Todd Tondee, 43, is running for re-election to the Kootenai County Commission after winning a two-year term in 2006. His challenger, Tim Herzog, 60, is a Post Falls real estate agent and business owner who has never held elected public office.

Tondee wants to continue the daily chores of managing the county’s business while updating the comprehensive plan. After that, he’d like to follow through on rewriting zoning ordinances. Those are a couple of unsexy tasks, but they’re long overdue in a county that has absorbed a population explosion since 1994, when the plan was last revised.

Herzog’s goal is to be a rebel, and his cause is watching taxpayer dollars. That’s a perennial favorite for political candidates, but the job is more involved than riding herd on a slogan. Herzog’s most recent political passion has been property value assessments. He’s been involved in four appeals to the assessor’s office this year, and he thinks the process should be much simpler. The puzzler is why he doesn’t run for the state Legislature, where the changes would have to be made. He acknowledges that he couldn’t solve the problem as a county commissioner.

Both candidates would like to address county employees’ pay as well as substandard jail-hold facilities. The county continues to lose good workers, including law enforcement officers, to higher-paying jurisdictions. Herzog’s solution is campaign cliché, dismissing talk of any new revenue sources and somehow finding the money in the current budget, a document he hasn’t studied much.

Tondee cites forgone taxes, or taxes the county was entitled to collect in previous years but did not, as a possibility in tackling budget challenges. That may not be politically popular, but it is grounded in reality. The county struggles to keep pace with recurring costs, let alone new expenditures, such as replacing the condemned Worley building, which was the site of the former jail hold and other offices.

Tondee is also a business owner, but he isn’t reluctant to push issues such as impact fees for developers. Though he isn’t a dynamic leader, his attention to the details of smart development in a rapidly expanding county is an asset to the commission. He deserves a second term.