D.F. Oliveria

A deadbeat dad is a deadbeat dad whether he's driving a truck cross country or dealing cards at a Washington Indian casino. He's a man who has fallen behind in child-support payments and refuses to try to catch up. Yet, there's a distinct difference between the run-of-the-mill deadbeat and the casino employee. The state of Washington can garnish the trucker's wages. But it can't touch the dealer - even if he isn't a member of the tribe. Tribal sovereignty laws protect him.

Our Miss Fox is doing better as Idaho superintendent of schools after a woeful start - some of which was media-manufactured, most of which was self-inflicted. Anne Fox fired some good people. Dated the wrong people. Drove the wrong car. Ninety of 105 school superintendents surveyed by The Associated Press after her first months in office either had no confidence in Fox or withheld judgment on her. Those numbers have improved somewhat in a second AP poll conducted recently. The number of superintendents who have confidence in Fox's ability to manage the Department of Education has increased from 14 to 33. That's still nothing to write home about. But Fox's promotion of several respected professionals within the department has her on the right track - finally. Now, if she'll swap her '50s prom hairdo for a '90s version, she'll be on her way to re-election. Are booze agents on too short a leash? Most folks would agree that regulation of booze is a good thing. Businesses shouldn't be allowed to sell it at all hours, to sell it to underage kids or to bootleg it. Yet, the Idaho Alcohol Beverage Control Bureau is so strapped for funds that agents are hamstrung in doing their jobs. Unbelievably, agents have been ordered to stay in their offices every other week to save money on gas and other travel and vehicle expenses, to eliminate overnight travel and training and to cut night shifts from four to only one per month so the bureau can avoid reimbursing them for dinner. Now, I appreciate a bureaucracy operating a tight ship, but this is foolishness. Why is the agency so pinched now when it has had eight months to absorb the 2 percent budget cuts ordered by Gov. Phil Batt? Is this poor management? Or are we cutting bone, not fat? The governor's office needs to find out. Retirement came too soon for local hero If anyone ever has deserved a Sweet Potato Pie, it's Roger Hansen, the guiding light behind Project CDA, Coeur d'Alene's alternative school. Stories abound about how he has been able to reach kids society had written off and turn them around into productive model citizens. He was a surrogate dad to many. A tough disciplinarian. Independent (sometimes to the dismay of school administrators). In 1994, Reader's Digest magazine recognized him as one of its 10 "American heroes in education" and followed up last year with a feature story on him and his program. The good that Roger did in his 18 years as director of Project CDA will reverberate for generations. Well done.

"Smelterville" rolls off the tongue like a rusty ball bearing, conjuring up images of smokestacks, toxicity and grimy buildings. The name is a chamber of commerce nightmare. Holiday Inns of America and Pizza Hut have turned down potential sites in the Silver Valley town because they don't locate in smelter towns.

You needn't look further than the May primaries to see Idaho Democrats are in deep trouble still. While Republican primaries are teeming with candidates, Democrats are scrambling to fill slots in a swing county like Kootenai. The D's, for example, produced only a political unknown with an unlisted phone number for two Kootenai County commissioner slots. Credible candidates are needed in all races to foster debate - though it's hard to blame Democrats still shell-shocked by the '94 Republican tidal wave. Things are going so badly for Idaho D's that Republicans like Gov. Phil Batt and House Speaker Mike Simpson feel sorry for them - but not sorry enough to hand over any seats. The Democrats say the anti-incumbency mood did them in during 1994, not their message. But the single-issue tendency of many grass-roots Democrats makes you wonder if they're as much in tune with conservative Idaho as they think.

There are more unsportsmanlike ways to kill bears than by using bait and dogs. You could shoot them while they're caged in a zoo. But, of course, that's illegal. Bear baiting and hunting with hounds should be, too. The practices are so unfair that a 1994 Idaho poll shows many traditional bird, deer and elk hunters oppose them. Cecil Andrus, former Idaho governor and an avid hunter, has said: "In my opinion, bear baiting does not fit within the definition of hunting as a sport."

Don't look now, but the money-changers have found yet another way to fleece customers. Not content simply to jack up fees for everything from bounced checks to telephone inquiries, the sharks are gnawing away at one of the few free bank services left: the automatic teller machine.

How about a Sweet Potato Pie for the flying Fish that put Coeur d'Alene on the map (again) last week? Mica Fish, a Lake City High graduate, wowed 'em at the United States Amateur Snowboard Association championships in Vermont, winning two golds and the girls freestyle overall (ages 17-18). Now, she has her sights set on the 2002 Olympic Games in Salt Lake City. Not bad for a kid who picked up the sport four years ago, learning by trial and error. Other snowboarders have coaches and attend academies to learn their stuff. But Fish, a freshman at Central Oregon Community College in Bend, Ore., has paid her own way until recently by working in a snowboard shop. Now, a sponsor is picking up some of her costs. Mica became a champion the old-fashioned way. She earned it.

A decade ago, Bill Wassmuth was talking on the phone with a friend late one night when a blast shook him. Three white supremacists had placed a pipe bomb in a trash can behind the former Catholic priest's rectory. They wanted to intimidate him; they wanted Wassmuth to quit defending human rights. Wassmuth, now director of the Northwest Coalition on Malicious Harassment, admitted later he feared for his life, but he refused to back away from his cause. Said he: "I won't be controlled by fear."

It must be nice to be a law onto yourself. You set the rules. Then you set yourself above the rules. You decide who walks free, who goes to jail. You threaten to arrest or kill judges, prosecutors, law enforcement officials and even sympathizers who cross you. You and your followers seize a courthouse or two. You steal with impunity. You teach others how to defraud the government, credit-card companies, mortgage institutions and neighbors by passing worthless checks.

Gino White visited my office the day when news broke that Joshua Buehner is too young to run for the state Legislature. Buehner? He's the 18-year-old Lakeland High School honor student who had planned to enter politics - until state law intervened. Candidates for state representative have to be at least 21 years old. Which brings me back to White. The former lawmaker was only 24 when he was appointed to the Legislature. A Democrat, he served capably for several terms and was North Idaho's only member on the powerful Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee two years ago before losing to state Rep. Don Pischner, R-Coeur d'Alene, by 15 votes. In 1994, Gino saved funding for North Idaho College. Youth has its place. The minimum age should be adjusted downward. If Buehner's old enough to vote, he's old enough to serve in the Legislature. Besides, he sounds sharper than some of the guys we're sending down there now.

Remember that GQ reporter from Washington, D.C., who painted North Idaho as a hotbed of white supremacy? Now, we have the March 25 issue of Newsweek - including a U.S. map dotted with swastikas, K's, circles and squares to indicate havens of Nazis, Klansmen, Skinheads and militias. And whaddaya know? The only blemishes in Idaho are a swastika in the Panhandle (thanks a lot, Reverend Dick) and a militia dot in the southeast. Meanwhile, swastikas, K's and militia squares blanket the GQ reporter's East Coast stomping grounds. Seems he was looking for hate in all the wrong places. All the wrong places Then again, Newsweek might have misplaced a swastika or two. It certainly mislaid Hope artist Ed Kienholz's grave. Elsewhere in the March 25 issue, Peter Plagens reports: "When he (Kienholz) died at the age of 66 in 1994, his body - along with his dog's ashes and a bottle of vintage Italian wine - was put into a shiny 1940 Packard and rolled into a grave in northern Utah." Someone had better tell Ed's wife, Nancy. Ed requested a trap door be cut in his favorite Packard so she could join him in death, as in life, under ground they shared in North Idaho. All the wrong places II The New York Times called the Lincoln County Sheriff's Office in Libby, Mont., last week looking for skinheads in camouflage. Seems the most elite of the eastern media was in a lather about Montana's kooky freeman. The office clerk paused long enough from filing to give the Times ink-slingers a geography lesson. Jordan, she told them, is way over in eastern Montana - next to one of those Newsweek militia squares.

Sometimes, Idaho Gov. Phil Batt's penny-pinching tendency flares at the wrong time. Earlier this year, for example, he balked at providing funds to maintain the eastern end of the Centennial Trail, along Lake Coeur d'Alene, a picture-postcard stretch of the two-state system. Now, maintenance and liability worries have caused the Republican governor to hesitate at accepting a once-in-a-lifetime offer made by Union Pacific. The railroad is willing to pave its old Silver Valley line and give it to Idaho as a trail, stretching 72 miles from mining country to Plummer and the heart of the Coeur d'Alene Indian Reservation. For little or no capital investment, the state would get a trail that hugs wetlands, mountains, some 40 miles of river, another 10 miles of Lake Coeur d'Alene and links Silver Valley hamlets. Eventually, a spur link over Fourth of July Pass, east of Coeur d'Alene, could tie it to the Centennial Trail, providing a three-state trail from Spokane, through the Idaho Panhandle and into Montana.

They did what? In a 3-2 vote, the Coeur d'Alene School Board on Monday approved funding for several "maintenance" projects, including $70,000 to build a Lake City High School press box. Trustees Ken Burchell and Jane Curtis correctly voted no. Why should the Cadillac of area schools get another perk when there are pressing needs elsewhere? Coeur d'Alene High School, for example, has made do without funding for secondary phases of its renovation project. As a result, sports boosters constructed a baseball/soccer complex themselves and recently staged a classic-rock concert to raise about $15,000 for new bleachers (or a tractor to drag the infield, if baseball coach Paul Mather has his way). And CHS' needs aren't the only ones the district has. Nonsense like this sinks school bonds. (See third Hot Potato.) Macdonald can't hide from this guy

The so-called "wise-use" or county supremacy movement received a double dose of reality this month. A U.S. district judge and the Idaho Supreme Court ruled separately that counties have no authority to manage state and federal lands within their borders. These lands belong to citizens throughout the state or country, not just those who happen to live closest to them. Any high school senior enrolled in a civics class could have told us that.

One of the best bills passed by the 1996 Idaho Legislature has received little fanfare. After dragging their heels for a year, legislators hammered out the details for a constitutional amendment, passed in 1994 by 106,261 votes, that permits Idahoans to redesign their county governments. Bigger counties, such as Ada and Kootenai, can jettison the archaic three-commissioner system for several other options. Meanwhile, smaller counties can choose to go together to fund such offices as prosecutor and sheriff.

Gee, maybe teenagers would quit using drugs if we simply taught them to "just say no." Or maybe we could waste more money on drug education. After all, the DARE program builds self-esteem and makes everyone feel good. Maybe we should put our heads in the sand, too.

Forty-five percent of Lakeland School District patrons flunked their class in civic responsibility Tuesday by voting "no" on two levy issues. Each naysayer deserves a Hot Potato - with the biggest russet reserved for Rathdrum developer Larry Clark. Clark campaigned against a $9.3 million bond to construct a junior high school and against a $650,000 levy for a hot-lunch program. (Where does he suppose his future tenants are going to educate their children?) By following this anti-levy Pied Piper, some 1,800 Lakeland voters shirked their community obligation to provide good school buildings. They also missed the opportunity to build while construction costs and interest rates are low. Let's hope the myopia fostered by Clark and embraced so readily isn't contagious. Post Falls (on Tuesday) and Coeur d'Alene are facing crucial school levy votes this spring. The-e-e-re goes Hilde Greyhound racing in Idaho is illegal once again - thanks to 20/20 hindsight by the Legislature and Gov. Phil Batt. Eight years and hundreds of euthanized racing dogs later, the Legislature has outlawed this blood sport. It was a case of "too little, too late," however. The Coeur d'Alene Greyhound Park closed in December after having lost its shirt for the past three years. The Post Falls track had a poor reputation industrywide and was dogged by accounts of animal abuse. It wouldn't have been built if legislators had relied on their gut instincts and not rushed through a bill in the closing days of the 1988 session, a bill for which businessman Duane Hagadone personally lobbied. So much for sizzle. CdA Council victimizes neighbors again Coeur d'Alene's Ida Hawkins has a legitimate beef with City Hall. Seems neighbor Don Jacobson has built up a successful but noisy business since he moved his tree service into her residential neighborhood 10 years ago. Imagine how you'd feel if you had to contend daily with your neighbor literally sawing logs - and splitting and chipping them. Well, the City Council doesn't have your imagination. Council members saw nothing wrong with Ida's discomfort (or the drop in her property's value). They gave Jacobson Tree Service (and its two high-priced attorneys) permission to continue running the business in one of the city's most restrictive zones (R-3). City officials apparently lost their bureaucratic nerve a few years ago when "Avon Lady" Rose Christman refused to close her shop in a Best Avenue residential zone. How else can you explain this cockeyed unanimous ruling that makes all Coeur d'Alene neighborhoods vulnerable?

The 1996 Legislature will go down in history as the one that ended Idaho's 79-year-old workers' compensation exemption for agriculture. That bill alone makes the session that ended Friday successful. But it wasn't all. The Legislature held the line on taxes, passed welfare reform and addressed North Idaho's problems with growth and floods. Legislators deserve a B-minus grade for their work - some of which remains incomplete.

If you missed the Coeur d'Alene High School sports fund-raiser Saturday, you missed the community event of the year. Coeur d'Alene's Pete Hoorelbeke (aka Peter Rivera of Rare Earth) and three classic-rock buddies treated Coeur d'Alene to two solid hours of golden oldies and left the Boswell Auditorium crowd chanting for more. Man, can those guys play! Still! And they raised more than $10,000 for CHS athletics. Lake City High School boosters shouldn't feel left out, though. They have a new school, complete with a fine athletic complex. Meanwhile, the old high school has been scrambling for money to build three sports fields after voters apparently decided not to fund planned renovations. Hoorelbeke and friends have made that bitter pill easier to swallow. Give them a Sweet Potato Pie for helping us out while guiding a rousing tour down memory lane - and give side orders to CHS Principal Steve Casey and Athletic Director Larry Schwenke for making it happen. Dorr's failure means here comes the judge Hmmm. Seems more than coincidental that Rathdrum officials waited until after the Legislature had ended to seek a judge's approval for a new water reservoir. State Rep. Tom Dorr, R-Post Falls, tried to have "judicial review" outlawed because it allows taxing districts to skirt voter approval. But the attempt failed. Now, on May 9, Rathdrum plans to ask 1st District Judge Gary Haman to approve a $500,000 reservoir project. The city probably needs a bigger reservoir. Last summer, its 285,000-gallon tank was drawn down to only 2 or 3 feet of water; Rathdrum didn't have the supply to fight a major fire. But city officials should make their case to constituents - not a judge who won't be affected by a $4 to $5 monthly increase in his water bill. A few barks shouldn't separate neighbors What kind of person kills a neighbor's dog with an arrow? (Or a bullet, for that matter?) Here's a Hot Potato for the Hayden Lake "neighbor" who skewered Petra Rasor's dog, Isabelle, on Thursday. Seems the pet incurred the death penalty by entering the Bad Samaritan's yard and barking at his dog. In Idaho, you can kill canine trespassers if they're threatening livestock or humans. But that doesn't seem to be the case here. Fortunately, Hayden Lake's William Tell wasn't anywhere near my place on Sunday when the Oliveria family pup, Cosmo, dug his way into a neighbor's back yard. Our gracious neighbor let Cosmo play with his pup until we returned home. Good neighbors look out for one another.

On Tuesday, we saw what collegiate sports should be and what they too often are - a tale of two Inland Northwest colleges. In Nampa, Idaho, the Whitworth College men's basketball team didn't lose until overtime of the NAIA Division II national title game. The Pirates landed in the finals without sacrificing academics. Or relying on a truckload of scholarships. Or cheating. In Moscow, Kermit Davis was offered the University of Idaho men's basketball coaching job. UI officials were tired of losing to in-state rivals - though the emphasis on scholastics under their latest coach, Joe Cravens, improved. So, they turned to Davis, a coach best known for a 50-12 record at UI (1988-90) and recruiting violations that landed Texas A&M; on NCAA probation.

J. Kirk Sullivan, a Boise Cascade timber executive who could be named president of the University of Idaho today, takes crassness to a new level. Expanding on his thesis that a college president's main purpose in life is to raise money, he admitted he'd shake down a rich widow if he had to do so. Said Sullivan: "If we target Mrs. X out there, and we know that Mrs. X is 72 years old - this is crass, but let me give you my example - and she's got $100 million and she doesn't have the University of Idaho in her will, then it's up to me to figure out how to get us into that will, assuming there's a window of opportunity." If this guy knows as little about higher education as he does about tact, the UI could be in trouble. Idaho trusty program strikes out

Lobbyists for Kootenai County, Coeur d'Alene and Post Falls are selling snake oil as they push the Idaho Legislature to approve a local-option sales tax. They claim it would provide property tax relief while forcing tourists to help pay for roads, police and parks. But a local-option tax is, at best, a break-even proposition for middle-class homeowners. It also means big property tax savings for Kootenai County's richest - and a soaking for the poor and the elderly. Rather than seek a regressive shift in taxes, local officials should continue to press for a fair distribution of state sales and liquor taxes. Outdated funding formulas have cost Kootenai County millions of dollars.

It's not surprising that North Idaho is enduring another outbreak of whooping cough, a potentially fatal disease for infants and toddlers. Idaho has a higher percentage of unvaccinated preschoolers than any state except Michigan and the highest per-capita rate of pertussis or whooping cough. North Idaho leads the way with a pathetic average immunization rate of less than 48 percent. The area is ripe for a preventable epidemic.

It's fashionable to denigrate the 1950s. Women supposedly were chattel then. Blacks, browns, greens and yellows had no rights. Joe McCarthy ruled. Blah, blah, blah. Critics, of course, forget that Betty Friedan's frustration with 1950s suburbia launched feminism. That Rosa Parks changed history in December 1955 by refusing to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Ala. That McCarthyism was rejected. The 1950s produced a young preacher named Martin Luther King Jr.; Brown versus the Board of Education (which legally ended segregation); "the pill"; affordable housing, cars and college; and the American Dream. Children knew their lives would be better than their parents'.