Kevin Keating

Former Bonner County school superintendent Max Harrell twice in his career has been paid not to work. Trustees paid the superintendent $222,000 in December to leave Bonner County. The district bought out Harrell's contract rather than endure two more years of discord in the community.

Welcome home, chief "I didn't come here to be a novelty," says Elaine Savage, Priest River's first female police chief. "I came here to do a job." Photo by Jesse Tinsley/The Spokesman-Review

Former economic development director Susan Johnson is suing the city, saying the mayor wrongly eliminated her job nearly two years ago. The lawsuit, which names all the City Council members and Mayor David Sawyer, doesn't ask for a specific dollar amount but seeks back pay from March 1996.

Joan Cramer stands in front of the smokejumpers exhibit featuring her husband, Albert, at the Bonner County Museum. Photo by Craig Buck/The Spokesman-Review

Fields Cobb addresses Bonner County commissioners, asking them to reject the amnesty law. Photo by Craig Buck/The Spokesman-Review

A parent who helped pass out ice-cream bowls at a Farmin Elementary School party exposed about 60 students to hepatitis A. The parent was helping with a Valentine's Day party at the school on Feb. 13. She did not know she had hepatitis and exposed a group of first- and sixth-grade students.

1. (Photo of license plate) 2. Allen Andrews shows off one of the 2-foot-long female rainbow trout he raises in his own pond, selling fingerlings for others to stock or catch. Photo by Craig Buck/The Spokesman-Review

Spreading diversity The Sibikwa players from South Africa perform Thursday at the Panida Theater in Sandpoint for high school students. Photo by Craig Buck/The Spokesman-Review

Sandpoint lost a well-known businessman and restaurateur Tuesday when Bill "Beaner" Johnson died of an apparent heart attack. Johnson was 70. He collapsed while working the morning shift at The Bagel Company, one of his downtown restaurants.

A prisoner who spouts white supremacist beliefs and is tattooed with swastikas scaled a fence topped with razor wire and escaped from the Bonner County jail Monday afternoon. Bloodhounds, sheriff's deputies and city police officers hunted until dark for Matthew Brakken, 25, but couldn't find him.

The Coeur d'Alene Chamber of Commerce is under attack - by its own members and Sandpoint residents - for supporting Asarco's massive Rock Creek Mine. Chamber volunteer Lori Barnes spoke at a public hearing on the chamber's behalf this week. She asked federal regulators to approve Asarco's controversial mine which many here fear will pollute Lake Pend Oreille.

Yagman

Jobs vs. the environment. That's what the battle over Asarco's proposed Rock Creek mine has boiled down to. Asarco insists residents can have both.

If FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi is ordered to stand trial, his lawyers want the proceedings held anywhere but Idaho. A motion Monday, supported by the U.S. Department of Justice, asked a judge to dismiss Horiuchi's case. If that tactic fails, lawyers requested the case be moved to a district "remote from Idaho."

Boundary County commissioners are not fans of U.S Forest Service gates, but they are condemning the destruction of one on Boundary Creek Road. It's the same road the Forest Service wants to obliterate and commissioners want to save. The vandalism only hurts the county's chances, commissioner Kevin Lederhos said.

Bonner County's new amnesty law is null and void - for now. The law was wiped off the books by court order Friday, with the blessing of county commissioners. "It was repealed - there is no amnesty," said county Prosecutor Phil Robinson. "Even if the idea of amnesty had any kind of validity or support it became a matter that was abused."

Bonner County authorities raided themselves Thursday, launching a drug search at the courthouse that landed one department head in jail on a cocaine possession charge. "The public should know that if we got a cancer here, we are going to get it out," said Sheriff Chip Roos.

A two-year feud over a planned Dumpster site has Bonner County commissioners fed up with all the trash talk. The commissioners demanded a retraction or apology this week from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. They said a Corps official, Mike Doherty, wrongly expressed a personal opinion about the Dumpster project in a letter written on Corps stationary.

The Environmental Protection Agency has slapped the city with a $27,500 fine for failure to monitor and enforce industrial wastewater discharges to its sewer plant. The penalty was for a long list of violations of the Clean Water Act. City officials, however, said the violations posed no danger to the public and pollutants were not discharged into the Pend Oreille River.

A measure of optimism. Mike McNutt measures a piece of siding on the new Lazier Center at Schweitzer Mountain Resort. Photo by Craig Buck/The Spokesman-Review

Sara Weaver

"Read our e-mail. No new charges." Internet users across the nation have flooded the Federal Communications Commission with that message, literally swamping its e-mail system. Computer users are responding in droves to a message sent out on the Internet. The message warned that telephone companies want FCC approval to impose per-minute charges on Internet service providers. The result would be huge telephone bills for computer users who now pay flat fees for unlimited Internet access.

Featured creature. Taxidermist John Thomas, at work in his Boundary County shop Friday, pieces together the "melk" in the background from elk and moose parts. Photo by Jesse Tinsley/The Spokesman-Review

Bonner County Commissioners may scrap a new law that gave amnesty to landowners with illegal or undevelopable lots. The law was intended to help residents who were unknowingly stuck with land that did not meet planning and zoning codes. But those who were supposed to benefit from the law didn't. Instead, a handful of residents were tipped about the upcoming amnesty ordinance and cashed in on it. Before the law passed, residents rushed to file deeds, split their land and created at least 265 new illegal lots.