Good government starts with quality people

Imagine for a moment that Kootenai County government is a car and the car has some handling problems. It doesn’t turn or stop very well, it’s difficult to keep it in the lane, and it pulls hard to the left. Commissioners Brooks and Fillios insist the only solution is to scrap the car and buy another one, with no test drive.

Smart people with common sense say that maybe we should have a look at the car and see if we can find what’s wrong. After a brief search, we discover the problem, two bald tires up front.

The common denominator of quality in ALL forms of government are the people that are elected or employed to run it. If you get good people, you get good government, regardless of the form of government. In Kootenai County, we are blessed to have many top notch county employees and elected officials. People like Steve Matheson, Jim Brannon and Leslie Duncan, who are drawn to the job by a sense of service to their community, not just a paycheck.

It has been said that government is like fire, a useful servant but a dangerous master. What keeps government in its place are fair and honest elections. Elections provide the feedback needed to keep government stable, to keep it from becoming a dangerous master; a dictatorship. It is an absurd idea that we can get “better” government by eliminating elected offices and replacing them with positions that are appointed by an un-elected and unaccountable County Manager.

We have been here before. In 2011, the county commissioners decided that nobody in Kootenai County was smart enough to draft a new Comprehensive Plan and that we needed to hire outside “experts” to plan our future for us. Nearly a million dollars were spent on the Unified Land Use Code (ULUC) and it was an unmitigated failure. At the root of that failure was that the “experts” had no stake or history in Kootenai County. They had a cookie cutter plan which they tried to bend our county to fit.

Likewise, proponents of change claim we need to do a nationwide search to find an unemployed “expert” manager who would move here on day one and on day two start hiring a clerk, treasurer, assessor, prosecutor, coroner and sheriff.

But who would hire the county manager? Proponents say that we need five, or even seven “part time” commissioners who get paid less than the three current part time commissioners. Apparently the “logic” is that finding three competent commissioners is hard to do but finding seven would be easier IF we pay them less. Got it? Me neither.

All 44 counties in Idaho have the same form of government and if you are wondering if our current form of government can handle our growth, you only need to look to Ada County. Ada has more than two and a half times the population and budget of Kootenai County but its government works just fine with three commissioners.

Proponents say that appointed officials would be better qualified than elected officials because, as Fillios states, "If that individual is elected, how do you know you're getting the most qualified individual for that position?" "Who is going to review the resumes? Are the public going to do that?"

Who indeed would review the candidates? To do it properly you would want an elected panel that represents all parts of Kootenai County. They would have to engage in a transparent vetting process of the candidates consisting of questionnaires, reviews and interviews. The process and results should be posted online so everyone can see the information.

This rating and vetting process is exactly what Kootenai County Republicans (KCRCC) have put in place. More than 60 Precinct Committeemen, elected from every corner of Kootenai County, participate in the transparent Rating and Vetting process with the questions, answers, and results published online for all to see.

The deep irony here is that Brooks was one of the primary inspirations of the KCRCC Rating and Vetting process. For the 2020 general election, Brooks was included as a KCRCC recommended candidate. Why? Because he was a Republican. The KCRCC got enormous pushback for doing this, with citizens insisting we do a better job of vetting the candidates. The KCRCC tasked our Elections Committee with creating the Vetting and Rating system which has been successfully used in the last two elections.

During the general election, Brooks had no problem representing himself as a Republican to get reelected, but now that there is a vetting system in place, those same Republicans that helped him are now a bunch of “extreme right-wing radicals.”

Brooks has unaffiliated himself from the 58% of Kootenai County voters that affiliate with the Republican Party.

I know many who feel relieved by his decision.

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Brent Regan is chairman of the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee.