COEUR d'ALENE - Even the most menial items, which arguably would be considered housekeeping tasks for most governing bodies, have become contentious arguments at the local GOP central committee meetings.

The Kootenai County Republican Central Committee meeting didn't even make it through the approval of January meeting minutes before it devolved into utter chaos.

Things began to heat up when Committeewoman Kellie Palm made a motion to amend the minutes to include a report Chairman Neil Oliver gave to the committee in January.

"On the agenda for that meeting under new business chairman's report was listed, but there were no chairman's remarks put into the minutes," Palm said. "I believe his remarks were pertinent to the caucus, and should have been put into the minutes. We should have a record of what his remarks are regarding the state meeting."

She said the Republican central committee "should have nothing to hide" and should include all agenda items that were covered during the open meetings.

Chairman Oliver obviously took exception to what he felt was an insinuation that he was hiding something, and began to call Palm out of order while gaveling her down.

"Kellie here we go again, you have to push it," Oliver said. "No one is trying to hide anything, and there is no reason to talk about hiding anything."

Oliver said Palm had a right to make a motion to amend the minutes but asked to stick to Robert's Rules of Order and stick to the issue at hand.

She made the motion to make an addition of the chairman's remarks into the minutes, but an argument erupted over what the proper procedure would be to do that.

"Corrections when proposed are usually handled through unanimous consent," Oliver read from Robert's Rules of Order. "So all you have to say is 'I am asking for unanimous consent to have the chairman's remarks added to the minutes.'"

Oliver asked the 44 committeemen in attendance if they would unanimously consent to the request, and Committeewoman Tina Jacobson simply said "no."

Then there was a motion made to add the remarks to the minutes, which opened the issue to discussion. Palm made her plea again, saying the item was on the agenda for the meeting, but the minutes omitted that discussion.

Visibly agitated, Jacobson argued that the meeting minutes are not a verbatim report on the meeting, but rather "CliffsNotes."

"This is not a courtroom, the secretary is not a court reporter and we don't put everything in verbatim," Jacobson said. "You find anyone's minutes that have that."

Others agreed with Palm, saying the minutes are the historic record of the meeting and should make mention of the chairman's report for committeemen to refer to in the future.

"Just from experience, if on the agenda there are the chairman's remarks, it should be referenced in the minutes, certainly not verbatim," said Committeeman Jim Pierce. "And as common practice, if anyone brings a prepared anything, it's usually included as an attachment for the record."

The motion failed, and another motion was made and passed to accept the minutes as written.

Then it was onto the treasurer's report. Oliver read a request from Committeeman Matt Roetter asking why the treasurer did not fully comply with the committee's bylaws that require a full financial reconciliation of committee's spending for 2013.

"My issue is the bylaws specifically say that on the January meeting of the KCRCC that the financial report include not only a budget, but also a reconciliation of the expenditures that are directly associated with that budget," Roetter said, adding all that had been provided was a budget for last year and a proposed budget for 2014.

As Tuesday's meeting was getting underway, Treasurer Douglas Balija distributed a campaign disclosure report he filed with the state, and tried to make the case that the report satisfied the state party's reporting requirements.

Palm, who has accounting experience, said the campaign disclosure report is not what is referenced in the bylaws, which specifically call for "actual income and expenditures, with reconcilement of the actual income expenditures by comparison to the annual budget."

"It says right in there that we need a reconciliation," she said. "That's not what we got. We are in violation of the bylaws."

After 15 minutes of back-and-forth arguing over what a reconciliation should include, it was clear there would be no agreement on the issue.

When Oliver made a decision to accept the campaign disclosure as meeting the bylaws, Palm made a motion calling for a full financial audit, and the argument took a turn for the worse.

Jacobson started to take a personal jab at Palm, and when Palm objected, Oliver again called her out of order.

When the argument subsided, Jacobson took the floor again and aggressively spoke against the audit while again taking personal jabs toward Palm.

"If you vote for an audit at this point in time, you can kiss your budget goodbye. You will suck out every penny you have in this organization," Jacobson said. "You will be giving it to a CPA firm to go over stuff that is plain and simple, and any idiot can figure it out if they would only be quiet and listen."

Jacobson said someone is working behind the scenes to take the committee's money away.

"We are wasting our time and we are getting absolutely nothing done," she said. "And now they want to propose to suck your money out so you can do absolutely nothing as a central committee.

"We might as well disband and go home."

After 15 more minutes of innuendo and argument, the committee voted against the audit.