Can District Demolition Pro Knock Down Three In A Row?

Ex-superintendent Max Harrell apparently hit the jackpot twice while tearing apart two school districts.

America, what a country!

Here, we have a guy who has been paid twice not to work - about $110,000 from the Butte Valley School District in northernmost California and $222,000 from the Bonner County School District.

Bonner County, of course, has only itself to blame for hiring Harrell. If district officials had done a good background check, they’d have discovered the controversy and financial mess he left behind in Dorris, Calif. But they didn’t. And the rest is history. Above all, I’m struck by the difference between buyouts in the public sector and the private one.

I’ve only been fired once during my newspaper career, some 16 years ago in Montana. I was managing a small daily when the publisher called me into his office on a Friday afternoon and canned me - without warning, without adequate severance. All I got was a curt “don’t let the door hit you on the butt on the way out.”

In fact, the publisher later was upset that I collected a summer’s worth of unemployment benefits before landing another job.

So, I’ll shed no tear for Harrell as he scrounges around for yet another job. The safety net he’s now tumbled into twice isn’t there for us working stiffs.

Killer close to get-out-of-jail-free card

Sooner or later, Thomas Henry Gibson, and probably Donald Manuel Paradis, will be freed from prison. This, despite Gibson’s claim he killed Kimberly Palmer 17 years ago in Spokane. Gibson, of course, never confessed under oath. And now that a judge has ordered him a new Idaho trial, don’t be surprised if his memory fails.

As you recall, the bodies of Palmer and her boyfriend, Scott Currier, were found dumped near Post Falls, like so much trash.

Paradis was facing the gallows for Palmer’s murder until Gov. Phil Batt intervened to commute his sentence to life without possibility of parole. Batt and now U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill had problems with the finding that Palmer was killed in Idaho. If she died in Spokane, as Gibson claims, then Idaho doesn’t have jurisdiction over the murder. After all this time, it’ll be difficult to convict Gibson again. Memories fade. People disappear. But it’s heartening that the Kootenai County prosecutor is prepared to take Gibson to court again. Here’s hoping the state attorney general’s office is, too. Gibson and Paradis shouldn’t get away with murder.

, DataTimes MEMO: D.F. Oliveria’s “Hot Potatoes” runs Tuesdays and Thursdays. You can comment on the items by calling (800) 344-6718 or (208) 765-7125, or by sending e-mail to daveo@spokesman.com.