Deputies one big difference between counties and cities

COEUR d'ALENE — The recent appointment of a deputy chief clerk by Kootenai County Clerk Jim Brannon highlights an authority given to elected county officials throughout the state.

Brannon, who last month appointed Jennifer Locke to be his deputy chief clerk, and other elected county officials are allowed under the state's constitution to appoint as many deputies as they see fit. Appointed deputies are officially sworn-in and classified as county employees. However, there is no requirement to inform the community at large that the elected official is searching for a deputy.

"It's not a publicly transparent process at all," said Dan Chadwick, executive director of the Idaho Association of Counties. "It's a determination by elected officials of who can be their alter-ego in office."

Chadwick added that the practice is standard in Idaho. IAC, a nonprofit dedicated to the improvement of county government, frequently offers guidance to elected county officials when it comes to appointees, particularly for chief or senior deputies.

"They are somebody that can come in and do the job should the elected official be unable to," Chadwick said. "They have administrative authority."

Describing Locke as the clerk's alter-ego is appropriate, Brannon told The Press. There are more than 90 appointed deputies working in various parts of the clerk's office, he said, and being sworn in gives them the ability to take minutes and conduct other official duties of the office.

"I solicited Jennifer. There was no application process," Brannon said. "Jennifer and I have fundamental agreements on how government should run. We want somebody to act on our behalf and we have to have them."

The only elected official unable to directly appoint a deputy is a county commissioner, Brannon added. That’s because a commissioner serves on a board with two others, and would need at least two votes to make an appointment happen.

Electing the county officials, both Brannon and Chadwick agreed, is the voting public stating it trusts the officials to do the job they were elected to do, including selecting and hiring deputies.

Municipalities, such as Coeur d'Alene, operate differently.

There is no constitutional authority given to the heads of city departments to appoint their employees the way it is done at the county level. Instead, according to Coeur d'Alene Human Resources Director Melissa Tosi, department heads are able to determine what the hiring process looks like.

The desire, she added, is to always have the hiring done through a competitive process. Sometimes that process is done internally, Tosi said, and others see a public search for a new employee.

"It really depends on the position itself," Tosi said. "A lot of the time, we may want to promote or hire someone internally, but we will still open up the position to the public just to see what the talent pool we get back looks like."