Fast Times at OFG Highschool

At last Wednesday’s OFG meeting, Mr. Brian Cleary brought up serious concerns about how the Final Report was produced by Ms. Kristen Wing’s subcommittee that was tasked with drafting the Final Report. The concern was that substantive deliberations were being made outside of the public eye that violated Idaho Open Meeting Law in 3 distinct instances. At the conclusion of the OFG meeting, the Final Report was approved with the typical slim 5-to-4 vote margin.

OFG = Optional Forms of Government
KWING = Kristen Wing
BCLEARY = Brian Cleary
BMCHUGH = Barry McHugh
DBOTTING = Dave Botting

Rewind to 1 month prior while the OFG Commission was in recess, the County Attorney BMCHUGH was contacted to provide input on whether this proposed County Manager would have broad authority to hire/fire any employee^† hired by Kootenai County, as well as other pertinent questions.

This input was incorporated into a Draft Report by KWING. Other commission members were given a tight deadline of 4 days to read this Draft Report, and send their comments to her.

BCLEARY disputed KWING’s illegal conduct. Essentially, BCLEARY made the case that the legitimacy of the KWING’s Final Report would be thrown into question because substantial deliberations were done outside of the public eye… e.g., violations of Idaho Open Meeting Law.

After BCLEARY was done speaking the public in attendance clapped in approval of his statements. What followed was a very unusual emotional outburst by DBOTTING as he yelled “Knock it off!” to the public.

Watch below 👀

In total, BCLEARY was able to point out KWING’s three violations of Idaho Open Meeting Law:

1. KWING revised her Draft Report using BMCHUGH’s input, and unilaterally set a very limited deadline of 4 days for other commission members to send comments without first consulting whether this was a practicable timeframe for everyone else.
2. KWING directed the entire body of the OFG commissioners (a full quorum) to email comments directly to her. This colloquy belonged in a public meeting. Essentially, KWING provided illegal license for the full OFG quorum to conduct business outside of the public eye.
3. KWING consequently used their input which gave us this abomination that 5 of the OFG members are calling the Final Report.

If you’re interested in seeing BCLEARY’s 15min speech, watch below 👀

The entirety of the OFG meeting is also available here if you’re interested. The clip above of BCLEARY’s speech occurs at 9m50s 👀

† For example: Undersheriff Dan Mattos or Chief Deputy Clerk Jennifer Locke