historic downtown.

The Idaho Transportation Department acquired the right-of-way for the byway in the late 1950s, state officials said in court documents. The Sandpoint Marina’s “C dock” unit illegally encroached on the state’s right-of-way, blocking byway construction, the documents said.

But Sletager, in other court documents, said no state right-of-way existed. He purchased the marina in 1995.

State officials said they talked with Sletager for months about the need to move the docks. According to court documents, Sletager sent letters back saying: “I don’t plan to move my docks and if anyone from ITD or your contractors trespasses I will have them arrested.”

The issue blew up in November 2008. Sletager, the marina’s security guards and construction workers confronted each other at the marina after contractor Parsons RCI asked Avista Utilities to turn off electrical service to the marina, according to news accounts. Idaho State Police troopers and Sandpoint police were called to the standoff, which ended peacefully.

A few days later, the state sought court permission to remove the docks. Delaying the construction of coffer dams in Sand Creek, which had to be done during low water, would have added $5 million to the byway’s cost, transportation officials said in court documents.

The docks were seized and put into storage.

Sletager was not available for comment Tuesday afternoon. But in court documents, he said the marina’s C dock unit had existed since the 1950s. State promotional materials for the Sand Creek Byway showed “the defendant’s existing East C docks, in their present location and undisturbed by the byway,” according to court documents.

Sletager is responsible for the cost of moving the docks back to Sand Creek. The byway construction should wrap up in 2012, said Barbara Babic, a transportation department spokeswoman.

Last month, the transportation department issued a news release saying it had reached a settlement with Sletager but had agreed not to release the payment amount. The Spokesman-Review obtained a copy of the settlement through a public records request.

From the Spokesman Review