Spokane7
59°
October 15, 2011 in City
Key tea partyer on public payroll
Property Rights Council job, aim controversial
Pam Stout, shown during a tea party rally in 2009, now heads the Bonner County Property Rights Council.
(Full-size photo)
BOISE – In the conservative crucible of Idaho’s far north, a tea party leader aiming to slim down government has a new title: government employee.
Pam Stout, a tea party activist interviewed by late-night TV’s David Letterman last year, landed a $25,000-a-year, 19-hour-a-week post heading the Bonner County Property Rights Council.
Stout is recruiting volunteers to this new arm of local government to advise county commissioners about slashing spending, free-market alternatives to regulations, and intervening in disputes with Washington, D.C., bureaucrats. Not everybody need apply, she said.
“If you don’t have a free-market perspective, you’d be uncomfortable,” said Stout, whose title is paralegal assistant, though she’s not a trained paralegal.
Some people are responding warily to what they see as an ideologically motivated panel installed inside the courthouse, funded with taxpayer dollars and blessed by elected leaders.
They fear its work could have a chilling effect on county employees trying to uphold local, state and federal laws, particularly those protecting the environment.
“Government should be inclusionary,” said Terry Harris, director of the Kootenai Environmental Alliance. “This is a layer of bureaucracy by ideologues who you would think would be opposed to bureaucracy. It’s spending where you’d think they’d be opposed to spending money.”
This new council is the first of its kind in Idaho, said county Commissioner Cornel Rasor, who rejected Harris’ suggestion that it’s a right-wing shock troop aiming to gut government from the inside while on the public’s dime.
Too often, he said, government has only this message: “Shut down, regulate, close and control.”
“We’re not taking anything away from people who believe property should be regulated,” Rasor said. “We’re simply providing an alternative perspective that was never there before.”
Clare Marley, the county planning director, was out of the office and couldn’t be reached for comment.
Rasor, the council’s founder, and the two other county commissioners are due to vote Tuesday on formalizing how the council is run.
Its seven charter members – including a former Republican commission candidate, GOP officials, tea party activist and Planning Commission member – are already getting started.
Their first tasks include figuring out how to jettison the historical society, extension agency and county fairgrounds from taxpayer support, Stout said.
On Oct. 6, they initiated an investigation of how the county might intervene in a dispute between a couple and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency after the agency declared their property near Priest Lake a wetland.
Council members will also vet proposed county watershed rules that could limit junkyards, landfills, feedlots and hazardous materials near Lake Pend Oreille and Priest Lake, to make sure the regulations don’t meddle too much in individual freedoms.
The council is being advised by the State Policy Network, a free-market California think tank that aims “to push back against an oppressive federal government,” according to its website. The Idaho Freedom Foundation, the network’s Idaho branch, will teach classes on free-market theories to council volunteers, Stout said, including using a text called “Government Failure” supplied by the libertarian Cato Institute.
Pushing back against the federal government is hardly a novel concept in Bonner County, where many people have moved to live out their own fiercely held beliefs of independence.
Ruby Ridge, the remote mountain sanctuary where Randy Weaver’s deadly 1992 standoff with federal agents helped inspire the militia movement, is just to the north.
And love for Washington, D.C., wasn’t exactly inspired earlier this year when federal prosecutors alleged violations of the federal Endangered Species Act against a North Idaho man who shot a grizzly bear just south of the Canadian border. The man said he was acting in defense of his children. He eventually paid a $1,000 fine.
“This kind of attitude at the federal government level has created that kind of a backlash, particularly here in northern Idaho where we’re more conservative,” said county Commissioner Mike Nielsen, a former law enforcement officer from Alaska who lives in a home at the end of a mile-long driveway and has three propane tanks to keep it heated.
It’s not just the feds, Nielsen said. During his 2010 campaign, voters told him again and again they were under siege from county land use regulators.
“What I was told was, ‘Mike, we need somebody to protect our property rights,’ ” Nielsen said. “It’s like we own the land, but the government or someone else is telling us how to use it.”
© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
1992 murder trial begins against sex offender 
kma on October 15 at 8:26 a.m.
This “hypocrite” Stout will be the first to ask for FEDERAL FUNDS when a disaster hits her little world. She is a TEABAGGER and now is part of the government. God, hello, Sandpoint is this what you want people to think goes on up there, guess so. Sounds like you condone this idiot money grabbing teabagger.
And for God’s sake, leave Ruby Ridge out of this. You people again need to stop smoking the weed. Oppresive federal government, again, UNTIL YOU NEED MONEY!!!!!!! Hypocrites.
Need someone to protect your property rights? Please, do as others do, hire an attorney or is it that you are too stupid you can’t handle your own problems. Now, you have to hire a FAKE paralegal and pay this FAKE paralegal (bigot teabagger) $26.00 per hour. LESS GOVERNMENT….OH…….. how quickly you people forget.
And, the grizzly killing was totally uncalled for had the father and mother been watching their children (six children) in grizzly country. No, the father was showering and the mother was napping while their little ones played outside unsupervised. Oh, and the pigs, not anyone else’s problem. It is the landowner’s problem to make sure children and animals are safe.
gr8whitedope on October 15 at 8:50 a.m.
Good job, Pammy. Hate the gummit and then infiltrate it to help shrink it small enough to drown it in a bath tub. If I was still the Pres, I’d hire you for my cabinet.
Miss me yet?
Kivaari on October 15 at 9:42 a.m.
Great plan. We need to see how to slow government. We need a group to examine excess laws and regulations. Much like the very ineffective Obama panel. Obama’s panel hasn’t made any progress. Give it to the locals to find ways to save. She will more then pay for herself through cutting other government budgets. Every city and county needs to slow government creep.
Squid on October 15 at 10:17 a.m.
The Bonner County couple, Mike and Chantell Sackett, who are in the EPA legal battle, are in the Supreme Court now, and are friends of mine. The EPA declared their property a wetlands, and fined them $36,000 per day, if they didn’t restore it back to a wetlands. The bill is now over $40 MILLION!!!
It never was wetland. Didn’t have a seasonal stream, or standing seasonal water. Isn’t even on the EPA wetland map. They bought a building permit, and leveled the site to build their house and some suits without paperwork told them to stop, when they did everything the right way. This is all about 6/10th’s of an acre, next to Priest Lake. That lake is about 85% natural shoreline, and there is wetlands everywhere, but not where they wanted to build.
This is all about Environmentalists trying to control people’s dreams and lives. The MO of environmentalists is to declare land a wetlands, to stop construction, and it is common in Spokane through the Moran Prairie Association too. Oddly enough, there are developers on that board, who gain for themselves, such as Harley Douglas, who is currently developing on wetlands on 29th and Cuba. He is the biggest housing developer in Spokane, and owns most of the bare land on the South Hill.
Try to build a house on more than 5 acres, on the South Hill. It WILL be declared a wetlands, and WILL cost you at least $10,000 to fight it. Mike and Cantell Sackett will have to pay a lot more than that, but will probably win a civil suit and cost Bonner County several million, but not a single duckling will be saved in the process. Hopefully a loon or two will be run out of town.
Yes, the Government and environmentalists need to be fixed, especially in Bonner County. If Tea Party members have to be part of the problem to fix the problem, then it’s just fine with me.
Just fix it.
charshe on October 15 at 10:40 a.m.
I would look at how that job was advertised and the relationship between this teabagger and the person who hired her. If she is not trained, and the job called for that, then the taxpayers are not getting their money’s worth. Her committee’s duties have not been assigned, yet she is already telling what SHE is going to do. She doesn’t want anyone with any other thoughts on HER committee.
This bagger will just cause more work for the law abiding county workers. What a travesty. Talk about a waste of taxpayer money.
richardch on October 15 at 11:23 a.m.
I wonder how many union hacks are on the taxpayer dole.and fuzzy headed fleabaggers.
Kivaari on October 16 at 6:23 p.m.
If she performs and saves much more then her wages, then she has done a good job. If she doesn’t produce then it is a waste. I’d say give here time. You need someone committed to the project to make it work.
Kivaari on October 16 at 6:26 p.m.
A squid, “Hey,hey, EPA, how many jobs did you kill today”. The EPA has a mission to hurt every person in Idaho within the next five years. They have nearly a billion dollars in fines from Asarco and Hecla, just so they can ruin lives and communities. good luck to your friends.