EDITORIAL: The gift that keeps on taking

To some, the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee looks an awful lot like Santa.

And we do mean awful.

From its bag of “presents,” KCRCC has dumped unworthy candidates down voters’ chimneys for some years now. You know them by their belligerence, by their loyalty to party over people, by their ideology-driven agendas and, sometimes, by their unadulterated incompetence.

The likes of Todd Banducci, Greg McKenzie, Michael Barnes and Mike Waggoner have earned most of the attention from an alarmed public as the trustees have driven North Idaho College to the cliff’s edge.

Along came Rachelle Ottosen, Tom Hanley and Tim Plass, the Community Library Network brethren who are hellbent on beating their NIC counterparts to institutional doomsday. Among an almost comical series of muffed punts, the library network’s board majority hired a controversial lawyer and promptly began ignoring his unwelcome advice.

KCRCC-inflicted damage doesn’t end with those boards — see Kootenai County’s contingent of legislators, for instance — but almost lost in the ranks of Unfit To Govern elected officials is Bela Kovacs. You remember him, right?

Kovacs’ inability or unwillingness to do his job as Kootenai County Assessor has hit high boil several times since his appointment in May 2020. 

A number of his employees quit because of what they described as a Kovacs-inspired toxic environment; roughly half his employees signed a petition asking him not to run for the assessor position when his appointment expired; the Board of Commissioners cut his pay in half and asked him to resign after his department missed critical, state-mandated deadlines; and now, Kovacs is calling for an investigation because of a $53 million error that has once again created chaos among county taxing entities.

With the KCRCC’s “rated and vetted” endorsement over a much more qualified and experienced candidate, Kovacs won the 2022 election with 76% of the vote. Unfortunately for voters, Kovacs successfully held off a public record request from The Inlander until after that election. The Inlander had simply asked why Kovacs had left his manager’s job with Spokane County prior to surfacing as a candidate here, and the documentation proved damning.

In a 22-page report, complaints from Spokane County employees leveled against Kovacs mirror those of the assessor’s employees at Kootenai County: largely, the absence of trust between Kovacs and his staff leading to a combustible workplace. You can read all about it here: https://shorturl.at/IRW19

Meantime, Kovacs is demanding an investigation into the $53 million mistake, the results of which may or may not prove enlightening. However, you can go ahead and skip to the bottom line, which tells you everything you need to know about the effectiveness of Mr. Kovacs as an elected official and KCRCC as a “rating and vetting” entity.

Both miserably fail the basic test of leadership, which is first and foremost to take full responsibility for errors on their watch, to teach and correct rather than blame and obfuscate. Morale suffers under poor leaders, and it's no coincidence that employee morale has at times cratered at NIC, CLN and the assessor's office.

When we do a better job electing actual leaders, we’ll see immediate and dramatic improvement in the way our institutions operate. 

We'll feel like the real Santa has finally arrived.