Archives for March 2007

From the Boise Weekly

By Shea Andersen

The Boise Weekly’s efforts to open a sealed state investigation into Intermountain Hospital have stalled, for now, after a ruling from District Court.

In a ruling issued late Tuesday, Judge Michael McLaughlin ruled against the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, and BW, both of whom had resisted a move to seal the state’s records of its investigation into the conduct of the troubled psychiatric hospital.

BW has yet to decide whether it will appeal the decision, according to publisher Sally Freeman.

Deputy Attorney General Robert Luce, who represents the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, was not immediately available for comment.

“I am surprised by the decision,” said David Gratton, BW’s attorney from the firm Evans, Keane LLP. “The people of the state should be entitled to information the state gathers relative to the conduct of people licensed by the state.”

At question is whether an investigation into the operations of Intermountain Hospital’s residential teen care unit is a public record. BW had requested a copy of the investigation’s findings in December, under the Idaho Open Records Act. According to the Idaho Statesman, that newspaper and KTVB Channel 7 made similar requests.

Intermountain, located at 303 N. Allaumbaugh, is Boise’s only private psychiatric facility. Over several years it has been the subject of numerous complaints for understaffing, patient assaults on staff and fellow patients, medication errors, inappropriate discharges for financial reasons and, in one case settled out of court, the wrongful death of a teenage patient (BW News, “A Gathering Storm, 08/02/2006). The most recent incidents involved what adolescent patients and their parents referred to as a “riot” that required intervention by Boise police. Intermountain has temporarily closed the unit.

When they began their investigation, Health and Welfare spokesman Ross Mason confirmed that Intermountain’s violations are potentially serious enough to put its licensure into question.

Within a month, Intermountain had filed a complaint in District Court to keep those documents closed. They won a temporary restraining order from District Judge Joel Horton, who agreed with Intermountain that release of the investigation’s records would result in “immediate and irreparable injury, loss or damage.” Judge Horton, who has since recused himself from the case, ordered all records of the case sealed.

At the hearing last week, Intermountain attorney Mark Peterson told Judge McLaughlin said the investigation contained sensitive information about patients and staff, and should remain closed.

“Intermountain feels an obligation to do what it can to see that these records are protected,” Peterson said.

Peterson also said release of the documents could have a “chilling effect” on any such hospital’s desire to seek an operating license with the state of Idaho.

From the Boise Weekly

From The Idaho Falls Post-Register

The FCC announced Monday it was granting license renewal to KID-AM 590, overruling objections to comments made by Trish Oak and Halli Stone while on the air.

Mar 13,2007 – PAUL MENSER – IDAHO FALLS POST REGISTER
Trish Oak and Halli Stone left the airwaves more than a year ago, but a shadow they left hanging over their radio station, KID-AM 590, was not dispelled until Monday.

That’s when the Federal Communications Commission announced it was granting KID’S license renewal application, overruling objections that were filed in summer 2005.

Idaho Falls residents Seth and Andrea Grover and Kevin Murray, and then-Idaho House Speaker Bruce Newcomb had filed complaints about comments Oak and Stone made on their afternoon radio talk show.

But the often-controversial duo, which left the air in January 2006 in favor of nationally syndicated talk show host Laura Ingraham, had the protection of the First Amendment of the U. S. Constitution.

“I think that just vindicates the content of our program and our right to express our opinions, which is what the program was all about,” Stone said Monday.

Andrea Grover, a member of the Post Register Readers Advisory Board, told the FCC that the two sisters attacked her after Grover wrote a newspaper piece expressing her distaste for what she considered ostentation at the 2005 inauguration of President Bush.

In his complaint, Seth Grover called their programming “psycho-conservative garbage,” and Murray complained the two went overboard with their views.

Newcomb said he filed his complaint in objection to on-air comments about several people, but that he was particularly upset by comments that he thought impugned the character of state Sen. Bart Davis and showed insensitivity with regard to the 2003 shooting death of Davis’ son Cameron.

In its letter to everyone with objections, the FCC’s Audio Division Media Bureau chief, Peter H. Doyle, said the comments were protected by the First Amendment, the Communications Act of 1934 and the FCC’s rules.

“The role of the commission in overseein program content is limited,” he wrote. Although it enforces statutory prohibition on the broadcast of o g scene, indecent and profane material, “(The) Commission may not regulate the type of material about which the objectors have complained.”

The FCC renews the licenses of all radio stations in the United States every eight years. Had there been no objections, the renewal would have gone into effect Oct. 1, 2005.

“Anytime there’s a dispute, they do postpone renewal of a license until it’s investigated,” said Neica Kinney, eastern Idaho station manager for Clear Channel Communications, which owns KID-AM 590 and several other radio stations.

Those stations are part of a pending sale to Blue Point Media, an Illinois company that announced in February its intention to buy 22 FM, 13 AM and six translator stations in the Midwest and Mountain West. The $45.7 million sale won’t be final until the FCC has signed off on it.

Informed Monday of the FCC’s decision, Andrea Grover said she has no beef with KID-AM 590 now that Oak and Stone are off the air.

“That was my only concern with the station,”she said.

From The Idaho Falls Post-Register

From the Associated Press

By JOHN MILLER
Associated Press Writer

BOISE, Idaho (AP) _ To open or not to open government, that is the question Shakespearean actors may soon help answer.

Idahoans for Openness in Government last month won a $30,000 national grant to enlist the Idaho Shakespeare Festival troupe in a new video on state laws meant to keep the public’s business public.

The group includes journalists, law professors and state officials and was formed in 2004 to educate the media and public officials about Idaho’s open meeting and records laws. The grant came in time for Sunshine Week, a nationwide effort to draw attention to the public’s right to know.

”People who work in government have a lot of questions about open government, open records and the media,” said Betsy Russell, IDOG president and a reporter at the Spokesman-Review newspaper. ”That’s what we need: Everyone to know what the laws are, and to know how to comply with them.”

The open meeting law was enacted in 1974 and lawmakers passed an open records law in 1990.

And in three years, IDOG and Attorney General Lawrence Wasden have partnered on a dozen seminars around the state on open government issues, helping reduce confusion.
Still, questions regularly arise about how the laws should be applied, Russell said, and the new DVD will allow the group’s message to reach more people.

The money for the production comes from the National Freedom of Information Coalition, through the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Idaho Public Television will help produce the videos, to highlight issues now bedeviling local elected officials, the courts and the state Legislature.

For instance, there’s an ongoing Supreme Court battle over an illegal private meeting by the Ada County Commission in 2005. This lent momentum to a proposed law change in the 2007 Legislature.

Meanwhile, in Boise County, in the mountains north of Boise, foes of a large subdivision plan sued the county commission last year, alleging it illegally barred them from a July meeting where the development was approved.

And in September, members of the Teton County Commission in eastern Idaho agreed to fines of $75 _ half the maximum penalty _ after meeting secretly in May.
Though that case was resolved, concerns over openness and local government ethics affected the outcome of the 2006 election, said new Commissioner Larry Young, who ousted one of the incumbents.

”The one violation was maybe just the last straw,” Young told The Associated Press. ”An amalgamation of things can poison the public perception. We’re not talking about national security. This is county government, which should be the people’s business.”

Idaho’s open meetings law obligates Wasden as the attorney general to enforce it for state government. Also, he’s often called in to prosecute cases such as the one in Ada County that so far has cost taxpayers more than $30,000 in legal fees. Commissioners there are fighting paying fines of as much as $150.

But it isn’t just local government that sometimes struggles with the law’s nuances, said Wasden.

He also fields queries from reporters, he said.

”A lot of media folks are coming in from other states, and while they may be familiar with the federal Freedom of Information Act and open records provisions of other states, they don’t know Idaho’s,” Wasden said.

Aides in Wasden’s office say they had received two to three inquiries per week about possible open-meetings or open-records violations before the IDOG seminars began three years ago. Now, it’s down to about one per month, said AG spokesman Bob Cooper.

Wasden will be featured along with the Shakespearean actors in the upcoming DVD.

The open-records group’s leaders say the production will include examples of what the state’s laws permit and forbid, storytelling, commentary _ and where the public can turn for resources should they feel they’ve been wronged by a violation.

”It’s a combination of vigilance and education,” said Elinor Chehey, a board member from the League of Women Voters in Boise. ”People are interested in seeing things happen out in the open.”

From the Associated Press

From the Associated Press

By John Miller
Associated Press
March 9, 2007

BOISE – Idaho State University asked legislative budget writers Thursday for money to match a $5 million donation from an undisclosed foundation to buy part of a warehouse where the Pocatello-based school wants to house health-science classes it now offers elsewhere around Boise.

Some Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee members knew nothing of ISU’s proposal until Wednesday and said they fear too much remains secret. As a result, discussions were postponed until next week.

The plan calls for spending $17.5 million to buy and renovate a third of a 320,000-square-foot warehouse in Meridian, Idaho, from the Meridian School District. The district bought it last year from Jabil Circuit, which shut down in 2002.

Besides the $5 million each from the state and the foundation, ISU would sell bonds to raise the remaining $7.5 million. The money would turn the university’s share of the warehouse into space for programs including nursing, dental hygiene and EMT training.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity,” said Kent Kunz, the ISU lobbyist in Boise. “The Meridian School District has made us a gracious offer to go into a partnership with them.”

Proponents said this shouldn’t be mistaken with plans for a southwestern Idaho community college such as one now being pushed by city and business leaders in Boise, Meridian and Nampa. Rather, ISU’s Meridian location would be a site where college students and 11th- and 12th-graders could take advantage of in-demand medical-field training from a four-year university at a single location.

Kunz said the private donation is contingent upon ISU buying the building. He declined to name the donor. “I will let them make their announcement,” he said.

The Idaho state Board of Education held an executive session in late 2006 and again Feb. 22 on the plan, Kunz said.

Public boards can hold closed sessions to discuss buying “an interest in real property,” according to Idaho’s open-meeting law.

When asked if the impending $5 million donation was the subject of the private meetings, Jeff Shinn, the board’s fiscal officer, said: “When a board talks about purchasing real property, they talk about the funding sources that are going to be used to purchase that real property.”

Some JFAC members said ISU’s last-minute proposal, accompanied by a mysterious donor and scant details hammered out in closed meetings, made them skittish, at least in part because they remember the consequences of the University of Idaho’s failed University Place project in 2002.

UI’s $136 million, three-building plan to expand in the state capital on growing Boise State University’s turf left the Moscow school and its foundation millions in debt.

“There’s obviously some secrecy,” said Rep. Margaret Henbest, D-Boise and a JFAC member, of ISU’s proposal. “I first heard about it last night. If it’s such a great idea … why did they wait until the end of the session to introduce it?”

Henbest added: “They said (about University Place) ‘Trust me, it’s a great project.’ It just feels like that, absent any details.”

Rep. George Eskridge, R-Dover, also said he wanted to hear more about the plan.

“Five million bucks is pretty significant,” Eskridge said.

“We’re all a little jumpy, because of (University Place).”

From the Associated Press