Your right to know: 'Who' doesn't matter

As you'll see in a moment if you hadn't noticed before, a Coeur d'Alene School District patron isn't happy with district officials. Mary Jo Finney told school board Chairman Tom Hearn to his face - in front of a televised meeting - that he should resign, and she has now put that message in writing.

We appreciate Finney for providing a forum to discuss something important, and to raise awareness among the public and public officials at the same time. Because she has been a persistent critic of the Coeur d'Alene School District for years now, it would be easy to ignore Finney's latest complaint. It would also be wrong.

Finney has contacted the Kootenai County Prosecutor's Office alleging open meeting violations by Hearn, other school board members and district personnel. At her request, The Press also is looking into her allegations that stem from the district's handling of sexual orientation and related legal issues.

Going back to at least 2005, Finney has been a thorn in the district's paw. In 2007 she helped lead the charge to remove from school libraries reading material she found objectionable. Later, she was an outspoken critic of the International Baccalaureate and Primary Years Programme curricula that had been adopted by the district and then met with staunch resistance from some in the community who believe the programs are spawned and manipulated by anti-American interests.

We bring this background up largely to point out its irrelevance in Finney's request for an investigation from the prosecutor's office. Finney has served up a timely lesson in a key area of the public's right to know.

Elected and appointed officials must thoroughly and expediently comply with citizens' information requests within the framework of Idaho statutes. Some information is protected; most belongs in the public domain. Sometimes, citizens have to fight for disclosure. And sometimes, those citizens will have to pay for staff time required to do extensive records research.

What is completely irrelevant is who is requesting the information, or why they want it. If the law says it's public, then compliance is required. It doesn't matter if the request comes from the newspaper, from an avowed enemy or a great friend. If the information legally belongs to the public, that's where it must go.

We think Finney would agree that the district complied fully with her requests for information. Now it's up to the prosecutor's office to determine if any violations have occurred. On Friday, we'll take a deeper look at this issue and the opportunity for further community growth.