Fillios defends year-old meeting with Dems

COEUR d'ALENE — Commissioner Chris Fillios took the floor at the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee meeting Tuesday night after a video of the commissioner received negative responses from community members and chair Brent Regan.

In the video, dated July 10, 2020, Fillios addressed Kootenai County Democratic Central Committee members on various topics, including elections, county government and the Unified Land Use Code.

Fillios told the Press Tuesday before the meeting that he had requested to speak to KCRCC after a post on Regan's Facebook Page on July 16. The post linked the video and described highlighted concerns with Fillios' comments.

"I took issue with some of the comments," Fillios said Tuesday. "I don't engage people on Facebook. When you're in my position, if you do that, you get hit."

Fillios, a Republican re-elected last November, said that in the previous two primary elections, he had received very little support from the KCRCC. Despite lacking that support, Fillios won, and during the KC Dems meeting, he stated his suspicion that Democrats likely weighed in on the election.

"There are a number of Democrats that are registered and have been registered as Republicans for a long time because they realize they can't elect Democrats. So why not at least get involved in Republican elections where they can have a voice?" Fillios said. "I suspect that some of that occurred."

Regan said political parties act as a team to "pick its best representative and put that in front of the voters" in the general election through primaries in the Idaho election system. By Democrats changing their party affiliation, Regan said, the commissioner was "praising" them for "putting on the other team jerseys, going to the other side and pissing in their beds."

"Basically, you're telling them to cheat," he said.

The commissioner countered that as an elected official, Democrats and Republicans in Kootenai County are his constituents. Fillios also argued that switching affiliation is not cheating.

"I work for everyone," he said. "If you're going to do this job and you're going to attempt it from a partisan perspective, you're going to have difficulty."

Regan said he "actually wished the Democrats to get their act together" when endorsing candidates so that voting Republicans "actually have somebody to go up against."

During the KC Dems meeting, Fillios stated that Regan has "long advocated that the county should be one zone" — a comment which the KCRCC chairman contends he never said.

The Unified Land Use Code proposal in 2012 attempted to consolidate ordinances throughout the county. After adopting the ULUC, members in the community, including Regan, expressed their thoughts that the new code infringed on property rights and became active in pushing for revisions.

Along the way, certain groups encouraged adopting a land usage where government entities did not plan development but left it "to the free market," Fillios said in the video.

"There is no protection. There's no uniformity. The whole county is opened up with essentially anything goes," Fillios said Tuesday.

The video also includes a quote from Fillios saying limited government groups who subscribe to the "one zone" theory have not prevailed because they lack the support of two commissioners.

"So far, they've been denied that. They have one now. If they get one more, there goes the county," Fillios said in the video.

Perceiving the comment to be directed at the central committee, Regan argued that he has never required an elected official to act on his agenda. Nodding to the idea that Commissioner Leslie Duncan is the "one" Fillios referenced, Regan said he initially did not favor her candidacy but grew to like her.

"Telling them that if Brent Regan gets one more commissioner he is going to take over the counties, and that's the end of it, that's preposterous," Regan said. "I believe that you get the good guys elected, and then you leave them alone."

Video of the discussion is available online at the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee Facebook.