And another thing …

Boom town dilemma. It’s natural for property taxpayers to roll their eyes when bureaucrats say they need more staff.

In the case of the Kootenai County planning and building departments, however, Director Rand Wichman has a legitimate gripe. In a county experiencing a building boom, the building department has the same number of inspectors today as it did 14 years ago. Meanwhile, inspections jumped last year by more than threefold from 1990, from 3,253 to 10,632.

You say, so what? The staff shortage means that developers, builders and home buyers were waiting three months for inspections last summer instead of the usual two weeks. That kind of delay fuels frustration and anger toward hard-working inspectors and the county they represent. By not spending the money to properly fund the two departments, county commissioners made it harder for the local building industry to function well. Think of that when Wichman asks for more staff at the budget hearings this summer.

Leave ‘em laughing. Stories that sound too good to be true – or too atrocious – usually are. So there may be more to the one out of Hempstead, N.Y., than was reported by Newsday this week.

Two men in their 60s, members of an organization that has some issues with courts and lawyers, were handcuffed, frisked and issued tickets to appear in court next month. Their offense? Disorderly conduct; to wit, telling lawyer jokes – old ones, at that – while standing in line outside a courthouse.

“Shut up!” shouted a bystander. “I’m a lawyer.” Enter the cops.

For the sake of free speech we’d like to think there are extenuating circumstances to justify the response. Otherwise, the thought of being jailed for openly ridiculing privileged classes is chilling – especially to editorial writers.