COEUR d’ALENE — Some officials welcome an open format for communication, but have their concerns about how open that communication will be.

A day after the Citizens for Honest and Responsible Government group announced its intention to launch a Web site geared toward non-partisan government communication, some officials familiar with the group’s old Web site, opencda.com, have their doubts.

“All it is a re-branding of the old opencda Web site,” said Thom George, chairman of the Kootenai County Democratic Central Commitee, skeptical if the new Web page will be anything more than opinionated blogging.

“They’ve been discredited by the facts so many times on the allegations they’ve made, their credibility in the community is nill,” he said.

George questioned the nonpartisan claim since some of the founders are raising funds for Jim Brannon, who is challenging the city’s Nov. 3 election. Brannon was supported by the Kootenai County Reagan Republicans — a group that strongly opposed all of the incumbents during the last election.

George said he didn’t expect the group’s agenda to change, which he described as “attack anything and everything the city does.”

The sites founders include Bill McCrory, Jim Doty, Susie Snedaker, Kathy Sims, Larry Gilman, Gary Ingram, Dan Gookin and Mary Souza.

They said a difference between the new site and opencda.com will be that it is branching into state issues.

Sen. John Goedde said he hopes the group is true to its word, and doesn’t let the page lean toward opinion-based commenting.

“I will welcome an unbiased source of information if that is what is provided,” he told The Press. “If it becomes a forum for bias, editorials and partial truths, it will only be one more frustration to citizens seeking the truth. Newspapers segregate their functions by creating an editorial page and a news section and I hope the Web site will do the same.”

The site, www.thechrg.org, will launch this weekend.