Commissioners 'learning together'

COEUR d'ALENE - The Kootenai County commissioners have a slew of questions to answer, according to Commissioner Todd Tondee.

Among them, how to restructure county government, whether to raise taxes next fiscal year, and how to prevent future embezzlement of county dollars.

"We're excited about the opportunities ahead of us," Tondee said on Thursday afternoon, speaking at a Reagan Republicans meeting at Fedora Pub and Grille. "We're learning together."

Tondee and newly elected commissioners Dan Green and Jai Nelson are weighing the long deliberated idea of reorganizing county government, Tondee said.

Some have proposed hiring a county administrator, he said, or even adding additional commissioners to the current three.

"Dan Green ran on reorganizing the county government, and I'm all for that," said Tondee, himself in the third year of his second term. "We might have something on the ballot this year."

The role of a county administrator would be more limited than some think, Tondee said.

"The general public, they have the idea that he would control everything, and it would not give that benefit," he said. "He would only have control of the 15 departments the board of commissioners are in charge of."

Tondee isn't in favor of adding more commissioners, he added.

More paid officials would increase costs, he said, and throw in more opinions to delay decisions.

"As you saw in this last election, if you're upset (with the commissioners), you can change the whole position of the board. You just replaced two of us," Tondee said. "If there's more of us, you'll have to change more of us."

The commissioners are partly to blame for the recent discovery of embezzlement in the clerk's office, Tondee acknowledged.

The officials are taking steps to prevent it from happening again, he said, like investigating why the account stolen out of wasn't tracked properly.

"Every week, we (the commissioners) get a list of all the bills paid, and we have to authorize it. The checks written on that account did not go through that process, and they were left out of the audit process," Tondee said. "We don't know why, and we're looking into this."

The commissioners are also reaching out to all department heads, he said, to report if any other accounts have gone overlooked.

"We need to make sure everything goes through this process we have," he said.

As for the county's financial status, Tondee said, it's stable, thanks to the commissioners taking reserve funds last year instead of raising taxes.

He doesn't know if the commissioners can do that this year.

"With a new board (of commissioners), we'll be looking at what's important, if there are any services we can get rid of," he said.

He added that he isn't in favor of using funds from the roughly $3 million foregone balance.

"Obviously we have a problem with the jail (being overcrowded). If we get mandated by the courts to do something with the jail, we would have to look at taking out of the foregone balance," he said.

The commissioners face another challenge in determining just what their statutory responsibilities are, he said.

"Recently in my new role as chairman, it has caused me to rethink the Idaho statues controlling the responsibilities of each elected official," he said. "I think there are some things we're supposed to be doing by statute that we haven't been paying attention to."

Duane Rasmussen, who attended the speech, said he is still concerned about funds handled through the clerk's office.

"It seems we're fixing it (the embezzlement problem) now, but there should have been better controls in place," he said. "The commissioners have an obligation and a duty to pursue the problem."