Edit: Officials stonewall public info

Some government officials don’t appreciate this; most do.

Three recent incidents snap this into focus.

• A clerk in the Whitman County courthouse, perhaps feeling protective of other officials, refused to provide the Daily News the names and phone numbers for the county’s junior taxing districts - fire, water, school, hospital - and tried to quiz us on why we wanted them. Those public records must be provided to a newspaper - or you, no questions asked.
• The police chief in Lewiston decided only reporters who showed up at a crime scene or who submitted written questions Monday through Friday between noon and 1 p.m. would get more information about what his officers were doing. For years, there and elsewhere, reporters have called dispatchers and officers to clarify confusing or missing facts on the police log.
• On June 29, Latah County Sheriff Wayne Rausch stopping faxing even the log of sheriff’s calls to the Daily News. That was the day we ran a story letting Rausch explain that his house was being foreclosed as part of a 2012 bankruptcy stemming from a more than $100,000 debt that went back to his first election as sheriff in 2004. We think the public needs to know anytime any elected official who spends the public’s money wisely has trouble managing his own.

He thought it unfair. More here.

DFO: I’m delighted that media and the public don’t have to deal with elected Neanderthals in Kootenai County.