COEUR d'ALENE - The buck clearly stops with Kootenai County's commissioners, who have inked settlement agreements over the past year resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in payouts to former employees.

But the settlements these elected county leaders authorize - paid by the county's insurer or directly from county coffers - can stem from the decisions and actions of other elected officials.

"I think the perception is when the county does something, the county does it," Commissioner Dan Green said. "I'm not trying to pass the buck. We make mistakes, too."

While two recent settlements were made with employees under the Board of County Commissioners, two others were paid to employees supervised by other elected officials - Prosecutor Barry McHugh and Sheriff Ben Wolfinger.

The county has eight elected officials: Sheriff, treasurer, assessor, coroner, clerk and three county commissioners. Each elected office is autonomous, Green said, with the ability to hire and fire their own employees.

The Press reported Wednesday that the county had placed Amber Schafer - a 911 operations manager - on paid administrative leave for at least a year before commissioners approved a settlement with Schafer for $60,000.

It was the county that was named in the tort claim Schafer filed in 2013 seeking $1 million. It was county commissioners who approved the settlement agreement.

Green said Schafer, however, was an employee under the umbrella of the sheriff's office and was placed on paid leave by Wolfinger. Kenneth D. Stone, a deputy prosecutor who received a $315,000 settlement from the county's insurer, was McHugh's employee and fired by the prosecutor.

Commissioners - whose job is appropriating tax dollars - had to approve those payouts.

Treasurer Tom Malzahn said the general public views the county as an entity.

"People often think of the county as the county," he said. "They know there are electeds, but they're not really sure how the electeds work."

Idaho's Constitution delegates the duties and distinct responsibilities for the county's elected officials, Malzahn said. One official cannot do the job of another.

"We are so different from any other entity, from any business," Malzahn said. "No business works like a county does."

Green said the county is different from a school district, which has a superintendent "responsible for decisions positive or negative and reports to the board of trustees."

"It's just tough to have a lot of chiefs," he said, "but I understand why there are safeguards built in."

In some areas, the separation of the different elected offices in Kootenai County is more clear than others.

The county has a human resources department, one of 18 departments under the elected Board of County Commissioners, but personnel records aren't centralized.

"The county human resources has a function and they have knowledge," Malzahn said. "They've got responsibilities so we work with them."

But Malzahn said the personnel records for his employees are kept in his office - and that's the way it has been since before he was hired in the treasurer's office more than 17 years ago.

Though the county has an employee policy manual, elected officials could, conceivably, determine whether or not to use them, Green said.

The sheriff's office, he said, actually has a manual that is more comprehensive.

Shortly after Wolfinger was sworn in as sheriff in 2013, he changed the name of the sheriff's department to the Kootenai County Sheriff's Office. The Press reported at the time that it was a nationwide effort of sheriffs to "return back to the 'Office of the Sheriff.'"

The National Sheriffs' Association said, "The Office of Sheriff is not simply another department of county government."

The association said using the term "office" implies sovereignty while "department implies being a subordinate unit of government."