Recalling Timberlake commissioners is right

As the only Timberlake commissioner who openly supports the recall movement, I can tell you that it’s not the turning over of day-to-day management to Northern Lakes that has compelled the community to initiate the first recall in Kootenai County history. The folks at Northern Lakes are a fine group of competent professionals, and we are lucky to have them as neighbors. What has everyone so upset is the dictatorial bullying of commissioners David “Rudy” Rudebaugh and Marty Fish, and it has now become clear that this state of affairs will not end until these two are “deposed.”

Several months ago, Rudebaugh issued an edict that no one in the fire district was to speak to the press without first clearing their comments with him in advance.

Rudebaugh’s intent was not only to gag everyone affiliated with the fire district, including his fellow commissioners, but to prevent the press from doing its job of reporting the facts as well.

Perhaps the problem is that Rudebaugh is unfamiliar with that unique document we all refer to as the Bill of Rights. It’s part of the U.S. Constitution, in case anyone wants to Google it.

But Rudebaugh did not stop at merely gagging the press and members of the fire district. He has also made a concerted effort to gag voters as well. Allow me to prove my point. At the Bayview Community Council meeting on Aug. 25, Rudebaugh was asked why he refused to allow public comment at so many recent board meetings and whether or not he was going to allow public comment in the future. He replied that the reason he does not always allow public comment is because sometimes “the agenda is simply too long,” but that he would “be allowing comment at the next meeting in Athol.”

As it turns out, the next meeting in Athol was a special meeting he called on short notice for Sept 9. It was a brief meeting with only two items on the agenda, and yet, contrary to his public pledge on Aug. 25, Rudebaugh still allowed no public comment. The reason is simple, of course. Whenever Rudebaugh wants to ram something down the public’s throat, anything he knows is going to provoke public outrage, Rudebaugh never allows the public to speak its mind.

But on this particular occasion he went even further than he ever had before by attempting to gag the only commissioner present willing to challenge the legality of his reinstating Chuck Hansen as an appointed commissioner, even as criminal charges against Hansen were still pending with the county prosecutor’s office. The gag came in the form of Fish’s motion to limit my dissent to a scant 2 minutes. Apparently even their “vote as a bloc,” confederate Commissioner Kirk Quillin found Fish’s motion too extreme to swallow. He suggested the motion be modified to allow me a whole 3 minutes. Such democratic generosity!

Now you see what I, as a duly elected commissioner, have to put up with, why the public is so outraged, and why this recall will ultimately be their undoing.