Kootenai County Starts Internet Pilot Project

It would serve out-of-state lovers and cross-town developers.

At the touch of a button, they could find the cost of a marriage license or building permit.

Meanwhile, public defenders could gain access to law books at faraway universities and commissioners could review model ordinances from other before considering them here.

All in seconds. All for less than the cost of a home computer.

Kootenai County is starting a six-month pilot project that would establish a county home page on the Internet and give 14 county departments access to computer web sites.

Initial costs for the project, the brainchild of County Clerk Dan English, are expected to be less than $2,000 - the cost of installing the software. Unlimited monthly access is about $170.

The project would give county employees quick access to important information and could increase interaction with the public, English said.

“A number of departments were asking for it,” he said. “I’m already a real active user myself and I just saw countless possibilities.”

So did new Chief Public Defender Ron Coulter, who regularly reads Internet versions of out-of-state newspapers on his home computer.

Coulter said the system would allow his lawyers - as well as those in the prosecutor’s office - to gain access to Supreme Court cases through Cornell or Emory universities within 24 hours of court decisions. While the service doesn’t eliminate the need for the legal research networks WESTLAW or Nexus, it is significantly cheaper.

The Internet “is almost like you’re standing in a river and all this information is just flowing over you,” Coulter said.

English said he expects county officials also would use the system to learn how other states handle problems similar to those facing Kootenai County. Officials can use key words to find another county’s ordinance and then retrieve the entire text, rather than making costly telephone calls and waiting days for mailings.

The county home page - a computer billboard of sorts - primarily would serve residents and visitors and would be modeled after home pages from other counties and one established by the state last year.

Idaho offers a computer profile and telephone information for all state agencies. It also gives up-to-the-minute access to legislative actions.”It would even help me,” English said. “I end up giving the same little spiel on about 90 percent of the calls I get.”

, DataTimes