COEUR d'ALENE - Kootenai County now has a consistent, uniform policy to ensure public records requests are processed and handled according to state laws and court rules.

The county commissioners on Tuesday voted to adopt a public records request policy, and settle on a single records request form.

"It standardizes it throughout the county," said Commissioner Marc Eberlein. "Before, every different department had a different public records request format."

The sheriff's office will maintain a different form, however.

County civil prosecuting attorney Barry Black said Tuesday that the new policy and request form were drafted to make it easier for the public to get information.

The policy tries to make "public records more efficient, not only internally but externally too, for the people trying to obtain records through the county," Black said.

The policy documents said "it shall be presumed that all county public records are open at all reasonable times for inspection."

Elected officials, department heads and employees should encourage people to use the official county public records request form, and to be concise and specific in making their requests, the policy said. Still, all requests made in writing will be processed, as that is the state law.

In part, the records request policy and adoption of a single records request form is a reaction by the county to being inundated by records requests from Frank Davis of Allied Bail Bonds in Coeur d'Alene. He has submitted hundreds of requests, many through lengthy emails.

In an email, Davis told The Press he used to use the county's forms, but said he stopped, in part because the county "chose to not use them from time to time in replying."

He doesn't like to use forms sometimes because "only a small amount of information can be included, and if needing to link to a document or other information, you cannot do that on the form," Davis said.

So why has he submitted so many records requests to the county?

"The simplest answer is verifying mountains of malfeasance that will not stop," Davis said in the email. "I have done this with some state agencies, school districts, cities, and even the courts - to where I find somebody not following the law, they immediately stop doing that and start to follow the law."

He added: "The one - and an enormous - exception is Kootenai County, who stops nothing at all when it is wrong and unlawful."

Davis and the county have battled in court in the past.