Bulldozing Incident Smoothed Over

Convinced last fall that Leonard Browning bulldozed a power pole, Spirit Lake officials wanted him thrown in jail.

Now they’re quietly offering to pay the $4,410 repair bill.

Why? City officials won’t say.

Browning thinks he knows. He reads the city’s decision as an admission that he was right all along: the city was illegally bulldozing a road across his property.

“They’re going to do whatever they can to put the fire out and get it down to a dull roar,” he said Monday, standing in a roadway that was once his front yard.

Until last summer, 10th Avenue deadended in front of Browning’s garage. In August, workers cut a roadway through to meet a new development on the other side.

Browning claims they chopped off a 30-foot swath of his land.

Days after the road work began, someone stole a bulldozer from the site and plowed through the nearby power pole.

City officials - and one witness - pointed at Browning. He’d recently threatened to bulldoze the mayor’s home.

Browning says he didn’t do it.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” he said. “I drove Cat (Caterpillar tractor) for years, and if I’d been on that Cat, I would have gone through the Mayor’s house. I know the difference between a road and a power pole.”

Still, the bill for the downed pole was part of the deal he signed with the council last week. The city also swapped him some land, and Browning handed over a deed.

Hearing of the agreement, Kootenai County Deputy Prosecutor Rick Baughman dropped the charges against Browning.

“I was concerned about Washington Water Power having been damaged to such a degree,” Baughman said. “My main concern in most any crime is the victim.”

So the road will go through, the pole gets paid for and the charges are dropped. Case closed, right?

Not quite.

Browning, a self-employed mechanic, is pushing ahead with his $4.2 million civil rights lawsuit. It names Mayor Paul Korman and the road workers.

The suit also names Police Chief Jeff Alexander, Kootenai County Sheriff Pierce Clegg and former Attorney General Larry EchoHawk. Browning says their offices wouldn’t pursue his claims that he was being wronged.

It’s difficult to know what the city thinks of all this. The City Council discussed the offer behind closed doors. City Attorney Richard Marshall said he couldn’t discuss it due to a pending lawsuit. The mayor didn’t return phone calls.

In a previous interview, Marshall claimed the city always had a 30-foot right of way. Other city officials said the right of way didn’t line up with the existing Tenth Avenue due to poor surveying decades ago.

Browning said he’s determined to see his suit through to the end. He’s acting as his own attorney.

“My forefathers died for these freedoms that we supposedly enjoy, and I’m not going to let the city get away with this,” Browning said.